After years and years of silence, Apple announced a new Mac Pro this summer at its annual World Wide Developers Conference. The highly modular, ridiculously powerful and expensive machine is aimed directly at the most serious of power users, specifically anyone who needs to grind through mountains of video. And as of today, you can finally order it, for the low, low starting price of $5,999 (without a screen).
A departure from 2013’s “black trashcan” look, the new Mac Pro is a throwback to the old school tower design, and the first generation Mac Pro back in 2006. It comes with a stainless steel case (with optional wheels for easy movement!) and is set up to accept all kinds of modular load-outs.
The main draw of the Mac Pro, aside from sheer power, is customization, so the specs depend on how much you’re willing to spend to load it out. Here are its most ludicrous specs when it’s maxed out to the high end:
• A 28-core Intel Xeon Processor (default is an 8-core)
• 1.5TB of system memory (default is 32GB)
• 8 internal PCI Express expansion slots, four double-wide, three single-wide, one half-wide with Apple’s I/O card preinstalled
• A dual Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX graphics card setup, for four total GPUs (default is one AMD Radeon Pro 580X)
• 4TB SSD storage (default is 256GB)
• A 1400W power supply
• An optional set of wheels for moving around its 40-pound heft
• A 3.5mm headphone jack
The new Mac Pro also pairs with a magnificent screen, if you’re ready to shell out for it. It’s called the Pro Display XDR (for eXtreme Dynamic Range) and its 32-inch LCD has a resolution of 6016 x 3284, or as Apple would call it, 6K Retina. For professional photo and video editors, it can handle P3 color, 10-bit color and a brightness of 1,000 nits for as long as you’d like with 1,600 nits at a temporary peak. As the cherry on top, its stand can also rotate into portrait mode. Well, it does if you shell out for its $999 stand which is sold separately.
The Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR can be mighty expensive depending on how you trick out your setup; the Mac Pro starts at $5,999 with an 8-core Xeon processor, 32GB of memory, an AMD WX 7100 graphics card, and a 256GB SSD. The Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999, which brings you to just shy of $11,000 to start for the pair, not including $1,000 for the Pro Display XDR stand or $199 VESA mount adapter. Both are finally available today, after being pushed back from a release date original slated for Fall. It’s a pricey proposition, but you can’t say the Mac Pro doesn’t live up to its name.
What does it mean to be “Pro”? Read the Story
