Apple has introduced the Mac Studio, a new Mac desktop that’s like the lovechild of a Mac mini and a Mac Pro. It’s powered by M1 Max and Apple’s new M1 Ultra.
The latter is described by Apple as the “world’s most powerful chip for a personal computer.” Built from a single aluminum extrusionwith a square footprint of just 7.7 inches and a height of only 3.7 inches, Mac Studio is designed to take up little space and fit under most displays. It also boasts an innovative thermal design.
The unique system of double-sided blowers, precisely placed airflow channels, and over 4,000 perforations on the back and bottom of the enclosure guide air through the internal components and help cool the high-performance chips. Because of the efficiency of Apple silicon, Mac Studio purportedly remains quiet, even under the heaviest workloads.
About the M1 Ultra
The M1 Ultra builds on Apple’s M1 Max and features a new “UltraFusion” architecture that interconnects the die of two M1 Max chips, creating a system on a chip (SoC) consisting of 114 billion transistors, the most ever in a personal computer chip. According to Apple …
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Max Enables:
- Up to 2.5x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
- Up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor.
- Up to 3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and over 3x faster than Mac Pro with its most popular graphics card.
- Up to 7.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 3.7x faster than 16-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Ultra Enables:3
- Up to 3.8x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
- Up to 90 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with 16-core Xeon processor.
- Up to 60 percent faster CPU performance than 28-core Mac Pro.
- Up to 4.5x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Mac graphics card available today.
- Up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 5.6x faster than 28-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
Apple says that the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra can play back 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video, which no other computer in the world can do. It sports up to 64GB of unified memory on systems with M1 Max and up to 128GB of unified memory on systems with M1 Ultra. The SSD in the desktop reportedly delivers up to 7.4GB/s of performance and a capacity of up to 8TB.
The Mac Studio’s design
On its back, the Mac Studio includes four Thunderbolt 4 ports to connect displays and high-performance devices, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a pro audio jack for high-impedance headphones or external amplified speakers. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are built in as well.
The Mac Studio even includes ports on the front. There are two USB-C ports, which on M1 Max supports 10Gb/s USB 3, and on M1 Ultra supports 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 4. There is also an SD card slot on the front to import photos and video. And Mac Studio provides extensive display support — up to four Pro Display XDRs, plus a 4K TV — driving nearly 90 million pixels.
The new Mac Studio is available to order today on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app. They will begin arriving to customers, and will be in select Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, beginning Friday, March 18.
The Mac Studio starts at US$1,999 and $1,799 for education. Additional configure-to-order options are available at apple.com/store.
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