Yes, the most expensive Mac Pro — see our previous blog on this dark cylindrical beauty — could cost as much as ten grand, and that’s without the monitor. That’s a pretty hefty price for ordinary folks, but real pros who want top of the line computing power might not worry about the extra cost for this extra-special computing platform.
Here are a list of built-to-order upgrade options that can take the new Mac Pro from the best to the better of the best:
The Processor. Upgrade to a 2.7 GHz 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor for 30MB of L3 cache. By far, the most expensive upgrade you’re looking at is the processor. If you’re not into saving fractions of a nanosecond and you don’t do industrial-strength compiling, you’re just as well off with the factory model, which is plenty fast.
Memory (RAM). Why settle for just 16GB (4x4GB) when you can load up with 64GB (4x16GB) 1855MHz DDR3 ECC. On the other hand, the average user can get along just fine with the standard configuration.
Hard Drive Storage. The Mac Pro comes with a standard ultrafast flash storage PCIe with 256GB capacity. For more money, you can upgrade the hard drive to 1TB (that’s one thousand Gigabytes!) Alex Heath in a Cult of Mac review reports:
“(Mac’s) SSD [hard drive] pricing is actually not too far removed from market rates, at least if you’re using 2.5-inch SATA drives as a point of comparison”
If you want more storage, but don’t want to pay the premium price for the 1TB, go for the 512GB, which is plenty large, unless you’re storing a large collection of graphics and sound files.
Graphics. The shelf model comes with two standard AMD FirePro graphics cards, which are ultra-fast and have plenty of bandwidth for average needs. Upgrade the Mac Pro graphics muscle with a dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB GDDRS VRAM and you’ll be running 3D video games and watching movies at the same time.
You’re not there yet!
You’ve spent just under ten grand for that special order dream machine, so why skimp on the display? Add a 32-inch Sharp 4K display and software tools like Final Cut, external Thuderbolt 2 storage, AppleCare maintenance, and you’re looking at $10K in the rearview mirror.
OK. You’re probably not into spending megabucks. You don’t have to. You might even be spooked a bit over the Mac Pro’s higher basic cost. The Mac Pro comes out of the carton with plenty of everything and you’ll run it for at least ten years with the best after-the-sale support for any product anywhere. Upgrades are all about the workload you’re going to place on your new Mac. Plug it in and watch it go.
If you’ve been procrastinating on your New Years’ resolution to recycle your Windows Vista/XP clunker, contact us. We can load you up with a powerful Mac Pro — or any model down through the iMac, or even the world’s best laptop, the MacBook Pro, and you won’t spend anywhere near ten grand.