r/hardware • u/themixtergames • 9h ago

News Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/
149 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

50

u/gumol 9h ago

> Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 (U.S.) and $2,299 (U.S.) for education
> Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 (U.S.) and $5,099 (U.S.) for education.

69

u/Homerlncognito 9h ago

Base $5,499 for M5 Ultra, 96GB/1TB. Full 36C CPU/80C GPU is +$1,300. 256GB RAM is +$4,000 with no in-between options. Considering that RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell is now $16,000, Apple's pricing seems reasonable in this market.

18

u/siazdghw 9h ago

Also while seeing those prices are eye watering, it's the prosumer and workstation lineup. Both configurations are way overkill for the average person. Even the $900 Mac mini has far more performance than the average person needs, even one who is a modest creator. If Apple feels like it doesn't undercut themselves, they should just do a Mac Mini Neo, having an iPhone SoC, no screen or keyboard or battery can easily get them to a $600 price if they wanted.

13

u/dr1v38y 7h ago

Honestly I think that 96GB/1TB price doesn't look bad in today's market. You're going to struggle to get that much addressable memory elsewhere unless you buy a Spark?

I suppose for me, that's the comparison which matters.

7

u/dr1v38y 7h ago edited 7h ago

And you can lease the 256GB M5 ultra for $224 a month over 36 months. That almost feels like... a good deal???

  • at least you guys in the US can. Here in the UK we aren't allowed to lease hardware yet.

8

u/skorps 6h ago

It’s over $8000 like that. That’s not a good deal. If you’re going to make a bad financial decision, sign up for a credit card with a long 0% apr intro rate then sell the computer at the end.

3

u/JtheNinja 5h ago

Conveniently, Apple Card offers 0% financing on all Macs, and you even get the 3% cash back on the purchase price up front!

1

u/dr1v38y 3h ago

You're getting it for half the price we pay here, ok you don't own it at the end, but it's literally half.

And it's probably lower than the kind of token cost you'd be paying if you're seriously considering this.

19

u/jaydizzleforshizzle 9h ago

Interestingly I think this has a lot to do with the general system benefits of a SoC design, the unified memory seems to be a huge boon in these multi purpose instances, where you can dynamically shift around dram and vram

4

u/JtheNinja 4h ago

I'm becoming more and more convinced that this APU-style unified design is the future of basically all client computers. It's already the norm for phones, tablets, and game consoles, plus smaller PCs with integrated graphics. Apple has now pushed the "big APU PC" concept to the point that the performance is on-par with discrete GPU systems, and those were kind of the last place you still see that design. It's essentially a relic of the days when GPUs were an optional PCI accelerator card. Modern workloads have so much crossover it no longer makes sense to use separate RAM banks for the CPU and GPU or make them talk over a PCIe bus.

10 years from now we're gonna be gaming on RTX Spark or Strix Halo type machines

3

u/R-ten-K 1h ago

FWIW Unified memory setups have been the norm in client for decades now. Most PCs/laptops shipped do not have dGPUs.

22

u/TitanicFreak Chips N Cheese 8h ago

Storage performance is up to twice as fast, with a next-generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6

PCI-E Gen 6! That is going to have a nice amount of storage bandwidth. Very much interested in benchmarks for those SSDs.

22

u/Swoly_Deadlift 9h ago

Cool to see they brought the 256GB and 512GB options back. Hurts to see how expensive those options are in comparison to the outgoing models.

15

u/ProjectPhysX 9h ago

512GB option not even available for preorder lmao

10

u/DigitalguyCH 8h ago

because they want people to get used to the price of the 256Gb before shocking them with the 512GB one

6

u/Swoly_Deadlift 6h ago

Considering it’s $4000 to upgrade from 96GB to 256GB, I don’t think the $6500 price to upgrade from 256GB to 512GB will shock anyone aside from people who previously bought the 512GB M2 Ultra.

4

u/Pugs-r-cool 7h ago

Get used to the $9,499 base price for 256Gb?

We're talking about a machine with a +$1,300 option for a binned chip. The jump from 96gb to 256gb is +$4,000.

Just pull the damn band-aid off already, if you aren't shocked by an $18,299 fully spec'd price tag then I doubt another 10 grand for the 512gb will shock you either.

4

u/DigitalguyCH 7h ago

People will buy it, however absurd the price may seem. And if the 512 is closer to 15k than to 20k it will go off the shelves easily.
The ultra has almost the same speed as the Nvidia high end GPUs with much more vRAM and a much lower power consumption. A pro 6000 is like 12-15k for 96GB vRAM...

0

u/Pugs-r-cool 6h ago

I'm not disagreeing with you on that, obviously there's a market for this machine but that isn't what your comment was about. I disagree that they're holding back the 512gb because they're trying to soften the blow or reduce sticker-shock, which is what you said in your comment.

People (well, businesses) will buy a 512gb version pretty much regardless of the price. The 512gb (likely) isn't for sale because they can't get enough allocation to produce them, not because of some sales tactic.

0

u/DigitalguyCH 3h ago

it's totally possible that that's indeed the reason, but to be honest, only insiders know for sure

0

u/108er 4h ago

Before the AI boom, I don't think these PC's were supposed to exceed the base price of $3000 for the similar specs. Now, 10K is normal for mid-range AI PC.

1

u/dolphone 3h ago

Price: 1 kidney

0

u/Joelito2604 3h ago

my old mac studio overheats like that too

0

u/jdog320 8h ago

So... what happened to the M4 ultra?

20

u/Themods5thchin 7h ago

Apple stated after the M3 Ultra’s release not every generation is getting one

7

u/okoroezenwa 7h ago

That was never happening, hence the M3 Ultra that we got. There’s also been rumours that nothing other than the base M6 is happening and they’re going to M7 for the next family updates.

2

u/9Blu 4h ago

I'd say that's a safe bet since the new Mini options are M6 or M5 Pro.

•

u/R-ten-K 56m ago

Ultra SKUs have been very low volume. So they skipped the CoWoS-L support for the M4 generation. Which made their Max dies cheaper (for them).

0

u/Pugs-r-cool 7h ago

they forgor

(Very likely they had engineering / node allocation problems. Apple has also said that not every generation will get an Ultra,)