Most Powerful iMac Pro Evar - $5000

Ugh! It looks like an iMac!

Does anyone else think that the whole iMac look is beginning to appear a little dated? That thick bezel down the bottom of the screen just looks so 2000.

$5000.00, come off it! And to add insult to injury when it comes time to upgrade you lob that whole beautiful LCD display in the bin with no easy way to effectively re use it. I personally think Apple are over their PC range as they don't seem terribly interested in selling anything in that corner of the market, they're a gadget company now.
 
bman212121 said:
From the looks of it they basically have 2 GPU coolers that are next to each other. So take a pair of 200W GPU cards, pull their cooling solutions, and put them so the tops of each cooler are next to each other. They can probably make up the other 35W via the huge aluminum backing that's part of the case. There is still airflow through that portion, and it looks like it has "fins" on the exhaust as well.
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Cooling is far easier when you can pull cold air from outside the case. Makes smaller form factors much easier to cool without requiring case fans.
 
Huacanacha said:
Interesting thing, for me at least, is the two Vega models listed. I guess one with 56 CU's (3584 "stream processors") and one fully enabled 64 CU's (4096 "stream processors"). Also looks like the HBM2 might be a little underclocked.

Vega GPU
  • Radeon Pro Vega 56 graphics processor with 8GB of HBM2 memory
  • Configurable to Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics processor with 16GB of HBM2 memory

On-package HBM2 replaces external VRAM, so the GPU can fetch data at up to 400GB/s.
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1.6Ghz HBM2 is really what can be delivered in any kind of volume.
 
BulletDust said:
Ugh! It looks like an iMac!

Does anyone else think that the whole iMac look is beginning to appear a little dated? That thick bezel down the bottom of the screen just looks so 2000.

$5000.00, come off it! And to add insult to injury when it comes time to upgrade you lob that whole beautiful LCD display in the bin with no easy way to effectively re use it. I personally think Apple are over their PC range as they don't seem terribly interested in selling anything in that corner of the market, they're a gadget company now.
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That price is comparable to other workstation PC without including a display of that calibers price. Now the no real way to upgrade down the road is a legitimate gripe, but this is easily a 3-5 year lifespan PC for the type of work likely to be done on it.
 
Sircolby45 said:
For 5k I could build a system that would leave this thing weeping in the corner....Heck I don't even need to build it myself. I can pay someone to do it and still come out ahead for that price.
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viscountalpha said:
There are hackintosh that could blown this out of the water for much less.
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I keep seeing this and it misses several key points.
1: No you could not build this PC for the same price. Once you include a display at that caliber plus the fact it is using a xeon which can be tricky to buy as an average consumer then put it into a form factor you designed yourself with a custom motherboard and cooling solution you might be running that price well past 5k.
2: People buy these for the same reason they buy workstations from HP and Dell, Support. A custom built PC while great means anything goes wrong you are fixing it and if the issue is with several components you are contacting different vendors with different warranty requirements. Buying one whole PC package means if you need support you call Apple, Dell, or HP etc.
 
TorryHolt81 said:
People do buy these iMacs... I can tell you as a current Student at the University of Maryland with our 40,000+ students on campus daily, every single lab has tons of these iMacs.

In our huge library, there is a floor dedicated to computers and its divided up by windows and Apple computers, guess which section is usually filled up and others not as much?

Living in the DC area, a lot of these companies love all in one computers. But it also helps that we have like 10+ Apple stores around.

Not everyone is computer savvy and people like the simplicity of Apple OS.

All in one computers are the future.
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Then the students graduate and go into the real corporate world where profitability matters and extra money goes to some exec's bonus and not buying overpriced Macs...and suddenly those same students don't have any idea how to do anything.
InorganicMatter said:
That Xeon has a 135W TDP, and Vega is supposed to be somewhere around a 300W TDP.

I am very curious to see if that elegant little enclosure is going to be able to power and cool all that hot mess...
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Apple gets much deserved criticism when it comes aesthetics, lack of upgradeability, and sheer cost. However, the one thing I have yet to fault them for in a long time is their attention to cooling. The Mac Pro Trashcan design was very clever cooling arrangement despite the ugly exterior, the old G4 towers had front to back airflow with sections cordoned off, etc. They may not be revolutionary in design, but rather small tweaks to existing ideas that tend to work out well for their chassis designs. I look forward to a teardown of this machine from iFixit to see just how they did the cooling.
 
Shintai said:
1.6Ghz HBM2 is really what can be delivered in any kind of volume.
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Yes underclocked is the wrong term as they are surely using 1.6Ghz chips at rated spec, with 2Ghz chips (and possibly the 1.8Ghz chips) not available in volume yet. It is lower than VEGA Frontier Edition with 480GBs of bandwidth, and of course even Fury X with 512GBs albeit with HBM1 and 4 chips vs 2.

Makes you wonder if AMD regret the decision to push HBM exclusively at the high end vs GDDR5x which is hitting similar of higher bandwidth numbers. The HBM power savings combined with their more power hungry architecture vs nVidia may have forced their hand.
 
ianken said:
Kinda makes the Surface Studio seem WAY over priced. Max spec SS: Quad core i7, 4GB 980m GPU. $4200.
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Different market. The Studio also has a full touchscreen with pen input which is in the ballpark of $1k on its own. This is much more heavily geared towards videographers or people with processing needs, whereas the Surface Studio seems to be aiming for artists.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Then the students graduate and go into the real corporate world where profitability matters and extra money goes to some exec's bonus and not buying overpriced Macs...and suddenly those same students don't have any idea how to do anything.

Apple gets much deserved criticism when it comes aesthetics, lack of upgradeability, and sheer cost. However, the one thing I have yet to fault them for in a long time is their attention to cooling. The Mac Pro Trashcan design was very clever cooling arrangement despite the ugly exterior, the old G4 towers had front to back airflow with sections cordoned off, etc. They may not be revolutionary in design, but rather small tweaks to existing ideas that tend to work out well for their chassis designs. I look forward to a teardown of this machine from iFixit to see just how they did the cooling.
Click to expand...

The iMacs do have a long history of being designed with severe thermal constraints, to the point where the "K" processors can't even reach OC speeds beyond the non-K version. Apple seems to be happy with forcing throttling to lower the noise floor at the cost of quite a bit of performance.

These Xeon's can't OC, but I won't be surprised if Apple built the system to run those at 80+ degrees.
 
I'm spoiled by on-site 3 year tech support warranties for pro computers. I'm also spoiled by being able to upgrade without thinking too much about it. That said, my old iMac 21.5 was a very good computer. I agree that Apple will run the CPU hot. As to good cooling solutions, um, the trashcan Mac Pro has almost universally burned out the GPUs for users under heavy use. There are long threads about it on the Mac forums.

Although I'm drawn to the aesthetics and simplicity of a powerful iMac Pro, as a previous iMac owner, I know the unfortunate reality of making a choice like that.
 
yyv_146 said:
The iMacs do have a long history of being designed with severe thermal constraints, to the point where the "K" processors can't even reach OC speeds beyond the non-K version. Apple seems to be happy with forcing throttling to lower the noise floor at the cost of quite a bit of performance.

These Xeon's can't OC, but I won't be surprised if Apple built the system to run those at 80+ degrees.
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I didn't know Apple ever shipped a computer with a K processor. I also wasn't aware they even allowed overclocking.
 
Snoflo said:
I'm spoiled by on-site 3 year tech support warranties for pro computers. I'm also spoiled by being able to upgrade without thinking too much about it. That said, my old iMac 21.5 was a very good computer. I agree that Apple will run the CPU hot. As to good cooling solutions, um, the trashcan Mac Pro has almost universally burned out the GPUs for users under heavy use. There are long threads about it on the Mac forums.

Although I'm drawn to the aesthetics and simplicity of a powerful iMac Pro, as a previous iMac owner, I know the unfortunate reality of making a choice like that.
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They've confirmed they are still working on a modular Mac Pro in addition to this, so I'd be interested in seeing how much room exists for both computers in their market.
 
Zinn said:
I build computers for friends and family at $200 per build. You could definitely part something together better for cheaper, and remember the base model isn't getting the 18 core Xeon. So... yeah.

For "pro" users a non-upgradable AIO computer that is literally glued together is simply retarded.
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Which is fine and dandy, but toss in a highend Pro level GPU and let me know how much those builds come out to. The Mac Pro's have often been a value based on the pro GPU and power they offer, most of these cards are well into 1K a pop. $250 for the ram, $250 for a mobo, probably more, $380 for the SSD, $600 for CPU, not many other 5k displays out there, but Apple does indeed use some really nice panels, best would be the Dell 5k, which is what, $1,800 on its own, another $150 for the PSU, the 10Gbe card will be another $250, add in case, OS etc and you are at $5k.

While yes, you could part something with all super budget parts for a bit cheaper, people buying this are for work, and warranty is a big part of that, and hate on Apple as people like, but they do tend to have pretty damn good build quality, even if they are not my taste.
 
grtitan said:
Some people will buy only Mac, no matter the price, no matter the limitations.

Those people will go to hell and back on their knees to worship apple and forgetting that these things are just tools to get the job done.
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Some people like pretty tools that are easy to use. We live in a damn capitalist society if people want to spend their hard earned money on this it should not bother anyone. Apple generally earns their customer loyalty through high quality products and great support. I use Windows based PC and Apple mobile devices and Macbooks equally. I build my own Windows PC primarily for gaming and I absolutely loath that PC because of all the inherent issues with windows and myriad of parts you have to deal with. I have pretty well optimized PC, but I use it for games only I can't stand to actually work on it. You may not want to pay Apple prices, and that is perfectly fine and people have perfectly reasonable reasons as to why, but lets move away from the idea Apple's customer base don't actually have good reasons why they buy Apple beyond the blind loyalty argument which is just lazy thinking.
 
No touch screen no care. Why couldn't they take some inspiration from the surface studio. I'd have been first in line.

Really want to move past the Cintiq tablet but the Studio is too weak. This has the power but not the form factor.
 
gigatexal said:
The display is gorgeous and likely 1 to 2 grand. The e5 2667 v4 is 2grand. That's already 3 to 4 grand right there. I think it's a decent value.
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As with all Apple products, where form is several rungs higher than function on the ladder of priorities, I bet you this thing will be constantly throttling like a motherf****r. Their Macbook Pros for example include some great hardware, but the thermal design won't actually let you use it, so what's the point?

That new cooling system they show still won't cope, in my opinion.
 
Still no touch screen? ... oh wait it's iMacs, but at least give us a touch bar :) ...
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I look forward to a teardown of this machine from iFixit to see just how they did the cooling.
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new_2017_imac_pro_thermal_inline.gif.large.gif


;)
 
Presbytier said:
I keep seeing this and it misses several key points.
2: People buy these for the same reason they buy workstations from HP and Dell, Support. A custom built PC while great means anything goes wrong you are fixing it and if the issue is with several components you are contacting different vendors with different warranty requirements. Buying one whole PC package means if you need support you call Apple, Dell, or HP etc.
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This especially. It's not just the hardware costs.
 
Red Falcon said:
new_2017_imac_pro_thermal_inline.gif.large.gif


;)
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I said a teardown. I want to see all the intricacies of how its bolted together. This picture tells me jack shit. It barely shows me how heatpipes are laid out and more importantly it doesn't show me how that heatsink is constructed and how its directing exhaust air perpendicular to the intake.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I said a teardown. I want to see all the intricacies of how its bolted together. This picture tells me jack shit. It barely shows me how heatpipes are laid out and more importantly it doesn't show me how that heatsink is constructed and how its directing exhaust air perpendicular to the intake.
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But it shows Apple's pixie dust in action!
 
Huacanacha said:
Yes underclocked is the wrong term as they are surely using 1.6Ghz chips at rated spec, with 2Ghz chips (and possibly the 1.8Ghz chips) not available in volume yet. It is lower than VEGA Frontier Edition with 480GBs of bandwidth, and of course even Fury X with 512GBs albeit with HBM1 and 4 chips vs 2.

Makes you wonder if AMD regret the decision to push HBM exclusively at the high end vs GDDR5x which is hitting similar of higher bandwidth numbers. The HBM power savings combined with their more power hungry architecture vs nVidia may have forced their hand.
Click to expand...

Even Hynix says there are no power saving benefit with HBM2 after GDDR5X/GDDR6. There is only size and ECC left.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I said a teardown. I want to see all the intricacies of how its bolted together. This picture tells me jack shit. It barely shows me how heatpipes are laid out and more importantly it doesn't show me how that heatsink is constructed and how its directing exhaust air perpendicular to the intake.
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When they make the video, please share it, I would like to see a more thorough teardown as well.
 
I was hoping for a Mac Mini or something standalone.

These Skulltrail NUCs are way more powerful than the i5 Mac Mini from many years ago.
 
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