A $43,859.00 Refurbished Mac Pro | Hacker News Reader

A $43,859.00 Refurbished Mac Pro

apple.com

115 pointsOMGCable165 comments

I'm reminded of the time someone actually put the "you could build an identical PC cheaper yourself" to the test back in 2013.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173695-apples-new-over...

While I'm sure AMD's latest high-core count chips may be giving us new cheaper options, high priced Macs have typically been reasonably priced for their specs.

More recently when the 27" 5K iMacs came out, I looked at the price of a 27" 5K IPS DCI-P3 monitor on Dell... it was only $100 less than the iMac, despite the Mac having a full computer in it, in addition to the display. People still complained that they were expensive.

The PC version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_IHSRPVqwQ

> on Dell

That's why :-)

The Dell was the only 5K IPS DCI-P3 monitor I could find. That's why. DCI-P3 was new to consumer space. 5K was new to consumer space. IPS further limited the the ability to find a comparable screen.

A lot of people, even in the HN/tech communities don't seem to understand that all monitors aren't created equally.

Yeah the point is Dell ain't the cheapest. Clearly it is the only one from what you have added. I was making the point that saying something is cheaper than Dell ain't saying much.

Because you're looking at manufacturers that primarily cater to enterprise. There is a big difference if you look at MSI or Acer for monitors generally and build your own PC.

The cheapest Kia is less expensive than a BMW. They both take you from point A to point B.

Are you arguing that Kia is also a luxury brand? Or are you arguing that luxury brands aren't a thing? I honestly can't tell.

Is Dell a luxury brand?

I have never thought that. I would expect better parts from MSI.

I believe Alienware is a premium brand and it's a branch of Dell [1].

P.S. I miss the ridiculous Alienware XP themes [2].

[1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/gaming/alienware

[2] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IpMO_Mx-ARM/UYvCW7ikojI/AAAAAAAAA...

I guess alienware is, you're right.

Not like...a desirable luxury brand to me even though I am a professional game developer, but it is a luxury brand.

In the Monitor world, Dell and HP’s business line are among the best in class, and have been for some time.

Except when you actually compare the specs for gaming monitors where refresh rate and response time matter

Except typical MSI and Acer monitors are not remotely on par with the professional monitors mentioned prior. MSI and Acer's professional monitors that are approximately the same specification, amazingly, cost approximately the same price.

Yes they are. Once you look at the actual specs beyond the name brand, you can get much better deal. Dell and Apple monitors are also going to usually be higher response time and lower hz as well, so worse performance for more money.

Response time and frequency are not the metrics that are most important for professional monitors. Colour accuracy, colour space and panel uniformity are the important metrics.

Sony can sell 1080p, 60hz monitors with 5ms response time for $3k because their colour accuracy, colour space support and panel uniformity are unparalleled outside of that price bracket.

Consider https://pro.sony/en_AU/products/broadcastpromonitors/lmd-a24... and https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1029229-REG/sony_lmda... , Sony doesn't even list the pixel response time because it's not important for the market.

> Because you're looking at manufacturers that primarily cater to enterprise.

He was looking at one of the few available remotely comparable display.

I've never used either of these computers, but maxing the specs on a System 76 Thelio Massive gets you:

- 2x Xeon Platinum 8280 (28 Cores each, 2.7 - 4.0 GHz)

- 2x 768 GB ECC DDR4 Memory (6x128GB per CPU, 1.5TB total)

- 1x 2TB NVME drive

- 1x 28TB SSD

- 4x Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB, 4352 CUDA Cores each)

- $ 53,356

I've never used either or anything remotely close to either that or the mac pro, so I could be missing something, but the system76 seems like much better value than the fully maxed Mac Pro at $ 53,899

It may be better value for your particular use case. It depends entirely on the requirements, surely? If you need the faster SSD, hardware disk encryption, ability to run MacOS or some other feature that the Mac Pro has over the system you specified, that might have a different answer than if you need the maximum number of CUDA cores.

The only thing you've mentioned that a mac actually has over any other machine is the ability to (legally) run OS X. Maybe you think that's worth a few thousand euros. Most people don't agree with you.

And, from my understanding, run it with something akin to stability. Am I wrong that Hackintoshes today are still for people who don't mind regularly chasing down pretty significant bugs (like "bluetooth doesn't turn on" style)?

That’s often the case. Apple is way better than Dell and HP on supply chain stuff, but their range is narrower. Dell has like 10000 configurations and Apple has like 100, with 80% of sales being stock SKUs. Even with laptops, they tend to offer at least one model that is an incredible value due to scale. If you need to configure, however, forget it.

Back in 2008/9, I bought about 300 cheese graters at a net savings of about $180k vs other workstations if memory serves. It was a happy coincidence that our need matched Apple’s config.

They didn't make the profit on the first sale. They made the profit on the next sale after the user finds it nearly impossible to upgrade and buys a new computer instead.

What I'd contest on this is the fact that almost nobody needs best in spec in every category... Yeah, building the exact spec might not be cheaper, but it's also not what's needed to match the performance in any 1 or more particular use case.

Also, nothing will every justify a $1k monitor desk mount.

Yes, clearly you should take that $1000 to buy the "I Am Rich" phone app instead.

That article is incorrect; their guess of equivalent GPUs was about $5600 too high.

The FirePro D700 used in the Mac Pro was essentially a rebadged consumer card. (It's surprising, but none of the GPUs in the Mac Pro officially supported ECC.) Instead of two FirePro W9000 cards ($6800), they should have specified two HD7970 6GB cards ($1200).

This isn't just in tech.

I am still very surprised vast majority people dont know how to compare. And that is why branding and marketing matters.

I used to be furious at marketing. They are always hype and spin. But the older I get the more appreciate I have for it. Not because I agree with them now, but generally speaking consumers just aren't very good at judging values and knowing what they want. Marketing helps that, and push things forward.

27" 5K iMacs are really low-priced. It's outlier.

Going through Apple's buy site, the previous owner maxed out every single configuration except for storage (2TB not 8TB) and then skimped on purchasing a Magic Trackpad, opting solely for a Magic Mouse 2. If they were going to spend all this, they should have gone all in!

Pretax cost as configured: $51,999 Cost fully maxed out: $53,948

BTW, this refurbished Mac Pro represents a savings of 15% off of $51,999.

We don’t know if the previous owner got the trackpad or not. For example, if there were a problem with the computer and it was swapped for a new one, Apple probably wouldn’t ask for the Magic Trackpad. Or even if it was returned, I imagine those two products have different pools of stock.

Similarly, if the issue was with the SSD, maybe Apple decided to replace it with a 2TB before reselling it?

Or prefers a mouse for desktop (like me)

I do too for most stuff, but I decided to try out a Magic Trackpad for a while and now I actually keep both on my desk. Having full gestures available right next to (or in my case directly above) the mouse makes for a surprisingly pleasant experience in macOS.

or a trackball like me

Would be interesting to find out the annual price of renting a same spec machine on AWS/GC/Azure would be.

Don't forget to factor in the cost to be sitting in the DC with the machine, so that you're not beholden to internet latency/outages/etc.

If you don’t like trackpads... why would you get a trackpad.

I hope whoever buys this pays $300 more for AppleCare+.

$300 to protect against downside risk on $44,000 for two years isn't bad.

I was wondering if there was a refurb mac mini for sale the other day and I saw these machines (I think the cheapest one they had was $12k)

A little voice in the back of my head wondered... are these really used machines?

I thought this because a lot of new products on amazon have a fixed MSRP, but the same product used can be lower, so folks sell "used" products at a discount that still have all the shrink wrap.

It was terrifying to click this link and have it open up in the Apple Store app, with my payment info already available, and a big blue "Add to Bag" button under my thumb.

The bank would immediately decline a $43,000 purchase on my card. Not only is this way over my debit card’s daily anti-fraud limit, it also exceeds my bank balance. I would recommend keeping a small balance in any account used for online purchasing.

My trick is to only have a £200 net worth

I never purchase items with a debit card. A credit card always beats a debit card if you are able to pay it off every month.

If there's a wrong transaction with a credit card, the company will 99.99% of the time immediately take your side, and all you have to do is click dispute, and the money is instantly credited to your account.

With a debit card, in the past I have had to go through a week or so long process to get fradulent charges removed.

Plus other benefits, there are perks like automatically extended warranty on purchases like this one (amex), and all sorts of discounts.

I purchased something with a credit card, and returned it, but it was "lost" in shipping even though they signed for it. It took a while to notice, then it took a while to investigate and then a specified time period had elapsed and my cc company wouldn't reverse the charge. I cancelled the card.

I'll stop blanket recommending credit cards now.

Amex it is.

Ha, it was amex. Yes, credit card are better than debit cards but I thought I would have more options.

I only use my credit card for online purchases, but now that you say that it would be several times my credit limit so it probably wouldn't go through

Might look outlandish to everyday consumers but it's not unreasonable in my line of work (VFX, 3D, real-time graphics) to require this kind of specs.

I’m pretty sure you could escape for under 10k if you built this yourself in a PC.

... but macOS?!?

Hackintosh!

Those days are over, ARM transition and all. Enjoy while you still can.

They "still have unrevealed Intel Macs" as per the keynote; given that the 2013 iMac is still supported for Big Sur, we almost certainly still have 7 years of support for both architectures in MacOS.

Jobs said the same thing (about new Macs) about PowerPC in 2006. By 2007, Macs were all Intel, and the Intel-only Snow Leopard debuted in 2009. Complete abandonment of Leopard in 2011.

I give it 5 years at the most.

absolutely agree with you, if that. Support times seem to be getting worse as we have more overall system changes these days (or just bigger OSs?)

Eagerly awaiting the next-gen. "ApplePi" with ARM macOS on a raspberry pi 5. :)

The two video cards alone cost $10k.

The memory alone is $15,000.

It seems like they’re maybe Apple-exclusive so it’s possibly they’re drastically marked up. The Titan RTX is $2500 apiece and seems somewhat comparable.

The Titan RTX is a consumer GPU, not a workstation GPU. The cards are designed for different workloads, so are not really comparable.

What parts of the chip do they burn off for the consumer version?

It has ecc memory, more memory, and the design allows for 4 stacked together, making it ideal for deep learning workflows.

I think your issue may be with the exponential scaling of GPU cost at the highest end. As a consumer, you wish that a card ~2x the Titan in tflops only cost twice as much, but it doesn’t work that way for either platform, and of course isn’t helped by the workstation card market being smaller by unit than the retail/ORM gaming card market.

That said I did not downvote you; it’s an understandable frustration.

What RAM are you buying?

Here's a $32,000 attempt at a PC build to compete with a loaded Mac Pro. The result was a mixed bag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_IHSRPVqwQ

They threw a silly amount of RAM in it, so ended up using one of the AMD server CPUs/mainboards rather than a threadripper, since the threadripper could only leverage 256G of RAM. $1200 a stick... woof. I doubt the workload they put on things used that much memory. Would have been interesting to match a cheaper 24 core CPU ($1300) and 256G ($1000) or less of memory with that same test.

If we're going for comparisons, the $43k+ refurb Mac Pro linked at the top of this page still has 50% more RAM than that PC does.

I think the video's conclusion is spot on -- blindly comparing specs isn't really helpful for judging real world usability of hardware that is this high end. You should get the specific resources matched to your workload. That might be a Mac Pro, it might be a server in a closet with a TB of RAM, or it might be a PC with a couple of Quadros in it. Or maybe it's just a netbook with a Celeron :)

> They threw a silly amount of RAM in it, so ended up using one of the AMD server CPUs/mainboards rather than a threadripper, since the threadripper could only leverage 256G of RAM. $1200 a stick... woof.

Are you arguing that no one needs >256G of memory? Or are you arguing that no one needs ECC memory? Or are you arguing that server chips and motherboards shouldn't exist? Or is your complaint that Apple sells a workstation? Or maybe you think workstations should be illegal?

Should car makers only sell cars that you, personally, would like to buy? Should all manufacturers only sell things that you personally find useful? And if you don't find this computer useful how valuable is it for 100 people to chime in to say that? (IMHO opinion polls are better suited to that level of commentary.)

> I doubt the workload they put on things used that much memory

All anecdata to the contrary some workloads do in fact benefit from obscene amounts of memory. And if you've ever looked into it supporting >1TB of memory requires expensive dense memory modules because there are only so many memory busses on the chip and only so many sockets you can put on a bus.

> Are you arguing that no one needs >256G of memory?

For context, I'm working in cloud infrastructure. Due to customer demand (esp. from customers with large in-memory DBs), our newest set of ultra-large VM flavors goes up to 3 and 6 TiB RAM. I'm not directly involved with compute, but from what I gather, it's an interesting challenge esp. on the operations side. You can migrate a 4 GiB VM in a pinch if the hypervisor is looking bad. Migrating a 6 TiB VM, however, takes a substantial amount of time (22 minutes if you have a 40 Gbps link and can saturate it, which you usually can't).

I'm looking at what a workstation class machine likely should be, I guess. All things being equal, I'd love there to be no (realistic) upper limit on memory. ECC should have been supported by threadripper too, IMHO. I've only got a 128G on my workstation and already considering filling that extra four slots. 64-512G is likely pretty normal memory space for a workstation class machine.

My complaint is the testing methodology. Server vs server is a different problem/requirements. They compared a workstation and then built a workstation with memory requirements that were more common to a server class machine. I suspect a cheaper 'non-server' CPU, with a memory footprint that was more typical for a workstation load, a cheaper option would have held up. One of the likely reasons they gimped the threadripper was to ensure it did not compete with the epic product line.

As for the questions: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no. :)

I was curious as to whether this indeed would be possible. But the CPU (W-3275M) itself starts at $6k, the Vega's are $8k each, I can't find any catalogue prices but each slab of ram comes in at around $600 which puts us at $30k. Not unthinkable that the remaining hardware can add another $5k to the bill and you're looking at a $35k machine.

You can probably replace some of these with consumer grade parts, but I'll be impressed if you can create a machine with two titans, 28 cores, and 1.5tB of memory for under $10k.

What are you talking about? Just the 1.5Tb of RAM would cost you around $10K alone...

“I could clone Facebook in a weekend”

Yeah, not sure the point of this post. >$20k alone for GPU and RAM.

My takeaway is that somebody, somewhere, had to get a 50k mac replaced and apple has one to refurbish. I suppose it's not that surprising given that used luxury cars are a thing, but a used workstation at this price point is rare.

Curious about the low (comparatively to the rest of the specs) amount of SSD storage, given that raw video tends to be very large. I guess they would be using networked storage for everything?

If you're really doing video, I suspect you'd use storage arrays (perhaps arrays of SSD for high-end) instead of trying to cram it into your workstation, not to mention you'd want redundancy (and sharing) for production-type work

A lot of editors will keep all of their footage on some form of networked storage until they need to work on a specific piece of it. Bring it to the machine, edit it, and send it back to the storage array.

I work in the same industry, and will say you don't need to max out every component on a PC for real-time graphics peak performance. Yeah, you might need to max out a few parts, but not every part.

If I’m not mistaken, this was roughly the price point of an SGI Indigo II workstation — in 1995 dollars. Seems to be targeting a similar niche. Machines like the Onyx were even more, if I remember correctly — could be north of $100k. A license to something like Alias PowerAnimator was another ten to fifteen grand.

>> Afterburner is a hardware accelerator card built with an FPGA, or programmable ASIC. With over a million logic cells, it can process up to 6.3 billion pixels per second.

Interesting -- didn't realize FPGAs were commonly used in graphics development flows. Does anyone know what software is used to customize the FPGA to accelerate tasks in macOS?

It's not used often. It's a one off thing for Apple.

And I don't think you as the end user or third party programmer are given any options to customize it.

It’s programmed to function as a ProRes and ProRes RAW video accelerator, so is more useful for video production. Apple has it locked down though, so while they can update it, 3rd party devs would have to find a way to hack it to do anything useful with it, and I’m not sure how appealing a target the Afterburner is with other FPGAs around.

Doesn't really count as 'an FPGA', how it's implemented is really a minor detail. Lots of consumer and prosumer hardware out there is based on FPGAs, but programming it isn't something you're allowed to do. At least two pieces of hardware hooked up to my PC are powered by FPGAs.

Part of the logic here is that if you're only gonna sell 20000 units, it's probably better to just slap an FPGA in there than build out a fully custom board with a bunch of dedicated chips. The FPGA is easier to update after release, too.

I'm interested. What are the two pieces of hardware you are talking about ?

Video capture hardware and audio interface

Personally I do not need this, and I imagine most people don't. But I wonder what Apple's return policy on this machine was, and what happened?

Did someone buy this and then not find it good enough?

Did someone want to test it and then get their money back?

Was something broken?

This is an expensive machine, comparable in price to a nice, new car. I'd want a history report if I were buying this.

Maybe they just ran their compute then sent it back. Like leaving the tag tucked into the fancy shirt you only need to wear once.

I’m imagining someone on the white board comparing time to solution with various setups while taking into account shipping time

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." — Andy Tanenbaum

> You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it. https://www.apple.com/shop/help/returns_refund

That might be just enough time to render your student film.

It's customised, so you cannot just give it back. Something must have broken.

Very likely from a studio with a business account that's made more than a few orders.

Not a lot of people are going to order this machine and return for giggles, so I guess the standard return policy applies, 14 days very few questions asked.

There are a ton of Youtubers that do exactly this for unboxing/reaction videos.

First scenario that comes to mind, because someone mentioned the probably replaced SSD, is that there was an issue suspected with the machine when it was new, and Apple replaced it with a new one right away and did diagnostics after.

It's only 500GB away from being able to load the entirety of the SSD's contents into RAM.

Of course, I say "only" when that difference alone is nearly 16× the amount of RAM I have in this here Threadripper rig on which I'm typing this comment.

This reminded me of running Linux on RAM and being amazed at the speed.

Knoppix, damn small Linux, puppy Linux, slax, and a few, even older, firewalls and router distros that existed (exist?)

For that price, I could buy nearly 3 of those $15,000 first-gen Apple watches!

Note: for anyone wondering why it's so expensive, look at the amount of RAM it has

When I create an EMR cluster with 10 nodes with 16 cores each. I get 10 cpu nodes with 1.3 terabytes of RAM. Costs $10 per hour! I use it to run Spark to process and analyse data. Amazon has the option to have GPU based nodes too! If I run it for a whole month then it'd cost me around $7.5K. Running it for 6 months will cost the same as this machine. Although not an Apple to apple comparison. This seems like a reasonably priced machine, especially for Machine Learning/Data science folks (Only if it had nVidia GPU) :D. For someone who needs that kind of power, it's not overpriced. Especially for the quality of hardware you get.

For reference, the new version of that model would be $51,599.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/tower#

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict you'd still get those beach ball spinners even with this setup.

It's definitely a machine optimized more for throughput than latency. Though 1.5TB of RAM can go a long way toward hiding storage latency for some workloads.

"Quality products at great prices"

Express delivery to my location is an additional $8.

But at least there's a power cord already included in the box. And a mouse.

Doesn't even include the wheels!

Remember that app when the App Store was still new - it was $1000 and was just named something simple like “I’m rich”. This sort of reminds of that

Ackshually, it was $999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

Thanks good memories

I still think Apple should have kept it in the Store. If somebody is willing to spend the money, then dammit, let them spend the money. It said exactly what it was and who it was for, so you couldn’t even call it fraudulent.

New, this configuration would be $51,599.00 before tax.

EDIT: Ninja’d like 5 times over. I see I wasn’t the only one that rushed to figure out what kind of discount the buyer is getting on this.

A 5$ option

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Grater-Stainless-Parmesa...

Apple has a very generous return policy. There are so many refurb Mac pros due to return for incompatible peripherals or whatever reason it was returned.

Why buy an expensive new/refurbished Mac now if there are completely new models with ARM available in a couple of years? I'd wait 1 year or so for Intel Macs' prices to drop to half or lower, because Apple will not be able to sell them anymore, and then buy and install Linux on them.

One reason is that you might need a machine now, as opposed to in a couple of years.

That's the beauty of Macs: they are (or were) reliable for at least a decade, unless Apple decides to drop software support for them. Waiting was never a problem for Macs. It's the architecture transitions that kills them.

The new Mac Pro is not even shipped, it's basically obsolete now. Or in two years, if Apple keeps their promise.

The new Mac Pro has indeed shipped. It was released in December 2019, and people started receiving them months ago. And “it’s basically obsolete now” stands in apparent contradiction to “they are reliable for at least a decade, unless Apple decides to drop software support for them”, which Apple has made clear they’re not looking to do with the transition to Apple Silicon.

Reliability doesn’t necessarily play a role here at all. For some users, the trash can Mac Pro did not meet their needs. The 2019 Mac Pro is a completely different beast. The last machine I’d argue that was comparable was the 1st generation, which no longer supported the most recent versions of macOS.

Would you still buy software for "the beast" knowing that software support will be dropped anyway? I did that once, being naïve enough to believe that Rosetta (powerpc on intel) will be there forever as an option in MacOSX. Man was I dumb. Apple literally burnt $15k worth of hardware and software in front of my eyes when they announced to drop PowerPC and then Rosetta later. No. Screw that. Don't buy news Mac now. Don't make the same mistakes.

The economics may not make sense for you, but they may make sense for others for the work they’re doing. If having a fast $10K machine now will allow someone to make $500K over the next two years, that’s money well spent. If that’s not the business another is in, it may not be. And both are fine.

Even if you needed these specs and macOS, you could easily save thousands by buying the RAM yourself. You could save even more with by using the W5700X GPU (or even off-the-shelf 5700 XT).

What does this do that a much cheaper computer doesn't?

Massive realtime video renders (think multiple simultaneous 8k in real time), compositing, scene rendering/animating, transcoding. Or computations on extremely large scientific datasets.

You are color grading a $200 million movie and want to apply various tweaks to the video and see the effect in real time. With a regular PC you have to render and then view... with something like this you could render in real time at 8k.

In which case 50k seems like a pretty reasonable price.

It's surprising that there are enough of those kinds of use cases to justify an entire production of a product like this. Something about the depth of certain markets being way bigger than they appear.

There are a lot of production studios around the world, of which only a fraction produce movies that end up in theaters or sold on Amazon or iTunes.

Every YouTube ad you’ve seen has a client who at least wants their ads to look as good as a James Cameron movie.

Fast

My last Mac Pro cost $3499. I did professional video work on it for 8 years. And now I can't justify / afford one. What a world.

I like it that it has stainless steel with feet.

I wonder if the number of people who would are willing and able buy a refurbished Mac Pro is higher or lower than the number of people who are willing and able to buy a used Bugatti.

It seems that once you have the kind of money to be getting those items, you would want to get it new and customized exactly how you want it.

I struggle to find any job that requires a Bugatti. Few jobs exist that require a 50,000$ computer, but they do exist.

A Bugatti is bought as a status symbol. This Mac Pro was bought for high end video editing. They were willing to pay $50k because it's for editing multimillion dollar projects. They'll probably be paying thousands of dollars per day for this editing work. The refurbished one does the job just as well as the new one.

It seems to me the ECC ram, maxed out is really the driving factor of the cost.

If a single SKU costs 50k, what are the development costs?

Insane.

Seems pretty pricey given the specs. How much would it cost to put together a new Linux box with the same/functionally equivalent components?

$5k max

Is that including an FPGA?

I'm guessing you can get (multiple) good nvidia cards to match apple's afterburner cards

Probably not for the same power envelope.

Doubt it. FPGA is almost guaranteed worse in performance/watt and performance/dollar compared to ASIC.

Only in cases where reprogramming capability or lack of initial cost of production make sense FPGA is used.

Well here’s the relevant specs for what it does:

> Compatible with Mac Pro (current generation) PCI Express x16 card

> Accelerates ProRes and ProRes RAW codec in Final Cut Pro X, QuickTime Player X, and supported third-party applications

> Supports playback of up to 6 streams of 8K ProRes RAW or up to 23 streams of 4K ProRes RAW

So if there’s an NVIDIA card that does all that, great, happy to hear it. I heard Adobe Premiere was recently updated to support the Afterburner as well so hopefully it also works with NVIDIA’s equivalent.

Actually, NVIDIA driver for current version of macOS don’t exist.

Like, there are only two GPU manufacturers left in the world, and requisite macOS driver for the bigger and better one, flat out don’t exist.

If somebody is willing to prove that they can build equivalent hardware to this monster for only $5K, I am willing to overlook the operating system entirely.

Can you even buy half the ram for that cost?

> 1.5 TB DDR4 ECC Ram

No, that much RAM is over 10k alone.

Citation needed. Apple hardware is expensive, yes, but usually isn't that far out of line with prices for equivalent specs.

are you sure? 1.5 TB ram on amazon is around 11.5K (https://www.amazon.com/24x64GB-DDR4-2133-PC4-17000-Upgrade-P...) Cursory search. But still, surely you can't build one for 5K

The RAM itself would run you up more than double that amount.

This isn’t gonna cost less than 20k.

Looking up on NewEgg DDR4 128GB ECC, I see 2x128GB for $1650 so the 1.5TB configuration of the Mac is $9,900.

The processor is around $3,150.

The Afterburner is not available for Linux at any price. It only contributes $2,000 to the price anyway.

The AMD Pro Vega II is not available for purchase. Finding an equivalent card would require substantial amounts of guesswork. The only recent GPUs I can find with 32GB are around $7,000. The configuration has two of them.

You're up to $27k by this point and you don't have a computer yet, and I'm not so sure that the equipment above is comparable.

When did Apple stop making the "trash can" style Mac Pros? This link is surprising to me.

What is the cheapest desktop you can build with 1.5 TB of ddr4 ram?

It's pretty standard to have 8 slots [1] on motherboards and rarely 16 slots [2]

64 gig DDR4 modules cost ~$300 [3] 128 gig DDR4 server modules can cost as little as ~$800 [4]

8x64 = 0.5 TB of DDR4 ram = 8300 = $2,400 16x128 = 1.5 TB of DDR4 ram = 16800 = $12,800

[1] https://www.amazon.com/TRX40-AORUS-PRO-Fins-Array-Motherboar... [2] https://hothardware.com/news/gigabyte-mz31-amd-epyc-7000-mot... [3] https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007611%20601275379 [4] https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007952%20601324426

That’s just the RAM cost, though. The threadripper TRX40 platform supports 256GB max RAM, and the epyc you linked tops out at 1TB. Just finding a cpu and mobo that will host 1.5 TB is a multi-thousand dollar expense all on its own.

I was able to configure a prebuilt for about $21K

https://i.imgur.com/rbZB2uv.png

ECC ram is more expensive than regular DDR 4 ram

No wheels ??? :).

That is a ripoff, not even the wheels are interluded.

I wonder what's the price for a new one

For this configuration, $51,599.

-1 doesn't have $700 wheels

i would go for a 48-core dell poweredge r820 with 1.5TB of ram for 7k on ebay, albeit missing the GPU cards

Apple's prices are starting to get out of control.

Ok. I learned my lesson... don't make fun of Apple on HN.

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