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Comment by nightski | Hacker News Reader

Wow $4k is pretty crazy. I'm not saying it's a bad deal, just that it's enough to make someone think "do I really need this". I can build a powerhouse PC for $2k.

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My main problem with these kinds of prices is not just the markup per-se but the fact that you've now got 4k$ into a very fragile, unrepairable machine - and for laptops, also vulnerable to damage & theft.

I've always stuck with entry-level MacBooks for that reason - it's a more reasonable amount of money to lose and allows me to not care too much about it even in sketchy situations where you wouldn't want to bring a 4k$ non-waterproof device.

I don't really bring my desktop computers in sketchy situations where they might get wet. They tend to sit in the exact same spot on my desk in my office for their entire lifetime. It'd be a weird trade off to design a desktop computer for physical durability and water resistance...

I'm talking about laptops - if this is a desktop then I stand corrected (though it still applies to the higher-end versions of the laptops which would be at a similar price). I guess the non-repairability and non-upgradability arguments still apply though, even more so for desktops (some parts in my gaming desktop are still from 2011).

The Mac Studio starts at $1999 and at that price probably is faster than a $2k PC.

What $2k PC are you gonna build with anywhere near the performance of the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra?

Last year I built one for slightly over $2k with a 5950x, 128GB ram, 1TB ssd and a RTX 3080 graphics card. That would get you in the ballpark.

Obviously we need to wait for people to get their hands on the Ultra and do some real benchmarks, but if we take Apple's claims at face value (which seems reasonable since the original M1 held up well to real-world benchmarks), then:

M1 Ultra has 90% better performance than the "fastest 16-core PC desktop chip available", which is probably the 5950X.

M1 Ultra has better performance than the "highest end discrete GPU available" (probably the Radeon RX 6900 XT?) while using 1/3 the power.

So I'm not exactly sure I'd call your build same ballpark, and I also can't imagine it was only slightly over $2k given that the CPU[1] and GPU[2] you specified alone cost $2200 on a good day...

[1] https://www.amd.com/en/direct-buy/5450881400/sg

[2] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rtx+3080

I snagged the GPU for $700 (or MSRP) on launch. That is the hardest part to obtain right now. 5950X goes on sale - it's at best buy for $599 right now. That left about $1000 for the rest of the build (Motherboard, RAM, SSD & Case) based on my budget of $2200 which honestly is more than you need.

The 3080 beats the Ultra in perf for games/ml. The 5950x is not 90% slower, but it is slower.

Like I said, it's not going to be equal to the $4000 M1 Ultra. But it's in the ballpark (and does beat it in certain use cases such as games/ml).

The thing is these are 2 year old parts at this point. If we see 4x series from nvidia and/or Zen 4 this year all this could change dramatically.

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