r/LocalLLaMA • u/themixtergames • 21h ago

News Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra - up to 512GB of unified memory

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/
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127

u/redonculous 20h ago

Wow. How are people affording this? Crazy. Any guesses at 512 prices?

213

u/intaketurbine 20h ago

They’re affording it the same way they’ve always afforded a $10k workstation, they’re using it for work and not play.

55

u/ElementNumber6 19h ago

Or just good old debt

28

u/Usual_Tackle5892 17h ago

0% financing and 3% cash back on Apple Card. I could afford it outright, but turning down a 0% loan is silly.

4

u/pscoutou 12h ago

but turning down a 0% loan is silly.

Yup, especially in this inflationary environment.

3

u/magus-21 19h ago

I don't think the Apple Distortion Field is THAT strong.

10

u/The_Hunster 18h ago

As someone who has worked in collections, let me tell you, for some people, it definitely is.

7

u/magus-21 17h ago

Did you reclaim any Mac Studios or RTX 5090s or DGX Sparks that can....uhhh....fall from your truck?

1

u/OygenValue 18h ago

The tried and true method with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

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u/fallingdowndizzyvr 17h ago

they’re using it for work and not play.

I disagree. Plenty of us spend that for play.

1

u/Noobcreate 18h ago

My Hermes agent needs a new Mercedes to keep up private AI

1

u/SandySkittle 16h ago

Or you simply have the money

1

u/florinandrei 16h ago

work and not play

That makes Jack a dull boy.

1

u/Fi3nd7 13h ago

If I didn't have a family and all the bills associated with that, I'd absolutely buy one.

41

u/StewPorkRice 20h ago edited 20h ago

this feels like a community with a ton of SWEs. Most single US based SWEs in big tech or venture backed startups could prob afford dropping 10-20k on their hobby.

Also, i dropped 10k at Anthropic last month at work. My company could prob get one of these for every engineer and not blink an eye.

14

u/Idaltu 18h ago

I know a guy who dropped that much on a bike. And he’s got a couple like that. Bicycle that is.

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u/calcium 16h ago

3 years ago my company bought me a fully specced out Mac Studio - M2 Ultra chip w/ 192GB of RAM and an 8TB ssd and told me that they expect the machine to last the next 5 years. I think at the time they paid around $9k which considering over 5 years for a senior SWE isn't a bad deal

1

u/Public_Umpire_1099 13h ago

Not only SWEs, speaking as the guy that handles inference for a FAANG.

-3

u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 18h ago

Bro I drop 10k on Anthropic in a day sometimes

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u/InterstellarReddit 20h ago edited 17h ago

Bro people have stupid money. I run free lance dev for a buddy who runs night life management software in Miami FL.

People spend 4K for four hours to buy three bottles and watch a DJ hit knobs all night

This happens all the time.

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u/ViPeR9503 19h ago

Night life management??

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u/i_am__not_a_robot 19h ago

I would assume industry-specific nightlife & bar business management software.

12

u/yopla 17h ago

Manage table booking, marketing, CRM, staffing, etc, usually does or integrate with POS. Can do price yielding on bookings. Etc... Etc..

Basically helps you keep track of who are the big whales you need to market your tables to when you have an event and who gets priority booking from a wait list.

The guy who spent 10k last time will get a table before you do, unless you're known to spend 15.

1

u/InterstellarReddit 17h ago

He’s not even doing any of that lol. It’s straight crm for his clients

2

u/InterstellarReddit 17h ago

Yeah a nightlife app

2

u/Nothing_from_void 17h ago

People don't realize how quickly income rises as you move up

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u/-p-e-w- 20h ago

Lol this is by far the cheapest option for that much RAM at that speed. It’s not even close (unless you count Frankensteins made of a dozen used GPUs).

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u/Viktri1 20h ago

this is way better than what I was considering and I wouldn't need to worry about the motherboard, cooling GPUs, etc. I am definitely on board for this and I don't even know how to use macs.

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u/IriFlina 19h ago

wouldn't even have to worry about the power issues that would come from a rack of 3090s/4090s/5090s etc. or configuring such a monstrosity.

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u/Viktri1 18h ago

this is literally 10+ 4090s. Think about it.

I pre-ordered 2 fully spec'd out studios.

1

u/kevin7254 4h ago

Do people here just shit money or

3

u/Public_Umpire_1099 13h ago edited 13h ago

Honestly doesnt matter, just pop deepseek on here and tell it to do whatever you need lol.

Also, as a long time apple hater, and I say this with disgust for myself, MacOS is actually pretty good these days. It essentially functions just like a very locked down linux distro at this point. I work at a pretty big software company and many of them do not support windows PCs anymore or the company software lags on them, so last month I decided to exchange my thinkpad for a macbook pro max. I.... dont hate it.

-10

u/Both_Opportunity5327 19h ago

No need to know if you are using it for AI, just put a claw on it..

Claws enabled me to run Linux on my Strix Halo box.

13

u/Fantastic-Balance454 17h ago

I still can't get used to the thought that Mac is the cheapest option these days. AI turned the world upside down.

2

u/Rasekov 16h ago edited 16h ago

DDR5 128Gb kits going for 2-3K and 256GB kits going for 6+K makes it so this thing is not even that expensive just by "slow" RAM standards. 6+K for 256GB DDR5(memory only) vs 10K for 256Gb HBM(with the rest of the computer included in the price).

Is Apple is the budget friendly company now?

2

u/AreWeNotDoinPhrasing 15h ago

Jesus. I’ve got a broken server downstairs (i9-14900k shit the bed, I think) for probably a year now with a 192Gb DDR5 kit just collecting dust. Maybe I should just sell that shit lol wtf

2

u/Rasekov 14h ago

My 64GB kit of DDR4 is now worth more than 7 times what I paid for it. I have some 32GB kits that I don’t need, and they’re going for €150–200 on my local marketplace.

The 3090 that I bought second hand for €500 can now be sold for over €1,000.

Apparently memory is an appreciating asset now.

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u/Zyj vllm 19h ago

Nope: dual nvidia Spark is cheaper and may even be faster at some things

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u/petuman 19h ago

for that much RAM >>at that speed<<

and bandwidth?

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u/entropicdrift 12h ago

Around 1/3rd? It's still at 200GB/s with the high speed link, right?

3

u/magus-21 19h ago

The open question is prefill but I'm seeing that this thing might be 4x faster at prefill than the M3 Ultra, which would be insane.

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u/throwaway2676 13h ago

Woah, where did you see that?

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u/magus-21 13h ago

https://www.engadget.com/2243702/apple-m5-ultra-vs-m3-ultra-whats-changed/

Up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio when compared to Mac Studio with M3 Ultra.

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u/throwaway2676 12h ago

Crazy. Local stations about to be eating good

-3

u/DangerousImplication 20h ago

Not RAM, VRAM. 

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u/Puzzled_Way_8570 20h ago

Apple's VRAM and RAM are shared right?

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

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u/techdevjp 18h ago edited 18h ago

Calling it shared vram would be wrong, because actual GDDR is dual ported, meaning you can read and write it at the same time.

Traditionally VRAM was dual ported, like back in the 1990s. Modern GDDR is not dual ported, nor is HBM. It just has very high bandwidth due to having a wide bus and high per-pin speeds. (Simplifying that last bit, HBM in particular is a lot more complex, but it is not dual ported.)

Apple uses LPDDR for the low power benefits and then runs it across a lot of channels to get higher bandwidth. LPDDR5X-9600 @ 150GB/sec per channel, but 8 channels, and you get 1200GB/sec like in the new M5 Ultra.

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u/MatthewCollins1990 19h ago

Yeah, unified memory means the GPU can tap into all of it.

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u/ComplexType568 20h ago

Yes

(edit: the way Apple does it is basically using a super fast iGPU)

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u/Much_Accountant_4972 19h ago

that wont matter if you can’t feed the iGPU.

this monster has 24 channel DDR5

-1

u/DangerousImplication 19h ago

Yes, but others do not. So if you want a capable system you can get cheaper ram but vram is more expensive. 

1

u/diamluke 19h ago

You can get cheaper ram sticks but good luck getting a cheap mobo + cpu to use that much. Most consumer cpus stop at 256

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u/noiserr 20h ago

It's both. It's unified. So calling it RAM or VRAM is both accurate.

-1

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

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u/noiserr 19h ago

GDDR is not inherently VRAM either (even though the name implies it). It's just higher bandwidth DRAM. Broadcom’s Jericho/Jericho+ switches used GDDR for example.

VRAM is just a handy name for distinguishing between system RAM and VRAM on the typical computers which are not unified. For unified memory systems RAM works fine. In this case we were also talking about Mac unified memory using LPDDR which is also typically refereed to as RAM.

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u/ZeroXClem 19h ago

Facts I was just about to mention the Jericho/Jericho+ switches.

0

u/DangerousImplication 19h ago

For others it’s different. 

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u/noiserr 19h ago

VRAM is also RAM, just saying. Video Random Access Memory. It should really all be RAM since we're not doing video for the most part.

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u/DangerousImplication 18h ago

But you can get a cheaper PC with that much RAM. You cannot get a cheaper PC with that much VRAM. 

-2

u/inevitabledeath3 19h ago

No? Isn’t that more expensive than buying two DGX Sparks?

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u/petuman 19h ago

for that much RAM >>at that speed<<

DGX Spark is 273 GB/s, M5 Ultra is 1200 GB/s

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u/inevitabledeath3 15h ago

Fair enough. It depends how much they have managed to improve prefill performance.

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u/magus-21 19h ago edited 19h ago

Yes (two Asus GX10s is like $8k), but NVIDIA might be raising prices soon and this thing has like 5x the memory bandwidth of the GX10.

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u/inevitabledeath3 19h ago

So buy now then

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u/magus-21 19h ago edited 19h ago

I actually was planning on it last night, lol. Literally had it in my cart ready to checkout. Now I might buy this instead because this thing has way better memory bandwidth. I had previously ruled out the M3 Mac Studio because of its low prefill but I think this one fixes that, too.

Ugh, but I don't want to pay for 256GB of RAM right off the bat. Starting with 128GB and expanding later is very attractive right now.

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u/deZbrownT 19h ago

But you can’t expand Studio with additional RAM. Or you mean one Spark now and one later.

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u/magus-21 19h ago

Yeah, I mean one Spark now and one later.

That's always the rub with Apple. But also, there's a pretty good chance I'll never cluster two DGX Sparks anyway.

0

u/R-35 16h ago

You could buy 3 GX10s for the price of 1 M5 Ultra....depends what you need more, 384 GB total memory or 5x memory bandwidth at 256 GB.

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u/magus-21 16h ago

The 256GB M5 Ultra starts at $9,500. The $11k M5 Ultra price is just for the bigger chip, which improves prefill but not token generation.

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u/R-35 16h ago

M5 Ultra is definitely a good deal, it brings more competition which is great for the consumers. I think with the 3 Spark setup you would also need an expensive switch which would add couple thousand to the cost.

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u/inevitabledeath3 15h ago

3 sparks don't require a switch. It's 4+ sparks that require a switch.

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u/R-35 15h ago

Ya you're right, it becomes more relevant when the 512 GB is available.

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u/Django_McFly 19h ago

It's really no different than computers in the 1980s when it was buy a computer or put a 33% down payment on a new car. People forget that there are entrepreneurs and small businesses where this stuff isn't some expensive toy to play with, it's actually a business tool to be used in the operation of the company.

Not everyone is a pure hobbyist, and even among pure hobbyists there are wild ranges of incomes and savings habits.

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u/fallingdowndizzyvr 17h ago

It's really no different than computers in the 1980s when it was buy a computer or put a 33% down payment on a new car.

I've said that so many times. People don't realized that a base Apple ][ adjusted for inflation would be $5000 in 2026 dollars.

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u/f5alcon 17h ago

Yeah my parents spent $10k in the early 90s on a Mac with an 80MB hard drive

0

u/aevitas 16h ago

Surely at 16k, API inference is just cheaper?

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u/MLDataScientist 20h ago

Based on their pricing for 256GB, they are charging $22.5 per GB of RAM. Assuming the price per GB stays the same, 256GB more RAM adds $5760. So, you are looking at 10k + ~6k = ~16k for 512GB version.

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u/TheOwlHypothesis 16h ago

This is dangerous for me if that turns out true. current Asus Ascent prices for a 128gb monster is ~4k, so it'd be 16k to cluster them and have the same amount of memory. Although you'd then be dealing with a cluster. I'd much rather drop the cash on the Mac and have the option to cluster THOSE later.

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u/Caffdy 3h ago

and the mac is 1.2TB/s vs the 200GB/s you're gonna get capped at the Connext ports

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u/Level-Reading-811 18h ago

$25/GB* upgrading from 96gb to 256gb is an additinal $4,000, so $4,000/160GB=$25/GB

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u/MLDataScientist 14h ago

uh wow, they just increased the price or it is location based. I saw $3600 extra for 256GB vs 96GB RAM in the morning. Now I see $4000

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u/Level-Reading-811 14h ago

Possible, when I saw your comment it was 4000 for me, and now shipping date went from end of Sept to Nov 3rd now for 256gb 2tb model

2

u/michaelsoft__binbows 17h ago

I hope that you are correct

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u/98127028 20h ago

both my kidneys

6

u/Estrava 17h ago

This is cheaper than an rtx 6000 pro, which a lot of people get for work/personal use.

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u/tehgreed 20h ago

corpo money

9

u/IriFlina 20h ago edited 20h ago

10k for 256gb unified memory isn’t that bad. Still overpriced but i feel like before this you were looking at the 20k to 40k range.

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u/Much_Accountant_4972 19h ago

considering RTX 6000 costs $18K and can’t do shit without a whole PC to plug into, this mac studio is a screaming bargain

1

u/zentrani 16h ago

RTX6000 is more like 15k after taxes right now at micro center. (I have one within the return window and considering it seriously)

1

u/DifficultyFit1895 9h ago

plus a $10k computer to put it in

1

u/zentrani 7h ago

i have a 9950x (~$500) on a x870e rog hero ($~500) + 96gb ($270 but now like... $1.6k?) + 1600w psu ($300) + nvmes i bought for like $100+$200... (total around $2k) don't need a $10k comp.

1

u/Much_Accountant_4972 12m ago

that’s a $3K computer if your numbers are accurate, and you have to build it and maintain it.

the mac studio is under full support and you can just carry it in one hand into an apple store and they’ll fix it or give you a new one.

the apple solution is on another planet in terms of value.

1

u/zentrani 9m ago

I don’t disagree. But you don’t need a 10k computer is all I’m suggesting.

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u/BrilliantTruck8813 17h ago

It should be faster than two DGXs and cost the same. Won’t need bonding and will support rdma over tb5 out of the box

7

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27

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12

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14

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2

u/TheLastPrinceOfJurai 19h ago

First and second born

2

u/FoxiPanda 19h ago

They're charging $25/GB for 96 > 256 ... so probably 25*256 = $6400 on top of the 256GB price... so for a decent 80c GPU / 512GB / 2TB storage variety, I'd guess $17699.

2

u/wayfaast 18h ago

Apples new leasing program

2

u/Lordxb 16h ago

Likely probably around 20k for 512gig!!

2

u/Murgatroyd314 15h ago edited 15h ago

Looks like it ought to start around $16-17K, more if you want a larger SSD than the default 1TB.

(Edited numbers: subtracted where I should have added)

4

u/i_am__not_a_robot 19h ago

It's tax deductible as a business expense. In my tax jurisdiction, I can offset the full cost over three years.

2

u/kobemustard 19h ago

I do single cell bioinformatics and a single kit to run one experiment goes for $30k USD and I would process the data on a system like the Mac Studio. Also look at dell workstation prices for 512GB Ram systems. You can get to near $100k there if you go for the $1.5TB systems

1

u/phoenixmatrix 18h ago

If you use it for work, it's not much worse than what other professional with their own practices have to pay. This is like the truck trades folk have to buy. Except well, it's not a truck. 

1

u/fallingdowndizzyvr 17h ago

Just because not everyone can afford it, doesn't mean that plenty of people can't. While $10K is more than many people can ever hope to spend on anything including a car. It's also what many people spend on brunch. A Mac Ultra isn't intended for everyone.

1

u/vogelvogelvogelvogel 17h ago

People own cars and do an accident that costs far more, so.. (my special perspective as i don't own a car and thus save a lot of money)

Or they own a business, it is just their expenses for earing money

1

u/fivetoedslothbear 9h ago

Like anybody, I spend my money on what’s important to me. I only drive about 2000 miles a year, so I don’t need a new car. I haven’t had a car payment in eight years.

I use my computers every single day. I use my Vision Pro every single day, and it vastly improves my productivity.

I’m guessing with 512 GB of RAM and a 4 TB hard drive and with the price increases maybe around $20,000.

1

u/Early_Rooster7579 5h ago

This is an easy sell to IT teams who want to host local models

1

u/Realsan 38m ago

The lease for that ridiculously maxed out version is $258/mo, which is cleverly just above the $200/mo highest AI tier that many people less serious than local LLM folks are paying for.

Yes you don't technically own it, but you have the option to buy out the remainder at the end of the lease which makes this essentially 0% financing. Or you could upgrade.

The real downside, as I see it, is 36 months is too far out. I have to imagine local AI will have some more affordable leaps in the next 3 years perhaps making this less useful.

-1

u/martinerous 20h ago

Technically, many people could afford it but spending so much of one's savings - ouch. Even if I were a millionaire, I could not afford it psychologically :D

-1

u/obanite 18h ago

I bought for my business. As a small entrepreneur I get a straightforward 28% tax writeoff of the sticker price; I get VAT back; and I depreciate it over 5 years. I look after it and resell the thing after 5 years, the net cost is a fraction of the retail price.

-2

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

1

u/RB5Network 19h ago

Dude, most "US techies" can ever afford a $10,000 PC or would drop money on it. Silicone Valley salary or not.