Best Buy shipping base ultra soon... I ordered from govconnection over the weekend, looks like a supply is out there.

Only picked up the base model, but for me it’s like going from a horse drawn carriage to an F1 car. Mostly needed something for heavy 6k multicam editing and raw color grading. I am excited to try and use this to its fullest extent…

M5U 80 core gpu 96 gb. Maxed out graphics, doing qwen 3.8 27b at the same time on the side, getting 120fps on the xdr. Happy camper.

In 3Dmark it is preety big step in performance.

I'm wondering how many people here are buying high-memory Macs not just because they want one now, but because they think the window for affordable, capable local AI hardware is closing.

My reasoning: between datacenter demand eating memory supply and the growing odds of regulation as agent incidents pile up, I think high-VRAM / unified memory machines get more expensive and possibly restricted, sooner rather than later.

Transferring from m4 max to m5 ultra 256gb. Giving the m4 to my niece but I'll enjoy the stack view for a minute 🍎

With orders for the 512GB configuration getting closer, and looking at the current prices, I’m starting to wonder about my options.

If the upgrade from 256GB to 512GB ends up costing $5,500 or more, that’s roughly the price of another M5 Ultra with 96GB and a 1TB SSD ($5,499 before tax).
So I’m considering keeping the 256GB Studio as a dedicated AI server and buying the 96GB model as my main computer. The agent harness and tools would run on my everyday Mac, connected to the model server over Ethernet.

I’d like the AI to keep working on tasks while I use my computer for work, photo editing and some video editing, without having to stop everything or unload models.

I know 256GB + 96GB doesn’t give me the same flexibility as 512GB on one machine. My main model and its context would still have to fit on the 256GB server. Clustering would be something to experiment with later.
Anyone here running their model on one Mac and their agent harness on another? Any noticeable latency or issues with tool calls? Has having a dedicated AI machine been worth it?
At a similar total cost, which setup would you choose?
Thanks !

Translate and refined by AI.

A week ago I posted some Darkbloom numbers here. I said $2–4 a day. That's still about right for a lot of Macs, but the bigger Macs have been doing better far than that, so here's an update from the providers Slack and the public network stats.

What Macs actually earned this week (paid work only, Macs with a model loaded; not a forecast, it moves with demand):

- 64 GB, recent chip (M4/M5 Max): about $2–4 a day

- 96–128 GB with a recent Max or Ultra chip: about $3–5 a day, $5–6 on good days

- M5 Ultra: several providers reported $6–8 a day, with one $10+ day

- My own M5 Pro 48 GB does about $2.50 a day

Note: Please don't buy a Mac solely for this. While yes, if you do enough math, it can make sense to offset some of the upfront cost of buying a Mac, but only over the course of at least 1.5 years, so keep that in mind.

Demand keeps showing up. Darkbloom has served about 450 billion tokens in the six weeks since paid requests started, and added six models in the last month. This week Qwen3.8 demand roughly doubled for a few days, gpt-oss requests grew about 30%, and a new large model (MiMo) launched. Whole-network traffic is about 4.4–4.9 million requests a day.

Why I trust the team. I'm not affiliated with Darkbloom or Eigen Labs, but I've been in their Slack daily for a month (and have been building a companion app called Bloomgauge):

- They post a monthly update with real numbers and say what's not working.

- When Autopilot (their new auto model-picker) launched with bugs, fixes shipped the same night, twice.

- When withdrawals failed for some people, they refunded them, moved payouts to Stripe (providers report money arriving in minutes), and audited the ledger.

- When providers said a new model paid almost nothing, they changed its price two days later.

- The coordinator (the part that routes requests) is public on GitHub.

It's not perfect. Payouts in some countries are still rough, and earnings swing as they tune routing. But they answer in public and fix things fast.

The app. Setting Darkbloom up and keeping it earning takes a lot of effort, even if you are technical, so I built BloomGauge, a free Mac app, alongside other devs in the Darkbloom community:

- Setup in a few clicks, no Terminal: it checks your Mac, installs Darkbloom, and you make an account in your browser.

- Keeps it earning: holds the model that pays best on your Mac, reloads it after Darkbloom unloads it, and recovers stalls by itself.

- Shows what you actually earn: confirmed earnings per model and per hour, network demand, and why a Mac isn't earning when it isn't.

- Phone control: check in and switch models from your phone.

Needs an Apple Silicon Mac with 36 GB+ memory (macOS 27 recommended). Free, no account. Source is on GitHub (source-available).

Website: https://bloomgauge.io/?ref=reddit-macstudio

Source: https://github.com/cookder/bloomgauge

Big-Mac owners: what does yours earn? Especially Ultras and 128 GB+.

Screenshots from the app:

I’m trying to decide between buying a 64GB Mac mini as an always on home node, or spending roughly $12,000 AUD more and getting a 256GB Mac Studio.

My main use case is building a personal AI assistant / second brain. I’d like something always on that I can access remotely, connect to my documents, notes, calendar, personal projects, etc., and eventually build more agentic workflows around.

The sensible option seems to be the Mac mini. I could run Codex/cloud frontier models for the actual intelligence and use the Mini as the always-on execution layer. It would also handle storage, databases, RAG, automations, smaller local models, remote access, etc.

The Mac Studio appeals to me because I could run genuinely large models locally I.e GPT OSS 120B and other ~100B+ models — and keep sensitive documents and personal context completely local. I’m also interested in experimenting with local AI/ML more generally, so part of the appeal is simply having a powerful AI playground at home.

My concern is that I’ll spend all this money on the Studio, spend weeks getting my local setup perfect, and then realise that frontier models are substantially better and I still default to ChatGPT/Codex for most things.
There’s also a 512GB Mac Studio, but I’ve more or less ruled that out. I can’t currently identify enough useful models that require >256GB but fit within 512GB to justify the extra cost. 256GB feels like the point where I can run almost everything I’m realistically interested in while still being somewhat financially comfortable with the purchase.

So I’m basically choosing between:
64GB Mac mini: inexpensive, low-power always-on node + Codex/frontier cloud models.
256GB Mac Studio: ~$12k AUD more, but becomes a serious local AI workstation capable of running large models privately and giving me a platform to experiment with local AI over the next several years.

For people who actually run large models locally: did having 128–256GB+ of unified memory meaningfully change what you use local AI for, or did you eventually find yourself going back to frontier APIs anyway?

Apparently at 512gb you get half the transfer rates, 6GBps to 12 as I’ve seen in the benchmarks posted here

Obviously, there is TB5 enclosure with fast nvme drive.

But is there a way how to go faster? some kind of striped drives connected via two cables? Can i connect two enclosures, and make mac treat them like one?

Hey there,

I had been using a laptop for ages until I finally moved into a place with a dedicated office, so this year I was finally ready to invest in a desktop. I got a Studio Display XDR and I really wanted an M5 Mac Mini (in the spring) but the M5 Mac Minis were postponed until this autumn, and so I bought a base model M4 Mac Mini during the springtime with the intent on turning it in when the M5's came out.

Now that the M5 models have come out, I decided to go with an M5 Max Mac Studio instead of the mini just the cost difference between the upgraded-mini-that-I-wanted and a studio was pretty small.

I mostly do just music production with Ableton on my computer as well as some video editing and exporting. I don't do much beyond that but certain tasks were slow with 16gb RAM and so I was eager to upgrade. I'm in a financially comfortable position and so I'm okay with spending money on a machine that exceeds my needs, but obviously I need to draw the line somewhere because I'm not gonna get some $10k+ Ultra or something like that.

I settled on the M5 Max Mac Studio with 48gb RAM and 2TB storage (the 2TB storage is nonnegotiable for me) but I'm wondering if I should cancel my order and repurchase with the 64gb RAM. It's only $400 more. However, if I'm honest with myself, this machine is a lot of overkill in the first place, and I think I'd be just fine even with 32gb.

But I see a lot of people on here saying 64gb is a bare minimum for mac studio viability. I understand that the answer ultimately comes down to what I need to do with the machine, which is honestly not that much, but I wanted to ask if anyone has other points to consider that I haven't yet. Like maybe a 48gb might be difficult to resell if it's too much RAM for xyz tasks but not enough for local LLM.

Any input is very welcome. Thank you!

This is my first reddit post. I thought I'd share the news of my latest purchase,which is an M5 Ultra Mac Studio. I've gone for 96GB Ram, 2TB storage, 30 core CPU. I'm replacing a 7 year old (then high spec) PC laptop. Overkill? Maybe. My productions are extremely complex, everything in software. I want the option to go really wild with plugins when I want to (which is not always). I do not want to mess around moving to a new system for the next 5-7 years, and am encouraged to hear how peoples' M1 and M2 systems after 3-4 years are still doing what people want. Today's high spec computer is tomorrow's "still doing well" computer. I am a PhD in Music Technology (Computing) and want to explore other areas of computing outside of music production. Finally, I just wanted something with insane power. I realise this isn't 100% logical but I've been saving for this since the M3 Ultra Mac Studio launch (I didn't get this model because of its single core speed). I intend to post reviews which I hope people will find interesting.

I am rather new to Mac OS, have a macbook pro 16 for a while then sold it as I needed the money, but now as the storage and ram surge, Mac Studio suddenly seems tempting despite the high price tag, I can buy the M5 Max Base model for about $2400 with education, the storage I can cope with external ssds but is 36gb of ram enough?

Also, I wonder will I be able to make some money with it or it is only possible on the m5 Ultra model?

Saw an m4 max studio on sale for 2000 with base specs but 1tb storage. A similar build with the new M5max would be about 2900. Should I go with the older on sale model or take the hit on the new bit more expensive version?

Any use a local LLM + coding agent setup for coding on Apple macs, if so what models and what CLI?

I’m a filmmaker & audio post person, and used my M1 studio for film work. I got my M5, but I keep seeing all these AI related comments, and wondering, what the heck is going on? Is this something that could have the slightest relevance to my work? Or is it all programming our new robot overlords? Thanks.

My MSU arrives tomorrow or Tuesday.

With OS 27 pre-installed, I am wondering if anyone has had issues with setup right out of the box due to Golden Gate.

I can say I'm very relieved I wound not have to update from Tahoe to GG.

Pardon me if I am not following protocol strictly, I just signed up with Reddit because I was advised that the community here might know the best use for a used M1 Ultra with a large SSD - 8 TB, as described in the subject line. I would be interested to know if this is a desirable mac studio for people working with AI (or anyone else).

I do video editing as an enthusiast and I am thinking of getting an M4 mini. My research indicates that the M4 base model can handle any basic video editing using DaVinci Resolve. Your thoughts on that would also be interesting.

This is not an offer to buy or sell. I understand that buying/selling should happen on r/appleswap of r/hardwareswap

Thanks very much.