The most powerful Mac Studio Apple has ever built to date is here. Just be ready to pay up to $18,299 for it. That's the price tag on Apple's own configurator for a fully maxed-out Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra chip, 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB of unified memory, and 16TB of storage.
It's a staggering leap from where the line starts. The base M5 Ultra Mac Studio opens at $5,499, with a 30-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 36GB of memory, and 512GB of storage. A separate, less expensive configuration built on the M5 Max chip starts at $2,499. Go from the entry price to the ceiling, though, and you're paying tens of thousands more for memory and storage upgrades that carry steep per-tier costs, like the $7,500 jump from 256GB to 1TB of storage.Apple unveiled the new Mac Studio this morning alongside a refreshed Mac mini built around the company's new M6 chip, positioning both as major steps forward in on-device AI performance. Johny Srouji, Apple's chief hardware officer, called the M5 Ultra Mac Studio "the ultimate desktop for on-device AI and the world's most demanding pro workflows," per Mashable's report on the announcement.The eye-watering top-line figure isn't purely a function of more cores and more storage. You can mostly blame the global memory crisis within the tech industry, aka RAMageddon, for the current state of consumer tech affairs.
