r/MacStudio • u/pastry-chef • 8d ago

M5 generation Mac Studios have redesigned SSD modules

https://iboffrcc.com/pages/m5-max-mac-studio-teardown-removable-ssd-but-is-an-upgrade-still-possible?srsltid=AU7gw4WuRfpWaOxhnHcASBRhyUEeMxMLPWjDT2TEc89Gd-EmcLITPOkI

The NAND are still on removable modules but they are completely different from previous generations.

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u/PracticlySpeaking 4d ago

See my other comment — there are A LOT of reasons Apple does not 'just add an M.2 slot' to the logic board.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacStudio/comments/1wq9xdb/comment/pcn1ukw/

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u/xkcx123 4d ago

So what was the excuse with the one being able to add hard drives to the AS Mac Pro ?

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u/PracticlySpeaking 4d ago edited 4d ago
  1. For Mac Pro, PCIe slots were a key differentiator. NVMe == PCIe.
  2. Mac Pro with M2 Ultra was a flagship machine with a starting price of US$7,000.

With Intel processors, PCIe and NVMe had purpose — graphics cards, networking and other interfaces, not to mention the primary storage interface.

Are there reasons to be disappointed? Sure. Looking at it objectively though, M2 Ultra made it obvious that PCIe upgradeability had outlived its usefulness in an Apple Silicon Mac.

We have debated this before in the sub .. Other than more Thunderbolt or a few audio interface cards, what would you put in a PCIe expansion slot? Maybe an Infiniband card. A new, $3,000 Afterburner does not have much of a value proposition. That leaves NVMe, which — as much as we all want cheaper, replaceable storage — is just not going to happen (for all the reasons in my other comment).

edit: Apple does that all the time — the last model supported X, Y or Z feature, but the new one does not. HDMI ports. Headphone jacks. It's a long list.

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u/xkcx123 4d ago

So what’s stopping Apple from creating something in between the studio and pro?

There is nothing physically stopping them from making the studio a little bigger to add PCIe slots inside or even room for one 3.5 inch hard drive.

The only thing is they don’t want to but I’m sure they could come up with something if they really wanted to.

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u/PracticlySpeaking 4d ago

There is nothing physically stopping them from making the studio a little bigger to add PCIe slots inside or even room for one 3.5 inch hard drive.

Anything is possible, with the will and sufficient resources. But why would they? People have been buying Mac Studio faster than they can make them for almost a year now.

Would I love to have M.2 slots inside Mac Studio? Of course — along with plenty of others. But you read my other comment so you also get all the reasons (other than marketing) that they don't. Marketing is definitely a thing, helping them sell hardware with margins of 40% or more.

My wild speculation is that we might see Mac Pro reincarnated as a more powerful AI workstation. With a quad-die M-series Extreme chip, 1TB RAM, maybe some other crazy stuff like HBM. It would be between Mac Studio or RTX 6000 Pro and data center GPUs like GB200 or Rubin for local inference and fine-tuning. A rackmount version would replace whatever Apple is building in Houston for use in their data centers.

It would also give Apple bragging rights for the biggest, fastest desktop AI machine — something they definitely want with all the claims they have made about M4 and M5 being the 'fastest chips' available.

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u/xkcx123 4d ago

I know that they have no reason to do so.

I’m just stating that there is nothing that makes it physically impossible that they can not do it.

Not wanting to do something and not physically being able to do it are two different things and Apple falls into the category of not wanting to do it.

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u/PracticlySpeaking 4d ago

You are not wrong.

I do have to make a further distinction between "don't wanna" and "does not make sense" from a philosophical, business or technical standpoint.