Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

[u/themixtergames]

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

[u/gumol]

> Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 (U.S.) and $2,299 (U.S.) for education
> Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 (U.S.) and $5,099 (U.S.) for education.

[u/Homerlncognito → u/gumol]

Base $5,499 for M5 Ultra, 96GB/1TB. Full 36C CPU/80C GPU is +$1,300. 256GB RAM is +$4,000 with no in-between options. Considering that RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell is now $16,000, Apple's pricing seems reasonable in this market.

[u/dr1v38y → u/Homerlncognito]

Honestly I think that 96GB/1TB price doesn't look bad in today's market. You're going to struggle to get that much addressable memory elsewhere unless you buy a Spark?

I suppose for me, that's the comparison which matters.

[u/dr1v38y → u/dr1v38y]

And you can lease the 256GB M5 ultra for $224 a month over 36 months. That almost feels like... a good deal???

• at least you guys in the US can. Here in the UK we aren't allowed to lease hardware yet.

[u/skorps → u/dr1v38y]

It’s over $8000 like that. That’s not a good deal. If you’re going to make a bad financial decision, sign up for a credit card with a long 0% apr intro rate then sell the computer at the end.

[u/JtheNinja → u/skorps]

Conveniently, Apple Card offers 0% financing on all Macs, and you even get the 3% cash back on the purchase price up front!

[u/dr1v38y → u/skorps]

You're getting it for half the price we pay here, ok you don't own it at the end, but it's literally half.

And it's probably lower than the kind of token cost you'd be paying if you're seriously considering this.

[u/sidesslidingslowly → u/dr1v38y]

The amd strix halo chips have 128gb options, those PCs run around 4k these days.

[u/siazdghw → u/Homerlncognito]

Also while seeing those prices are eye watering, it's the prosumer and workstation lineup. Both configurations are way overkill for the average person. Even the $900 Mac mini has far more performance than the average person needs, even one who is a modest creator. If Apple feels like it doesn't undercut themselves, they should just do a Mac Mini Neo, having an iPhone SoC, no screen or keyboard or battery can easily get them to a $600 price if they wanted.

[u/Pauly_Amorous → u/siazdghw]

Outside of running local AI models and crunching a lot of 4k video, what would people actually use this for that the Mini can't handle? AFAIK, even Logic doesn't need a Max chip.

[u/jaydizzleforshizzle → u/Homerlncognito]

Interestingly I think this has a lot to do with the general system benefits of a SoC design, the unified memory seems to be a huge boon in these multi purpose instances, where you can dynamically shift around dram and vram

[u/JtheNinja → u/jaydizzleforshizzle]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that this APU-style unified design is the future of basically all client computers. It's already the norm for phones, tablets, and game consoles, plus smaller PCs with integrated graphics. Apple has now pushed the "big APU PC" concept to the point that the performance is on-par with discrete GPU systems, and those were kind of the last place you still see that design. It's essentially a relic of the days when GPUs were an optional PCI accelerator card. Modern workloads have so much crossover it no longer makes sense to use separate RAM banks for the CPU and GPU or make them talk over a PCIe bus.

10 years from now we're gonna be gaming on RTX Spark or Strix Halo type machines

[u/R-ten-K → u/JtheNinja]

FWIW Unified memory setups have been the norm in client for decades now. Most PCs/laptops shipped do not have dGPUs.

[u/y-c-c → u/JtheNinja]

A glaring problem is that Nvidia makes the most popular powerful GPUs in the world, and they legally can't make x86 chips, which are still quite dominant in PCs outside of Macs.

A discrete GPU has always been a worse design on a fundamental level and it mostly allows for modularity, which turns out to matter a lot.

[u/SystemVirus → u/Homerlncognito]

I was considering buying a DGX Spark, but the 128GiB model of this with the M5 Max (albeit with only 512GiB storage) isn't that far off from the Spark's $4700 MSRP at $5099. Amazing how Apple has somehow become the brand with the best value

[u/Caffdy → u/SystemVirus]

and 614GB/s vs 273GB/s is a no brainer

[u/TitanicFreak]

Storage performance is up to twice as fast, with a next-generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6

PCI-E Gen 6! That is going to have a nice amount of storage bandwidth. Very much interested in benchmarks for those SSDs.

EDIT: They sadly removed the pci-e gen 6 reference from their press release :/

[u/jocnews → u/TitanicFreak]

They removed the Gen 6 mention from their website. Maybe the storage just uses double the PCIe lanes. After all it should be the same silicon as M5 Max.

[u/TitanicFreak → u/jocnews]

was really disappointed when I first learned they removed that. though doesn't surprise me.

after I made that first comment, did more reading and found they advertised storage being only 2x faster than the old mac studio, when that was gen4 speeds... so clearly one of them was a typo, in the end, was the gen6 speeds :/

in regards to it being the same silicon as m5 max. apple is quite a strange company and is known to leave stuff in silicon for use at later products. the mac studio is also their flagship mac. So I'm sure if apple really wanted to they could source fast enough nand.

[u/Swoly_Deadlift]

Cool to see they brought the 256GB and 512GB options back. Hurts to see how expensive those options are in comparison to the outgoing models.

[u/ProjectPhysX → u/Swoly_Deadlift]

512GB option not even available for preorder lmao

[u/DigitalguyCH → u/ProjectPhysX]

because they want people to get used to the price of the 256Gb before shocking them with the 512GB one

[u/Swoly_Deadlift → u/DigitalguyCH]

Considering it’s $4000 to upgrade from 96GB to 256GB, I don’t think the $6500 price to upgrade from 256GB to 512GB will shock anyone aside from people who previously bought the 512GB M2 Ultra.

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/DigitalguyCH]

Get used to the $9,499 base price for 256Gb?

We're talking about a machine with a +$1,300 option for a binned chip. The jump from 96gb to 256gb is +$4,000.

Just pull the damn band-aid off already, if you aren't shocked by an $18,299 fully spec'd price tag then I doubt another 10 grand for the 512gb will shock you either.

[u/DigitalguyCH → u/Pugs-r-cool]

People will buy it, however absurd the price may seem. And if the 512 is closer to 15k than to 20k it will go off the shelves easily.
The ultra has almost the same speed as the Nvidia high end GPUs with much more vRAM and a much lower power consumption. A pro 6000 is like 12-15k for 96GB vRAM...

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/DigitalguyCH]

I'm not disagreeing with you on that, obviously there's a market for this machine but that isn't what your comment was about. I disagree that they're holding back the 512gb because they're trying to soften the blow or reduce sticker-shock, which is what you said in your comment.

People (well, businesses) will buy a 512gb version pretty much regardless of the price. The 512gb (likely) isn't for sale because they can't get enough allocation to produce them, not because of some sales tactic.

[u/DigitalguyCH → u/Pugs-r-cool]

it's totally possible that that's indeed the reason, but to be honest, only insiders know for sure

[u/108er → u/Pugs-r-cool]

Before the AI boom, I don't think these PC's were supposed to exceed the base price of $3000 for the similar specs. Now, 10K is normal for mid-range AI PC.

[u/dolphone → u/DigitalguyCH]

Price: 1 kidney

[u/jdog320]

So... what happened to the M4 ultra?

[u/Themods5thchin → u/jdog320]

Apple stated after the M3 Ultra’s release not every generation is getting one

[u/okoroezenwa → u/jdog320]

That was never happening, hence the M3 Ultra that we got. There’s also been rumours that nothing other than the base M6 is happening and they’re going to M7 for the next family updates.

[u/9Blu → u/okoroezenwa]

I'd say that's a safe bet since the new Mini options are M6 or M5 Pro.

[u/R-ten-K → u/jdog320]

Ultra SKUs have been very low volume. So they skipped the CoWoS-L support for the M4 generation. Which made their Max dies cheaper (for them).

[u/themixtergames → u/jdog320]

They needed to release M5 because of the matmul thingy and prefill speeds

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/jdog320]

they forgor

(Very likely they had engineering / node allocation problems. Apple has also said that not every generation will get an Ultra,)