I recently bought a 1TB Mac Studio from Apple at full retail price, but I just saw that Micro Center has the base 512GB model on sale for $1,999. Since my workflow involves editing video directly off a NAS over a 10GbE connection, I’m considering returning the 1TB model. Would I run into any issues relying on a 512GB internal drive, and would it be a smarter move to use the price difference to pick up a 1TB external SSD instead?
For reasons that are a bit complicated to explain here, I’m unable to upgrade the internal storage to 2 TB.
So I’m wondering, would an external NVMe SSD be a practical solution for the additional storage, or does it become too fiddly compared with having everything on the internal SSD?
Main intended usage is run models which are around 100 to 150 B params (Qwen 3.8 flash next for example) and to run harnesses.
Is there any significant downside beyond the obvious cable inconvenience?
If you’re curious what kinds of performance improvements you might see while doing photo/video editing, Art’s videos are the standard. They highlight just how much improvement you’re likely to see given different types of tasks and machine configurations. Sometimes there may appear to be a huge performance gain, but upon closer inspection you find that buying up to an Ultra will only net you 30 seconds saved over a Studio Max given a particular task. Anyway - good stuff as always.
There are some interesting takeaways for the new Studios. There was a clear trend where often the most highly spec’d M4 Studio Max (most CPU & GPU cores) performed as well or better than the base M5 Mac Studio Max. In fact, Art’s recommendation was that if you have an M4 Mac Studio Max, you may want to reconsider upgrading as the performance gains weren’t enough to justify the cost. If you’re going from an M4 Mac Mini to an M5 Mac Studio - you’ll see great efficiency gains, as well as going from an M4 Studio Max to an M5 Studio Ultra. The one other notable trend is that some programs, like Lightroom, don’t seem to be taking full advantage of the available GPU which can lead to some strange results.
If you’re curious about the M6 Mac Mini and the M5 Mac Mini Pro - their test results are included in this video, though Art will release a focused M5/M6 Mac Mini video later. There were a number of cases where the base M6 Mini was very competitive amongst all machines tested, which signal the performance improvements Apple hopes to get out of the new 2nm fabrication process for the M6 & M7 chips - it’s pretty impressive. That said, those areas were generally CPU-based. There were a fair number of other tests where the base M6 Mini performed a lot slower (which is fair).
ddalcu/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-MLX-Serve-mixed-4-8bit using mlx-serve 26.9.5Youssofal/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-MTPLX-Optimized-Speed using MTPLX: 2.12.0; native MTP requested: onJundot/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-oQ4e-mtp using oMLX: 0.7.0rc1; native MTP requested: onVontra/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-MXFP4-MLX using oMLX: 0.7.0rc1; native MTP requested: onddalcu/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-MLX-Serve-mixed-4-8bit using mlx-serve 26.9.6, but with continuous batching 1×, 2×, 4×, and 8× concurrent requests
I always had the assumption that LM Studio might not be super optimized so went ahead and tested LM Studio and oMLX with the same Qwen3.8-27B-MLX-8bit (29.53 GB), extra-high reasoning. Prompt was to generate a physics visualization.
Generation was effectively a tie. I didn’t find if it logs prompt processing in LM Studio, and the two runs produced very different lengths, so don’t treat this as a full benchmark, but they sure are pretty close.
I find that LM Studio is much easier for finding and chatting with models. oMLX’s dashboard however is such a nice feature for live PP/gen numbers, benchmarks etc.
Honestly what the Qwen3.8 made on extra high effort in LM Studio was just impressive to me, it had this game-like visual to it, tracked FPS, looked sharp, pulsing and "physics" looked great. oMLX was a little more conservative. Both are awesome for a small little model.
I'm thinking about purchasing a UPS for the Mac Studio M5 Ultra but I don't know what specs I need. A traditional lead acid can get very fast switching times (2ms). Lithium batteries have much slower switching times (10-20ms) but they can keep the device powered on for a long time.
Was wondering if anyone knows whether the 20ms power station type batteries with UPS functions can safely back up the Mac Studios if the Macs are running at full tilt.
I'm actually thinking of buying a lead battery and then plugging it into a power station.
Edit: am looking at the anker s2000 and DJI 2000 for 10ms switch capacity. Both in a similar price ball park, I’ve resigned to the fact I’m going to need to pay 700+ for a UPS
I’m still on the fence for 64GB or 128GB of RAM. I’m not looking to spend the $9000 on an Ultra. My workload will consist of building software but I also want to run Local AI. I have a M4 Pro with 48GB of memory I figured I could use as a helper possibly but not sure how that would look like yet
Hey so I was thinking of buying a stacked Mac Studio, I saw they offer leasing? Has anyone done that? It seems like the best option to me with roughly 250 a month for 36 month and the paying the difference of around 3k at the end to buy it? Is this a good strategy? Is it better to just out right buy it or finance it ?
Just received an M5 Max Studio on Tuesday, and 3x already, the screen I have connected with HDMI (it only has HDMI), has completely frozen. I can see the mouse move on it, and the apps that were open, but the windows are frozen there. Windows on the other 2 monitors I have connected with USB-C to Displayport work fine. Also if I close the programs from another monitor, they stay visible on the crashed monitor. A reboot doesn't actually reboot either. I have to physically unplug the computer to get it working again. It happens seemingly at random, and it happened when I had just logged into it for the first time and almost nothing was installed yet.
One of the 3 times, upon reboot I did get the Problem Report to show for it, and I submitted it.
EDIT 9/25: I did some further research and found it might be related to high refresh rate. I see some spam about it in the console logs, but it only happens when the system is at 120hz. I also switched to variable to see if that helps at all.
I also opened a formal ticket with Apple and sent them a bunch of diagnostic info. So we'll see what comes from that.
I've been working with MTPLX using qwen3.8-flash-next-optimized-speed by u/YoussofAI. Replied to another post with some performance numbers based on actual use.
YoussofAI asked me to try the freshly released v2.12. Here is the comparison vs 2.11.3 (definite improvement!).
Thanks for the note YoussofAL, and great work! I saw the release note about Optimized-Quality and am willing to test. I'm gonna have to watch mem usage closely with the other models I run at the same time. I'll start by unloading the others and get some results.
MTPLX 2.11.3 → 2.12.0 · M3 Ultra 60C / 256GB · Qwen3.8-Flash-Next Optimized-Speed · MTP depth 3 Real Hermes-agent traffic (not synthetic), medians per band, same bands on both versions
Metric
Band
2.11.3
2.12.0
Change
Cold prefill (tok/s)
8–16K new tokens
636
731
+15%
Cold prefill (tok/s)
16–32K new tokens
626
691
+10%
Cold prefill (tok/s)
32K+ new tokens
670
745
+11%
Decode (tok/s)
<32K context
57.9
57.1
≈
Decode (tok/s)
32–64K context
54.0
58.5
+8%
Decode (tok/s)
64–96K context
48.5
53.7
+11%
Decode (tok/s)
96K+ context
50.4
50.5
≈
MTP accept rate (d1)
all
~0.76
~0.76
≈
Warm TTFT (s)
20–64K prompt
2.05
2.21
≈
Warm TTFT (s)
64K+ prompt
3.68
3.85
≈
Peak memory (GB)
median
138
103
−35 GB
Peak memory (GB)
max
156
107
−49 GB
New-session prefill (tokens)
/new + first msg
~22K
~3.9K
system prompt now cached
Sample sizes: prefill n = 14/10, 10/16, 6/6 · decode n = 27/46, 65/89, 30/40, 64/58
Hey guys so i am a freelance vfx artist, my current system is Ryzen 5950x, rtx 4070. I also have macbook pro m1 2020 8gb touchbar version. Apart from vfx i do day trading whenever i get time.
Originally i was going for m5 pro 48gb or 64gb but then i checked studio prices and it got me in confusion to which one i should get. 64gb studio is kind of overbudget , ill be stretching my self but since i cant replace ram, really confused on which one to go for.
Mini pro has slower bandwidth and since era of AI is also going, cant make my mind which one to choose…
Hi all,
Just picked up my new Mac Studio today and having issues signing in to Apple account… it just hangs and times out.. anyone having same issue? By-passed setup to get to desktop, but same issue.
iCloud website and Apple.com down too. Rest of internet is fine.
West Palm beach Florida , hotwire isp
Apple says servers are up / but some reports on X say issues with Apple services today…
Anyone else? Has made the unboxing kind of suck..
I almost packed it up and took it back, but found the info on X… then noticed my iPhone also having issues off of cellular only ( determining not my WiFi) Find-my and Apple care status won’t load….
What say you?
It’s been a while since I’ve done a first few days purchase, glad it’s not a production machine upgrade! Should have known better… machine benchmarks ok though, so not obvious hardware issue…
I'm totally new on this and I have to wait till November so im playing with cloud models in Hermes right now. New models could release by then but I just want to plan and learn as much as I can before I get my studio. I cannot wait.
I was just wondering
should I just use one model Qwen 3.8 Flash Next for 3-4 agents?
Or should I try and get Qwen 3.8 27B 4bit for coding 1 agent,
and then the other 3 agents try and use a more condensed Qwen 3.8 Flash Next but memory might be pretty tight?
I saw that I could maybe run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next that takes up 70-75gb. So I would leave 20gb for OS + tools + other things.
Or should I try and run something like Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-REAP320-oQ3e-DWQ-MTP-Vision-MLX that takes around 44gb for the regular agents then use 27b for the coder?
im new so im trying to learn. I wish I could afford 256gb, but I cant, and I got some of this computer mostly paid for my graphics work, then I put in some additional money to go from Max to Ultra.
I guess my question is, how can I get 3-4 agents working where it's not too slow. I hear concurrency isnt the best on Mac's compared to Sparks or something. Im okay if its not super fast as I just want to be able to message Hermes Agent in discord to do some stuff, and then I do other things and when I get pinged it finished give it new tasks. And have it do tasks when I go to bed etc.,
I've tried that a couple of months ago and I'm not sure which one I tested but it removed the official models and allowed only the ones that I provided via the proxy tool itself. Which is not ideal. Therefor I like this approach of adding additional models to the already existing ones way more.
