Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “2019 Mac Pro Impressions: Cheese Grater is Back!”.
Cheesegrater is back big time: hey, what’s up guys mkbhd here, yes, I brought an iMac pro with me to the hotel room. Yes, I’m out here at WWDC in California, and yes, today, Apple did finally unveil a reveal the new design for the 2019 Mac Pro the cheese grater, it’s finally upon us, so I finally know what it looks like. We finally know what it’s made of. We finally know what it costs kinda, we finally know what it’s capable of so this video is all of those things in one place, plus some personal thoughts of mine. Also, this shirt is a new one in the mkbhd shop. I’Ll have a link below the like button. If you want to check it out, it is back everything’s on sale, including all the other stuff shameless plug.
It’S gon na be once every two months that we do these drops now so, first, two weeks of this month, we have this stuff on sale and get it if you want it all right, so the Mac Pro I’m gon na be honest. It felt kind of like the Tesla 2020 Roadster announcement when they went through these specs because they’re just absolutely ridiculous and it ships this fall. So it’s coming out before the Roadster, but let me just start with the specs, so the CPU will be anywhere from an 8 core to a 28 core Intel Xeon. There are 12 DIMM slots for up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM. I don’t know if you got that I’m gon na just say that one more time just so you can digest it. You can fill all 12 dims with 20 900 megahertz memory for 1.5 terabytes of RAM, and then it starts with one GPU, an AMD Radeon pro 5 ATX and can go all the way up to 4 AMD Radeon Pro Vega, two GPUs, which is nuts no word On NVIDIA GPUs it has eight PCI slots for full size and then for half-size up to 4 terabytes of SSD storage and a 1400 watt power supply.
So by the numbers on paper. Of course, we can tell it’s extremely high-end and then the name of the game really is Headroom here, especially with that 1400 watt power supply, so you’re, giving yourself room to grow into adding components to it down the road as you upgrade it. You know like a normal PC and it’s just putting down silly members at least promising them anyway.
So Apple’s website is covered in crazy, outrageous claims of performance over not just the old Mac Pro but over the 18 core. I’M a pro that I use now, which is already really fast, so I’ll drop the link to this, of course, below the like button, also and then the design. Of course that’s what people are talking about the most and that’s what we’re kind of waiting to see and it’s kind of fascinating in a bunch of ways. Do you know what trep trypophobia is with the holes? I don’t know about you, but this gets like awkwardly close to that. I’M just gon na throw that out there, but obviously the main comparison is to a cheese grater, which is the same as that previous Mac Pro that came before the trash can, but I’ll take the cheese grater over a trash can any day.
So this new cheese grater is about the size of, I guess a normal mid-sized Tower. It’S definitely not as big as the old cheese grater, but it’s way bigger than the trashcan. Thankfully, and it’s all metal, as you can see, those arcs across the top are handles and there’s a third handle in the middle that you can twist and then pull the entire show off, as demonstrated many times both on their website and by this sweet, augmented reality. Demo they were doing, and that gets you full access to everything. There’S two Thunderbolt ports at the top, along with the power button at the top and an LED light, and the back is just all your outputs from all those PCI slots. So that includes the Apple one, that’s built-in, which gives you the headphone jack two full-size USB ports and two Thunderbolt. So clearly, there’s a lot going on with the design of this tower, but even on the inside. I think it’s just as interesting as the outside.
So there’s a bunch of modules that will be included to fit into those many PCI slots and there were Apple calls MPX modules, so there’s a graphics card, MPX module, for example, that they’re putting the GPUs into, and that gives you thunderbolt and HDMI out. And then third parties can also all chip in and make their own MPX modules, each one of which can take up to 500 watts of power so promise, for example, the company that makes that huge 96 terabyte raid array of hard drives on my desk they’ve promised To make a small MPC module that has a huge amount of hard drives in it for the inside of the Mac Pro. So you can put these things inside the computer and there’s another. One Apple makes called the afterburner card, which is essentially just for video encoding and video editing processing. So it can take a lot of the work of processing pro res and pro res raw off of your CPU and we’ll dedicate it on to that card by itself, which is amazing for people who use those codecs and is great for video editing. So these modules are really powerful, and that is the kind of modularity people were asking for and waiting for for so long having all those PCI slots to add into there are three huge fans on the front taking advantage of that cheesegrater design and another blower in The back so you’ve constant air flow going through the whole thing, but they’ve said it can be quite enough to be on your desk or next to you and not be a problem. So yeah, it’s just it’s pretty much a rebuild from the ground up like we’ve wanted the price, so the face line for this Mac Pro is gon na start at six thousand dollars. Now the thing to remember about pricing like actual pro grade equipment, like the word pro, I think, is, is sort of overused. You know one plus seven Pro. What does that really mean iPad pro Mir pro, but really for actual professional-grade equipment? That stuff is very expensive and it’s clearly not for everyone.
This new Mac Pro is, of course, a creative tool, but no amount of money you spend on a creative tool will make you better at creating. I think we all know this, but it will help with things like quality control and, of course, making things faster, which is what professionals pay a lot of money for, and actually that brings us conveniently to the one accessory. The one other piece of hardware that launched alongside the Mac Pro, which is the new Pro display this new screen, is called the Apple Pro display. Xdr and XDR stands for extreme dynamic range, and this thing is again a monster on the spec sheet.
If you know anything about the world of pro displays and reference monitors, or even if you don’t it’s a 32 inch, 6k HDR display it’s an LCD that gets up to 1600 nits of peak brightness and has a million to 1 contrast ratio, which is excellent for An LCD and, as you can see, ultra thin, bezels and it’ll come in a glossy version, or this fancy nano etched glass which is matte instead and that’s of course, extremely color. Accurate of course, the actual, hands-on and and being able to put our own content on. It is extremely limited at events like this, so I haven’t seen my own videos on it.
So it’s hard for me to tell exactly how good it is, but Apple draws a lot of compare instead that 35 $ 45,000 reference monitors that are used in these actual editing houses that are making movies and things like that. The sustained 1000 nits of brightness is definitely the hardest part that takes a lot of power and a lot of cooling to get something like this to not overheat. So, that’s why you see the cheese grater ventilation in the back of the monitor, matching the Mac Pro and there’s even a fan in the back constantly spinning that you can’t hear.
But it’s necessary starting price for this monitor five thousand dollars and to get the Nano Edge. 2 glass version that has the matte finish: that’s another thousand bucks! So if you want that one, it’s six thousand dollars and then with the super thin bezels, there’s no camera built-in. So that’s sold separately, oh yeah, and so is the stand. So the stand which is all-metal it swivels and tilts and height, adjusts and can even rotate into portrait mode.
It’S actually a pretty excellent stand. It’S not included in the monitors $ 5,000 price. That’S an extra $ 1000 for that metal stand now.
That is a really easy thing to make fun of it, for I would do the same thing mostly because the way they announced it on stage was terrible. They gave like the prices of $ 5,000 or $ 6,000 for the stand. Why would you do it like that? The truth is a lot of people doing professional, video, editing and things like that are using these displays that are mounted in place, and they have stands already so when the upgrade displays they take them out and put them in the same place, and they don’t need To buy new mounts and new stands for them, so these people buy monitors with no displays all the time, but you and me, and people watching WWDC and most normal people just think of a monitor and a stand as together.
So I guess what they should have said was: this is a six thousand dollar monitor, but if you want to buy it without the stand, it’s a thousand bucks off 5k still expensive, obviously, and that’s gon na look insane if you put it on the shelf next, To other similar monitors and Best Buy or something, but it can look like a bargain when you’re shopping it against the 40,000 dollar reference monitors that it’s actually competing against with pro so anyway, all in all, there’s no denying these two pieces of gear are extremely high-end, And extremely expensive like this is not something most people get just like the previous MacPro, but damn like I you know I was we’ve been waiting for this for a while and they’ve made a lot of improvements to it. I mean especially on paper and just in the design that we’ve been waiting for for a long time for the Mac Pro it’s coming out in the fall. So I don’t know, probably the end of the fall, but I’m actually really looking forward to it and looking forward to seeing how it’ll fit into my workflow, of course, that afterburner card isn’t gon na. Do our 3d transcoding it’ll do pro res and pro res Raw. But I might have to mess around with that a little bit more. All this stuff depends on once I finally get it on my desk. I’M also a little terrified about how much it will end up costing. We should probably place bets on like how much them maxed out highest end.
Config will cost. I mean by the time you add a terabyte and a half of RAM, a 28 core Xeon, even the optional little wheels that you can put on the bottom. This thing is probably gon na, go I’m gon na, say I’m gon na say $ 40,000. Even that’s my guess, but the whole point is you: don’t have to buy the highest end, one like you had to with the iMac pro you buy. Whatever tier you need now, and you can upgrade it in the future and that’s the Mac Pro we’ve been waiting for so I’ll, take the cheese grater over the trash can any day either way. Let me know if you guys think there’s been a quick first impressions.
Video thanks for watching I catch you guys in the next one peace. .