Apple's Mac Studio now costs as much as a car: $22,299 for 512GB
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio can finally be ordered with 512GB of unified memory. The memory upgrade alone costs $15,500.
Apple has finally opened orders for the priciest Mac Studio yet. The M5 Ultra model can now be configured with 512GB of unified memory. Apple promised the option back in August when the machine launched, but it never showed up in the configurator. It arrived right on schedule, in late October.
The price is sobering. First you need the M5 Ultra with the 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU, which starts at $6,799 in the US. The jump to 512GB of memory adds another $15,500 on its own. That makes the minimum $22,299 with a 1TB drive. Max out storage at 16TB and you land at $29,799. The first of these machines ship to buyers on December 3.
Who is this for? Mostly people running large language models on their desk. Apple's memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, and half a terabyte lets you keep models locally that would never fit on a regular graphics card. The M5 Max version still tops out at 128GB.
So there is now a Mac built for AI without the cloud. It just costs about as much as a decent car.