With Apple’s 2023 refresh of the Mac Pro, announced on Monday at WWDC 2023, the Cupertino-based company has officially transitioned completely away from Intel with the brains of its computers.
While the Mac Pro’s insane specs and capabilities only represent a paltry 1% of actual Mac users in the market today with a starting price of $6,999, the fact that it exists is something to speak about, and in this piece, we’ll discuss the technical specifications of Apple’s latest Mac Pro refresh.
2023 Mac Pro tech specs
Finish
- Silver
Enclosure
- Tower
- Mac Pro tower enclosure with feet; configurable to tower with wheels
- Rack
- Mac Pro rack enclosure with rack mount rails
Size and Weight
- Tower
- Height:8 inches (52.9 cm)
- Height with optional wheels:9 inches (55.7 cm)
- Width:58 inches (21.8 cm)
- Depth:7 inches (45.0 cm)
- Weight:2 pounds (16.86 kg)
- Rack
- Height:67 inches (22.02 cm) 5U
- Width:98 inches (48.2 cm)
- Enclosure depth (from handle):24 inches (53.95 cm)
- Handle depth:81 inches (4.60 cm)
- Enclosure depth (from fascia):43 inches (49.35 cm)
- Minimum rack depth:0 inches (60.96 cm)
- Maximum rack depth:0 inches (106.68 cm)
- Weight:9 pounds (17.21 kg)
Chip
- Apple M2 Ultra chip
- 24-core CPU with 16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores
- 60-core GPU
- 32-core Neural Engine
- 800GB/s memory bandwidth
- Media engine
- Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW
- Two video decode engines
- Four video encode engines
- Four ProRes encode and decode engines
- Configurable to:
- M2 Ultra with 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine
Storage
- 1TB SSD:
- Configurable to: 2TB, 4TB, or 8TB
Memory
- 64GB unified memory
- Configurable to: 128GB or 192GB
Connections
- Eight Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports
- Six ports on the back of the enclosure and two ports on the top of the tower enclosure or two ports on the front of the rack enclosure
- Support for:
- Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
- DisplayPort
- USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)
- Internal connections
- One USB-A port (up to 5Gb/s)
- Two Serial ATA ports (up to 6Gb/s)
- Additional connections
- Two USB-A ports (up to 5Gb/s)
- Two HDMI ports
- Two 10Gb Ethernet ports
- 5 mm headphone jack
Expansion
- Six full-length PCI Express gen 4 slots
- Two x16 slots
- Four x8 slots
- One half-length x4 PCI Express gen 3 slot with Apple I/O card installed
- 300W auxiliary power available:
- Two 6-pin connectors delivering 75W of power each
- One 8-pin connector delivering 150W of power
Display Support
- Simultaneous support for up to eight displays:
- Eight displays with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz
- Six displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
- Three displays with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz
- Thunderbolt 4 digital video output
- Support for native DisplayPort output over USB-C
- HDMI display video output (per port)
- Support for one display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or 4K resolution at 240Hz
- Support for variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, and multichannel audio
Audio
- Built-in speaker
- 3.5 mm headphone jack with advanced support for high-impedance headphones
- HDMI port supports multichannel audio output
Communications
- Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)
- Bluetooth 5.3
- 10Gb Ethernet (Nbase-T Ethernet with support for 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 5Gb, and 10Gb Ethernet using RJ-45 connector)
Input Devices
- Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad
- Magic Mouse
- Optional Magic Trackpad
Conclusion
I can’t think of anyone in my immediate circle who would need the kinds of specs that the Mac Pro is pushing, but if you work for a large production company, then this might be the type of machine you could see in the office for working on massive workflows that require tons of system resources.
Even if you’re just a freelance professional in the market for a desktop Mac computer, the much smaller Mac Studio is a far better value and will do mostly everything you need it to.