While Apple refreshed the iMac lineup this morning, the default iMac pro that you can buy for $4,999 remains the same. But Joe Rossignol from MacRumors spotted some changes in the configure-to-order options.
You can now buy an iMac Pro with 256GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 ECC memory — not storage, RAM. But that will cost you a small fortune as you need to spend an extra $5,200 to jump from 32GB of RAM to 256GB of RAM.
But if you don’t need that much RAM, the good news is that other RAM options are now cheaper than before. For instance, upgrading from 32GB to 64GB of RAM now costs $400 instead of $800. Given that you can’t easily replace the memory on the iMac Pro, this is a nice change for people planning to buy an iMac Pro.
When it comes to GPU, Apple has added a new top tier GPU — the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16GB of HBM2 memory. It’s unclear whether the Vega 64X is much faster than the Vega 64 GPU. But once again, Apple is lowering the price of the Vega 64 upgrade, from $600 to $550. It costs $700 to get the Vega 64X.
Finally, SSD upgrades are now a bit cheaper as well. Upgrading from 1TB to 2TB now costs $600 instead of $800. And upgrading from 1TB to 4TB now costs $2,400 instead of $2,800.
The iMac Pro targets a specific market — people who need an incredibly powerful and stable computer when it comes to CPU, GPU, memory and connectivity. If you know you need a bottomless pit of performance, it’ll cost you a lot of money. But it’s good to see that there are now more options and more ways to configure the iMac Pro to your needs.
