Mac Pro Late 2013 Teardown

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+Late+2013+Teardown/20778

by knocknock • 13 years ago

142 94 13 years ago

That's a pretty good score, considering how unfixable the laptops have become.

calinet64• 13 years ago

Different tools for different purposes. In my experience, the laptops have not required opening for quite some time, speaking about my retina MBP and Air experiences.

I could upgrade the storage (just 256GB seems small) but I don't really need to... I have all the music I want in the "cloud" (Spotify, Rdio, Pandora) and I keep my video on my home server on an external enclosure I can mount anytime through SSH or watch via Plex.

I could upgrade the video card, but I never have before in a laptop; if I wanted to do things like that, I'd get a desktop.

I could upgrade the memory, but I maxxed it out at 16GB anyway and it won't fit any more.

I could open it to fix things, but there are few moving parts and nothing seems to break.

I might someday need to replace the battery, but on both my rMBPs so far (one owned 1 year, one owned 6 months) the battery has not notably declined in capacity. Even at the end of its life, a reduced 4 hour battery life will be plenty sufficient, and when it finally kicks the bucket, I'm happy to have Apple service it.

In my original 2008 aluminum macbook pro, I replaced the hard drive once, upgraded the memory, and replaced the battery; but none of these things are as relevant or limited as they were in 2009. I have no need for the equivalent upgrades anymore. The machine just works, exactly how I want it to.

ceejayoz2• 13 years ago

Laptops being less serviceable are merely a side effect of the demand for better battery life and smaller devices. Mac Pros don't suffer from that.

alexcroox• 13 years ago

My retina MBP is so thin an ethernet cable is too thick for it, I think I can understand why it's not exactly built for hot swapping parts out...

netcraft• 13 years ago

I hadn't realized how small this is. I was imagining something about 1.5x to 2x as tall from the previous pictures I had seen.

It is impressive how modular they have made it in such as small package, but the inability to expand without thunderbolt is a turnoff to me personally. Maybe once thunderbolt becomes more ubiquitous and cheaper it won't be as big of a deal. Apple wants $30 for a half meter cable http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD861ZM/A/apple-thunderbol...

agumonkey3• 13 years ago

First picture with a hand on it got me mouth-agape. It's a big soda can. Impressive indeed. I wish they chose a more angular form factor, circular feels odd, and oddly not Apple-ish enough.

psedit: I didn't see the can / macpro picture the first time (slow DSL today) psedit2: this level of custom hardware reminds me of the ~70s era, on IBM machines, every piece was as specific as it could get. Beautiful to see, maybe less fun when in need for parts.

calinet64• 13 years ago

It's actually a special-edition New Belgium Patagonia-themed beer... just discovered it thanks to this. Cool can design.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

Circular not Apple-ish enough? :)

http://www.cupertino.org/inc/img/apple_campus-cover.jpg

superuser2• 13 years ago

FYI, that "half meter cable" is not simple electrical continuity. There are microcontrollers in the ends handling the data as it passes.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/06/29/thunderbolt.ca...

konstruktor2• 13 years ago

I assume the majority of people posting in this thread know this. From a functional point of view, it's still a 30$ half meter cable, and it is also sold as such (not as a transceiver chip/cable kit). It's an interesting technology, though.

bane• 13 years ago

I wonder how many people will just run this with the case off. It looks so much better to my eyes.

Maybe an aftermarket clear case will show up?

I really hope a similar form factor takes off for custom computer builders.

agumonkey3• 13 years ago

An vertically extruded triangle form factor would have been superb, like a sibling artefact from 2001.

And Apple already owns triangles http://www.theverge.com/policy/2012/6/7/3068355/Apple-design... ...

archgrove• 13 years ago

Alas, it won't even turn on without its case (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-rev...). It needs it to guide air through the cooling tower style design. Presumably, someone could make a transparent case as an accessory.

marknutter5• 13 years ago

I think there'd be a market for a third-party glass or clear plastic case, which I believe would serve the same purpose but show of the awesome internals.

MartinCron• 13 years ago

If ever there was a product that called out for a Kickstarter, it would be the clear Mac Pro case.

Artisan borosilicate glass, naturally.

stephann• 13 years ago

I hate apple products lately (macbook pro), well I love them but I hate you cant replace components like RAM and SSD.

I wish they improved soon. As for mac pro, I love design.

Kiro• 13 years ago

Why can't you replace the SSD?

whichdan• 13 years ago

They've started using a proprietary SATA connector.

samatman• 13 years ago

Saying that it's 'shockingly un-apple-like' that the outer case can be removed, shows that the reviewer is handling his first Mac Pro. I still remember the glee I felt, every time I opened my G5 Mac Pro.

My lust for this machine is only growing. It looks like a cross between Darth Vader and R2D2. Love it.

Tloewald• 13 years ago

Indeed, Apple's pro macs have generally been ridiculously upgradeable and user-accessible. (Modulo needing to "cover your hands in bandages" before opening up one of the full-sized Mac II series). The 7-series "sidecars", and 8- and 9- series towers, could be completely accessed without tools and had CPUs on upgradeable daughtercards.

leoc• 13 years ago

Here's Jobs touting the accessibility of the 1999 PowerMac G3's internals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=pH-...

brudgers3• 13 years ago

The video cards in the last generation of MacPro's could only be upgraded to the cards offered directly from Apple or the handful Mac-specific parts offered by third parties. With it's unusual form factors, the new MacPro will probably offer even fewer options.

It also looks like the current form factor also limits internal storage to a single drive - i.e. it's a workstation that does not provide for an internal RAID configuration. It also does not provide any way to back data up without using a network connection or external device.

None of these may be deal breakers, of course, but the trend is definitely away from upgradability. Then again, a shared heat sink and limited air volume combined with a 450w power supply and a single fan design probably give Apple business reasons to move in that direction.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

I remember reading something by Woz where he said he had to fight just to get user expandable memory in the early Apple products. Jobs thought the owner should never open it. So maybe we have Woz to thank for early expandability. Although it was nothing compared to every tiny piece replaceable with an online ordered component IBM clones.

justin66• 13 years ago

Saying that it's 'shockingly un-apple-like' that the outer case can be removed, shows that the reviewer is handling his first Mac Pro.

Or that he's insightful enough to recognize that the Mac Pro is an anomaly in the Apple product line.

Avenger42• 13 years ago

Exactly. He's not saying "un-Mac-Pro-like", he's saying "un-Apple-like".

jokoon• 13 years ago

I hope this is the most mucle-y windows-running computer.

mortyseinfeld• 13 years ago

Wow, that thing is freaking cool.

marknutter5• 13 years ago

I'm probably going to be buying one of these today so I've been doing a bit of research. Turns out most everything is user replaceable; most importantly, the processor. So you can save your self a fair bit of cash by buying the base model and upgrading later as needed, which is what I intend to do.

josephlord3• 13 years ago

Xeon processors don't seem to drop in price the way the consumer ones do so you might not save as much as you expect.

Edit: It may still be worth buying the base model now and upgrading immediately if the Apple markup is large.

marknutter5• 13 years ago

The Apple markup is large.

josephlord3• 13 years ago

Specifically on the processor it may be cheaper to get the base and replace it immediately for £1800 [1] than to buy the top of the line than to pay Apple the £2800 extra it seems to ask for what appears to be the same processor (cache, speed at least). And you might be able to sell the original.

[1] http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-xeon-e5-2697-v2-s-2011-...

e406• 13 years ago

I really want one, but $5400 is too much for the base ($3000) and the disk expansion via Thunderbolt 2 ($2400 for the 6 bay one).

I'm currently looking into a hackintosh that'll set me back about $1700:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/envoy510/saved/3dCe

I just can't justify the $5400 vs $1700, even though I really do love the design of the new Mac Pro. Also, mine has 32GB of RAM instead of 12GB.

atonse• 13 years ago

That list is very different from what's in the Mac Pro.

1) You've picked an i7. The Mac Pro uses a Xeon. They're way more expensive. 2) The Mac Pro has ECC RAM which is more expensive. 3) You picked one video card, and it's probably a gamers card (not a GP-GPU like the FirePros, again, MUCH cheaper) 4) OCZ SSDs which have dodgy reliability and are SATA, not PCI-E 5) No Thunderbolt controllers 6) A 750-watt power supply - The mac pro gets by with 450w.

If you assemble a list of parts that are actually similar to what's in the Mac Pro, you'd probably end up closer to $5,400.

And none of that counting the desk space you save, the noise characteristics, the expandability (PCI-E speed and 6 hot-pluggable devices for each thunderbolt 2 port).

Where you're more likely to save money generally with Apple products is with upgrades, as some have pointed out with the Xeons.

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

If you want that Apple quality, get a Macbook Pro instead?

thirdsight• 13 years ago

Much better than I expected. I've been concerned that they're making lemons recently with the total black box MBPs. iPads I can understand being sealed/disposable but not MBP line machines. Good on Apple for friendly engineering design this time.

Unfortunately for me though, I both can't justify one and can't afford one anyway.

codex• 13 years ago

Surprise feature: 512GB of DRAM associated with the SSD. Is this a write cache? If so, is it battery backed?

cdawzrd• 13 years ago

*512MB. This is not an Apple innovation... I believe all SSDs have caches hanging off of the controller, used for both write and read. Flash memory is very much slower than DRAM when writing. This DRAM cache is why many SSDs have better burst performance than sustained write performance. Only the most high-end datacenter-oriented SSDs have backup power, typically supplied by supercapacitors rather than batteries though. I don't see any backup power on this Apple SSD.

konstruktor2• 13 years ago

Which brings us to an interesting point: A typical workstation USV is about the size of the Mac Pro :)

hashtree• 13 years ago

Seriously impressive design all around. However, I still can't pull myself to spend 10k on one when I can instead do a decked out iMac and then offload processing to ~4 custom built servers with far more total procs/ram/ssd. The only hard to replicate piece is the six channel PCI-E SSD (cost-wise).

This is what I have done for years now, and however much I might like to just for the design... I imagine sticking with it.

lisp-and-seo• 13 years ago

> The only hard to replicate piece is the six channel PCI-E SSD (cost-wise)

Not really, all you need are a motherboard supporting (fake) hardware RAID (that's almost any over $100) and a couple of good 240GB SSDs. A RAID 0 will far outperform the MacPro in random access (e.g. OS drive) and in the worst case - sequential reading - will be no more than 10% slower.

The hard to replicate part is the OS, but IMHO Linux and Windows with some UI configuration are superior.

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

This is a beautiful machine. It does look odd but every hardware built into the Pro looks amazing fit and stylish. The only complain, of course is when you need all those extra cables and just make the Pro looks uglier. I am going to one of these a year or later, like when the 2nd or even 3rd generation comes out. When iPod first came out, it was a big hit but it was a monster. 2 generations down it was slim.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure the form factor is here to stay for a while. Apple isn't going to re-engineer the Mac Pro's case nearly as rapidly as their other consumer devices.

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

Ah. I don't know. I feel like there might be improves. But Apple does have a track of adding/removing small features like removing or adding usb and 1394 ports.

rsynnott• 13 years ago

And it's not like they change their other computers' cases very much, anyway. The previous iMac managed about five years, for instance.

userbinator• 13 years ago

Those caps in the PSU are going to get pretty cooked judging from their position...

Mac Pro Late 2013 Teardown

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