iMac Pro: Apple’s New Workstation Grade Machine

Apple has finally released its new workstation grade machine: The iMac Pro. The specs crammed inside this beautiful machine are totally insane compared to the earlier iMac lineups. It is a great upgrade over its predecessor, the 5K Retina iMac. In this article, we will talk about why the iMac Pro is such a marvelous device.

Build Quality

The new iMac Pro has basically the same design as its bigger brother 5K Retina iMac with a new space grey color and some additional airflow tweaks. As Apple states, “We redesigned the thermal architecture of iMac Pro with innovative dual blowers, a high-capacity heatsink, and extra venting. The result? Almost 75 percent more airflow and an 80 percent increase in system thermal capacity. Which lets iMac Pro handle 500 watts — 67 percent more power than the 27-inch iMac.”

I/O Ports

iMac Pro comes with a wide range of I/O Ports. This time around, Apple has done something exquisite. Not many people expected this from Apple. They have added a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port. Now you can connect to a shared storage over 10 Gigabit Ethernet. iMac Pro has four full-speed Thunderbolt 3 ports that uses 4 PCI Express Lanes. It also has 4 USB 3.0 Ports. An inclusion of an SDXC card slot and a *ahem* HEADPHONE JACK *no pun intended* has made the I/O selection almost complete.

Apple says that you can extend the display to two more 5K display, using the Thunderbolt 3 port, taking the total pixel count to over 44 million.

Specifications

This is where things get interesting. The fact that Apple has crammed some of the heaviest parts and has been successful in cool it without throttle is insane. It is equipped with a Xeon W Processor. The base model has an 8-Core Xeon W-2145 Processor. It also comes in 10, 14 and 10 core versions. Getting to see a workstation grade hardware inside an All-in-one machine is mesmerizing.

It comes with a 32 GB, 64 GB, or 128 GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 ECC SDRAM. The 128 GB of RAM might seem ridiculous, but the point to be noted is that the iMac Pro is a target for Graphic Designers and Video Editors. And, as a video editor, Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere will eat that RAM right up. iMac Pro comes with a 1 TB of SSD which can be upgraded to up to 4 TB. This Raid-0 configuration (according to iFixit) give you some of the most amazing read and write speeds (3.3 GB/s of write and 2.8 GB/s of read).

The Graphics processor on this device is absolutely amazing. The base model comes with a Vega 56 Graphics Processor, while it can be upgraded to Vega 64, with up to 16 GB of HBM2 Memory. With this hardware, theoretically, it can run Triple-A titles if you run Windows 10 in boot camp (though this isn’t iMac Pro’s purpose).

The iMac Pro has one of the most beautiful displays in all of the computer market. It has 27-inch 5K (5120 × 2880) screen with 60 Hertz refresh rates. It has a Glossy glass-covered widescreen display with LED backlighting and IPS technology with P3 color gamut. It has a max brightness of 500 nits and has 1.07 Billion colors.

Our Verdict

iMac Pro is undoubtedly one of the best computers right now. If it weren’t for the “un-upgradability”, it would be a perfect machine. While this device comes in at a very expensive price tag, it can be a very worthwhile investment for Graphic Designers and Video Editors.

The price of base model iMac Pro is $4,999 plus taxes. So, when it ships to Nepal, we can expect the price of iMac Pro in Nepal to reach a minimum of Rs. 6 Lakhs, and mind you that is the price for the base model. If you go all out on this device, the price will go to about Rs. 15 Lakhs. So, this means, this isn’t for everyone.