Apple By Sal Cangeloso Dec. 31, 2013 12:00 pm
Apple’s Mac Pro is finally here. After being teased earlier this year and details coming out in October, the workstation is available for sale. Starting at a somewhat prohibitive $3000 you might expect that this is a workhorse of a computer and a feat of modern engineering. You’d be right on both counts.
It might not appeal to you personally, but Apple’s newly released Mac Pro is one of the most incredible desktop computers ever released. I’d note that it’s one of the most impressive desktops to be released in 2013 or in the past few years but that’s not really saying much given the state of innovation in today’s desktops. A hardware teardown released by iFixit has just how much work Apple’s engineers put into the pint-sized workstation and just how innovative of a computer it is.
As I noted in my “how the Mac Pro is made” article, Apple made some really interesting decisions with the Mac Pro, many of which are exposed in this teardown. Opting for a cylindrical chassis had a huge impact on the system — it enabled the used of the three-part motherboard which is capped by the system’s single fan, all of which are placed around a huge central heat sink. At the bottom of all that is a daughterboard which is a cluster of integrated circuits and controllers. Each of the sides is part of the mainboard with the critical components, like the GPU and CPU, facedown so they can be directly against the central heat sink.
(That’s not to say that someone decided on the cylindrical layout and all the other decisions were made as a result. We simply don’t know how Apple arrived at this novel design. At some point a major call had to be made though, maybe it was on the shape, or more likely it was a goal based on volume and or noise production. Either way, we’re looking a computer that’s as loud as the Mac mini and a fraction the size of the previous Pro.)
The teardown doesn’t reveal too much we didn’t already know, but it does confirm something we had all hoped: that the new Pro is somewhat easy to maintain. We knew from day one that the 2013 Mac Pro would not be particularly upgradeable and it wouldn’t be internally expandable at all, but the hope was that users would still be able to get at the RAM and storage, and then, with luck, the CPU and GPU. The teardown confirms at the RAM is super easy to get at, that the CPU is upgradeable with some work, and that SSD is removable. The GPU though uses a proprietary*connector so don’t expect to be upgrading any time soon, if ever.
The Mac Pro’s single moving part, its fan, is swappable. Its case is easy to open, and the whole computer can come apart without any specialized tools. All that earned the Mac Pro a respectable 8/10 in iFixit’s repairability scale, though from the looks of this machine (especially after having taken the cover off of one) I’d don’t think this is a computer you’ll want to operate on, even if you can. That said, if something weird does happen once your warranty is up, then it should be quite possible to change out a part and get your Mac Pro up and running again.
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It might not appeal to you personally, but Apple’s newly released Mac Pro is one of the most incredible desktop computers ever released. I’d note that it’s one of the most impressive desktops to be released in 2013 or in the past few years but that’s not really saying much given the state of innovation in today’s desktops. A hardware teardown released by iFixit has just how much work Apple’s engineers put into the pint-sized workstation and just how innovative of a computer it is.
As I noted in my “how the Mac Pro is made” article, Apple made some really interesting decisions with the Mac Pro, many of which are exposed in this teardown. Opting for a cylindrical chassis had a huge impact on the system — it enabled the used of the three-part motherboard which is capped by the system’s single fan, all of which are placed around a huge central heat sink. At the bottom of all that is a daughterboard which is a cluster of integrated circuits and controllers. Each of the sides is part of the mainboard with the critical components, like the GPU and CPU, facedown so they can be directly against the central heat sink.
(That’s not to say that someone decided on the cylindrical layout and all the other decisions were made as a result. We simply don’t know how Apple arrived at this novel design. At some point a major call had to be made though, maybe it was on the shape, or more likely it was a goal based on volume and or noise production. Either way, we’re looking a computer that’s as loud as the Mac mini and a fraction the size of the previous Pro.)
The teardown doesn’t reveal too much we didn’t already know, but it does confirm something we had all hoped: that the new Pro is somewhat easy to maintain. We knew from day one that the 2013 Mac Pro would not be particularly upgradeable and it wouldn’t be internally expandable at all, but the hope was that users would still be able to get at the RAM and storage, and then, with luck, the CPU and GPU. The teardown confirms at the RAM is super easy to get at, that the CPU is upgradeable with some work, and that SSD is removable. The GPU though uses a proprietary*connector so don’t expect to be upgrading any time soon, if ever.
The Mac Pro’s single moving part, its fan, is swappable. Its case is easy to open, and the whole computer can come apart without any specialized tools. All that earned the Mac Pro a respectable 8/10 in iFixit’s repairability scale, though from the looks of this machine (especially after having taken the cover off of one) I’d don’t think this is a computer you’ll want to operate on, even if you can. That said, if something weird does happen once your warranty is up, then it should be quite possible to change out a part and get your Mac Pro up and running again.
More...
