14 DAY TRIAL // Apple announced at WWDC that it would be launching an iMac Pro later this year, but the company only revealed the starting price, saying that the most affordable configuration would cost $4,999.
The company promised to offer more information about the top-of-the-range configuration later this year, promising instead to equip the iMac Pro with the best possible hardware at the time of launch.
So based on this information, the folks over at ZDNet estimated how much the maxed iMac Pro would cost, and the result is shocking to say the least.
The hardware configuration
First of all, the processor. Even though no information on the CPU was provided by Apple, the company is likely to use an 8-core Intel chip for the entry-level model, with a price tag of $419 per chip. The iMac Pro with top-of-the-range configuration is likely to come with an 18-core Xeon processor, and an estimation brings the price of the processor to $2,282, without Apple’s upcharge included.
Cupertino typically adds another 75 percent over the standard price of components, so the processor alone could end up costing no less than $4,000.
In terms of RAM, the base model would come with 32GB of RAM, and comparing prices offered by OEMs like Kingston brings us to a final price for the memory upgrade of $2,700 when 128GB is offered.
Then, it’s the storage. A teardown made by iFixIt discovered that Apple was using a Samsung M.2 flash SSD on the MacBook Pro, and boosting capacity to 4TB and adding Cupertino’s own markup brings us to a shocking price of $3,600.
And last but not least, it’s the graphics card, which is expected to be the Radeon Pro Vega. Although this card is not available just yet, a comparison with NVIDIA’s GTX Titan X and adding Apple’s markup again raises the final cost by $2,000.
This means that, in the end, the maxed-out iMac Pro could cost no more, no less than $17,299, which is without a doubt one of the most expensive desktops ever made.
Versus Microsoft’s Surface Studio
The iMac Pro would be a direct rival to Microsoft’s Surface Studio, an all-in-one PC that was announced in the fall of last year and came with a pretty high price as well.
And yet, the Surface Studio is still a lot more affordable as compared to the maxed-out iMac Pro. The top-of-the-range configuration costs only $4,199 and comes with an Intel Core i7 processor, 32GB RAM, 2TB Rapid Hybrid Drive storage, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M graphics card with 4GB.
