Suppose you have already decided, and you intend to buy a Mac Pro from Apple in no time. In this buying guide we are going to tell you in what situations it is a good idea to do it, and in which you could save a lot of money and have the same result buying one of its many alternatives.
The Mac Pro is the highest-end equipment sold by Apple, an extremely powerful machine -that is undeniable- but with a price tag that makes you cry, which is why many people obviously back out because the most basic model starts at 6,499 euros . So, in this buying guide we are going to see the following questions: in what situations is it worth investing in one of these teams? What are its pros and cons? What alternatives are there to have the same result?
What is special about Mac Pro?
These teams are obviously workstations. In their most basic model, they are equipped with 8-core Intel Xeon W processors at 4 GHz (turbo), being able to upgrade it to models with a 28-core processor for the modest price of an additional 8,750 euros. The basic model has 32 GB of RAM memory , and for “only” 31,250 euros you could buy a Mercedes, or you could install 1.5 TB of DDR4 ECC RAM to this equipment.
Standard incorporates a Radeon Pro 580X graphics card, expandable to two Radeon Vega II Duo for an additional 13,500 euros. As for storage, the basic model has a 256 GB SSD, but for 3,250 euros more we can install an 8 TB SSD in total. There are other additional options, such as the Apple Afterburner card (accelerator card to decode video), or for just 500 euros more we can put wheels on the box. In total, the most expensive model (not counting software) costs a whopping 66,398 euros .
Leaving aside the exorbitant price that Apple asks for this machine, there is no doubt that it is quite a portent in terms of hardware, but after all it is not something that we cannot build with parts. What is special, this and all Apple computers, is its Mac OS operating system, tremendously effective and stable but also very closed, but for this reason it is also very safe.
Actually, there is nothing we can do on a Mac Pro that we cannot do on a Windows PC, so what kind of users are worth buying a Mac Pro for?
Is it worth paying what a Mac Pro costs?
Go ahead that this is a team oriented to companies and professionals, not for home users since this team exceeds the needs of 99% of ordinary users, even professional users. The thing goes further, and is that these teams are not even intended for graphic design professionals and not even for audio professionals (industry in which almost all professionals use Mac), but rather it is specific to video editing professionals exclusively.
And not all video editing professionals , but those who have to handle Terabytes of video in ultra high definition and who need to be able to handle them in real time. Only for this type of use is this hardware justified, and in this case even the stunning Pro Display XDR monitor is justified.
For other users, and we repeat that even for professionals of other types of things (in fact even for video editing professionals who do not need the best of the best), there are other alternatives that will allow them to do their work with the same result. and without having to spend these huge sums of money that buying a Mac Pro means.
What are the best alternatives?
Unless you use software so specific that it is only available for Mac OS, you can always assemble a piecewise PC equipped with a Xeon or ThreadRipper processor, with a huge amount of RAM, SSD storage and professional graphics for less money than it would cost you. do it on a Mac Pro, although yes, you will have to use Windows or Linux in this case. Keep in mind that most professional applications have a Windows version, including the well-known Pro Tools for audio editing, and they work wonderfully.
With everything and with that, if you use specific software that only exists in the Mac OS ecosystem, you also have much cheaper alternatives: the Mac Mini. Unless, as we indicated before, you handle huge amounts of ultra high definition video, a Mac Mini will give you excellent service with great performance and spending a lot less money. In fact, in case you need more than one of these small teams can give you, you will always have the iMac Pro .
In any case, you will always find alternatives in Windows to anything you need to do with a Mac Pro, and that is that we really repeat what we have said before: unless you have the need to edit terabytes of video in ultra high definition, it does not have It makes sense to buy a Mac Pro because you have envelope alternatives that are even more powerful, for less money.
