The $10,000 Mac Pro Killer

Apple's latest Mac Pro is a disgrace. It doesn't even have its next-generation M3 silicon. It costs $3,400 more than a Mac Studio that has the exact same specs. And their prices on storage and RAM upgrades seem to suggest they're made of gold rather than silicon. But the worst thing is that it's not even that good. Yes, here we go. Final scores, 3000 and change, 1900 and change. Whoa, whoa, 50% faster with the CPU. But showing you all the results right away is not fun or very useful. So let's talk about our options as we work together to build the PC Pro 2.

Yes, if you remember, this isn't the first time we've done this. And last time, the PC was not a clear winner, unlike our sponsor, MSI. If you don't have time to go through the process of selecting parts and building your own PC, MSI's Aegis RS gaming desktop comes pre-built with powerful components like a Wi-Fi 7-enabled motherboard, and has the advantage to be easily upgradeable. Check it out at the link below. Right off the bat, this version of PC Pro will be a bit more of a challenge. While our Mac Pro costs a whopping $11,800, the previous one cost around $30,000.

So, negotiate? Well, it all depends on what you get, right? There are two different M2 Ultras, one with 60 GPU cores and the other with 76. We've opted for the latter, which means that machine is as fast as it gets. Meanwhile, the PC Pro is getting a little, I don't know, newer, faster, broader? How about all of the above? The AMD Threadripper 7970X features AMD's latest Zen 4 architecture with a monstrous 32 cores and a boost clock of 5.3 gigahertz, all while consuming 350 watts. And that's before activating PBO or precision boost overdrive. More on this later, but there is a potential drawback of our machine compared to that.

This isn't a top of the line Threadripper or anything like that. This alone would have cost us more than half of our budget. But I remain confident that this CPU will have no problems. I'm still sure this bad boy will circle around that thing. Now, unlike the Mac Pro with its soldered CPU, our chip requires a motherboard with a socket to enter, specifically the Gigabyte TRX50 Aero D. There are only a handful of TRX50 motherboards on the market right now, and we settled on This is mainly due to the spacing of its PCI Express slots, which will make a little more sense later.

It's also conveniently the most affordable TRX50 board while still packing great features like two high-speed LAN ports, Wi-Fi 7, and a whopping four quad-lane M.2 slots, three of which are PCIe Gen 5. Now Wait a minute, Linus. This is a normal Threadripper. How is this machine professional? That's a fair point. Compared to the Threadripper Pro, we have fewer PCIe lanes, so you can't connect as many things to it, and limited RAM capacity at half the memory channels. But then I ask you this: how do we compare to the competition? Compared to even this non-professional system, the Mac Pro has even fewer PCIe lanes, supports less RAM, has limited support for professional applications outside of video and photography, and does not support ECC memory at all.

He has a faster memory, but we'll have to see what advantage that will give him. Let's talk about memory. The base model Mac Pro comes with 64 gigabytes of unified memory, and unified memory is really great. Apple's RAM is directly in the SoC package, increasing bandwidth for both the CPU and integrated GPU. Not only is it fast, but if the CPU completes a task and needs to hand it over to the GPU, that GPU has immediate access to it, rather than having to wait for it to be transferred between system memory and traditional GPU memory . Apple RAM also supports dynamic caching, meaning the CPU and GPU can partition system memory dynamically to better complete their respective work.

Or at least the M3 can. It's a shame this Mac Pro is still stuck with the M2. And what also sucks even more is the price. We added another 128 gigs to our setup, costing us $1,600. On the PC side, okay, sure, it's not unified, but boy, will we ever get much more for our money? I'm talking double the capacity, 384 gigabytes. These are Micron's 96 gigabyte, 5600 megatransfers per second DIMMs. They are ECC registered, which means they should be wonderfully stable. And we're going to fill all four slots here, maximizing our motherboard. It's a little funny that we ended up with exactly double the RAM because that clip circulated of an Apple employee who wrongly stated during an interview that: Eight gigabytes on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16 gigabytes on other systems.

I guess that's why it costs twice as much. Another sore point that Apple users have been complaining about more and more lately is the price of storage. Going from one terabyte stock on that machine to eight terabytes will add $2,200 to your bill. $2,200. For that price, you could buy another computer. You can buy one of each screwdriver at lttstore.com. Twice. Or you could do what we did and buy two of these. The eight terabyte Cybert Rocket 4 Plus. Yes, yes, that's right. Double the storage. Hey Apple, is your eight terabytes equivalent to our 16 terabytes? Is that a thing?

We will find out. Yes, we sure will. Now, our board does not support M.2 RAID, so we couldn't use these drives for redundancy or additional speed, but what we can do is have double the capacity, whether for projects, videos, games, or whatever we want . One advantage for Apple, however, has been, and perhaps always will be, sex appeal. I mean, look at this fine cheese grater. That's why people keep buying this. For us, we've gone with, well, okay. This is the Define 7 XL. It's not a new case by any means, but it's compatible with high-end hardware, fits many storage drives, and hopefully won't be too restricted when it comes to airflow.

Worst case scenario, we'll drill some holes in the front and get that cheese grater aesthetic back. For cooling, we opted for an NZXT Kraken 360 because, well, we had mounting hardware and with this triple radiator, it could handle our 32 CPU cores at full load, at least at their default speeds. The system supports overclocking, but it's still not something we would recommend for a professional machine in a production environment. Now, as you look at this lovely little montage of our cooler installation, I'd like you to remember when I said that this motherboard has the PCIe slot spacing we needed.

This is because for our build, we used not one, but two RTX 4090 Supreme cards from MSI. Yes, my friends, Apple is what it took to make NVIDIA's price finally seem so reasonable that you can only put two on it. However, there is a twist. The most attentive of you will have noticed that one of my cards is air-cooled and the other is water-cooled. That, my friends, is because we couldn't find any motherboard and case combination that could accommodate two air-cooled 4090s. And then, well, when we wanted two of the liquid-cooled ones, we discovered, oh my God, damn, the AI ​​rushed to China.

There is now a shortage of 4090. So we asked our trusty brother, Ryan, from the LTT shop support team, if we could borrow his air-cooled variant, and used the only remaining liquid-cooled variant. That way, we have two identical cards, but with slightly different hats. Now, since the shortage, the prices on these have gone up quite a bit, but I still think we'll end up looking pretty good in comparison. Let me take care of that. Anyway, to fuel this mess, we chose the Silverstone Hela 2050R Platinum, or SST-HA2050R-PM for short. It costs a whopping $670, which only seems like a bad deal until you compare it to the Mac Pro.

Ah. Reasonable. Now that the build is finished, all we have to do is turn it on and run some benchmark tests. Now, our final price, not too far off, but for fun, we will include results with both GPUs and also with a single GPU because a little bird told me, a bird named Elijah, that he will still win even with just one GPU. Yes. Good job, bird. Spoiler alert. I stuttered. I'm sorry. I messed up the shot. No, I loved it. It was great. I had to please cut myself and make me look good. Can you freeze the frame?

Cut around it. Put me on a beach. Know? Yes Yes Yes Yes. How to make myself look good. Give him a mustache like Tom Selleck and say: Don't you know who Tom Selleck is? He is the Seleckian. What does that mean? I couldn't help but notice Elijah. We've had a pretty bad start here. Our system didn't even boot. Error code zero D. Do you think you have seen low PP power? That's zero PP energy. And they are expelled. Ah, finally. PC. Hurrah. But which is faster? Classroom. And go. Wait. That's what? Is it F12? I don't know.

I don't know. Is there a hotkey for rendering? Yes. Oh, I didn't know that. It's F12. There you go. Go. I had a head start. F12 on a Mac. What is this? Command option F12. Oh, I don't know. I was just guessing. I give up. If anyone should have had the advantage, it should have been you. Revelation. You're done? Not me. Oh no, it's still going on. Yes. Although I go much faster than you. Oh, wow. Yes you are. Alright, I'm done. I'm not even halfway there. You started late. You started late. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

We'll let it warm up, we'll catch up, you know. I started like five seconds after you. Although so silent. It seems like he's barely doing anything. Wait. Since we're still waiting for the Mac anyway, why not run an intensive GPU test and see if they spin up? Yes, sure. We will run Cinebench. We will see what it can do, what results it can give us. Oh, you're done. I finished? Yes. Total Time. Oh, 246 was the final result. Yvonne is very proud of me. Here we go. Boom. It is starting. Oh hey, you should run it on Mac too.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. GPU startup. Hey, my fans are spinning. It's definitely louder. It is? Yes. No, I mean louder than the Mac. Like this thing is silent. Yeah. I mean, that's what happens when you connect a Raspberry Pi to a heatsink this size. It is not a Raspberry Pi. It is a powerful computer. It's an Apple Pi. Yes, don't feel bad. Your computer is really powerful. Good Guy. Well, this is represented several times. We're getting around 65,000 points, give or take. He's doing it over and over again. Preparing? It hasn't even started. Let's run it like four times.

Remember the first generation, when Apple was everything, our GPU was like, mm, yeah, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. And Nvidia says: what are you talking about? Well, that was the 3090, if I remember correctly, not the 4090, but still. He's done it several times while trying to finish this one. It's crazy how he crushes it. There you go, one finally finished. 9,500 points. We are more than six times that. What was our price difference? Give or take a few hundred dollars depending on parts sales. But the final cut, the ecosystem. I get my Windows phone back. Please bring it back.

Dozens of people are very angry right now. Is the difference in noise enough to make you prefer to buy the Mac instead of this one? No, this is still a really quiet machine. Although we should put the side panel in to be fair. Oh yeah. The Apple side panel kit in perfect condition. Kids don't say that anymore. How would you know? You are old now. However, let's do the CPU version of Cinebench first before ruling this out completely. And they leave, walking out the door with force. We don't have anyone. Nobody comes out the door strong.

Wait a second. Is this really closer? Yes. This can be a competition. Ah OK. Oh, PC Pro 2 is picking up speed. He's pulling ahead in the first corner. So I'm going to stop that now. Yes, please do it. Yeah. This one kind of had a moment where I thought, hey. Yes. Hey. Yes. No. Hey, yes. That? Because you said, hey, yeah, it's a song. Oh, I don't understand. Do we have scores yet? Yes. 3,000, 2,000. Oh, this one isn't even finished yet. Oh, does it give preliminary scores? Yes, I think it is an estimate of what it will be.

Oh, okay, well. Although it is almost finished, or halfway done, it is the second. And this one is not over, it is the first. It took a while to get going. Yes, here we go. Final scores. 3,000 and change. 1,900 and change. Wow. Wow. That's like 50% faster on the CPU. Apple Silicon has been a big win for them in the mobile space. Mac mini. Yes. Super cool machine. The studio too. Because we're not, we're just bashing this one because it's the same spec, but what is it? $3,400 we said. Basically, you're paying $3,500 for a fancy case and some PCIe slots.

You don't even have expandable RAM like before. And that is the problem. We like silicon for its efficiency. And know. We love silicon. I can not say that. Apple silicon. Oh, we love Apple. Silicone. That? Nobody is talking about that. They are different. That? Silicon. If is oneelement. Well. Silicone is a compound that contains silicon. So they are equal. No, that's like saying that water is the same as oxygen because it contains oxygen. Now I understand. We got there, ladies and gentlemen. For LOL games? Sure. Lets play a game. So CS2. Counter-Strike 2 is. Oh, it goes very fast.

Yes, it's pretty fast. How fast could you download the game? Delete it and reinstall it. Alright. Manage. Uninstall. Here we go. 1.5. 1.6. Will Mac win the game download benchmark? Oh, are we over it? Three. Yes, we passed it. Well, we beat it by 3.1. One thing I will say is that it is a W, which starts up much faster. Yes. That was also a problem we had with the last Mac Pro Killer: it took a while to boot. PC workstation platforms tend to be poorly optimized. But hey, you can download games at 3.4 gigabits per second compared to 2.8. Wait, Counter-Strike 2 isn't available for Mac?

Have you checked? It is not available for Mac. So it is trying to get you to start it. Ah, for crying out loud. I didn't even realize that. Okay, Rocket League. Rocket League is also not launching. Are you sure this is so? Does not work on the M Silicon. Well, were you just trying to make it clear that nothing works? Or were we supposed to compare them? I was trying to make it clear that it is very difficult. There are very select games that, you know, you can play or not play whatever you want. Were you?

Or did you think they worked? I was totally doing it on purpose. It is one of my favorites. Oh. Boomer sound enabled. Okay, very nice. Sound Boomer is not a real thing. What speaker is that? Is it just playing through the speaker? That sounds like it, huh? Is that a thing? I didn't know that was something I could do. Well, where is your PC Pro's built-in speaker? Good. I guess you have me on that. Alright, I don't have a speaker built into my computer. To be clear, Linux is a part of... Windows is a part of...

So when I say that macOS is sometimes problematic too, don't get upset. You know, why can't I write now? You know, I'm clicking this box. I am highlighting this text. It's not that my keyboard doesn't work. Oh, look, searchlight. Oh God. Wait, I think I figured it out. Receiving keystrokes. Dusk would like to receive keystrokes from any application. Do you like clicking? No. Is that what you're asking? So you want access to the keyboard for gaming? I'm tired of trying to open a stupid game. Oh, wow. This mouse is really slow. Imagine the bottom charging port not being the worst.

Hey, wave two. Shotgun, let's go. I mean, it seems kind of soft. I can't tell how you feel about the mouse though. Does it feel rubbery? Oh no. Well the mouse is terrible, but the actual game is fine. Well. Yes, it is working very well. Yeah, so why don't I have an FPS counter? Silly question. Did you really enable it? I don't know. Okay, I'll tell you what. Elijah will find at least one game that works for both of them. We'll have a little graph here, but spoiler alert, it won't be pretty because the raw power of the GPUs in the PC Pro 2 is much higher.

And remember that in games we can't even use both because NVIDIA no longer supports NVLink or SLI on consumer cards. Jerks. Well, Linus, we hear you. Apple is expensive and none of its products are good. But that's not what I'm saying. There are some arguments, strong arguments in favor of many of Apple's products. There's the power and portability of the MacBook, the efficiency of the Mac Studio or my favorite, the Mac Mini. That thing is a powerhouse. Or the comfort of AirPods, which I use daily. It's just that the Mac Pro is so bad that Apple will almost certainly bottle it up, by which I don't mean turn it into a can again.

I remember that. I mean, suspend it. I mean, even the most ardent Apple defenders are starting to realize that Apple's pricing, especially with Halo products like this, no longer makes any sense. If you search for the M2 Ultra Mac Pro, almost every article or video comes to the same conclusion. It is foolish. There are some things it does well. I mean, like Mac Studio because it's the exact same machine. Single-core performance was on par or even better than our Pro 2 PC at times. And its efficiency is outstanding. I think your overall power consumption is closer to one of these GPUs than this entire system.

But for the price of this, you can get a fully equipped Mac Studio for your home office and still have enough money to buy a refurbished MacBook Pro M2 Max from Apple's certified refurbished store. Or if all that sounds like a bad idea to you, you can buy this fancy Segway. Now with $700 reels for our sponsor. Earth News. They want to change the way we interact with the news by helping us better understand media biases and free ourselves from them. Because while the Internet has connected us more than ever, it's particularly good at connecting us with people and news we already agree with.

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It's time we had a smarter way to read the news. Go to ground.news.linus or click the link below and you can get 40% off your unlimited access plan today. If you enjoyed this video, go back and watch the first time we did this. That one cost over $30,000 and really wasn't even a clear winner. Then I do not know. Hey, at least Apple has reduced the price since then.