What's Inside the 2019 Mac Pro? Complete Disassembly and Analysis

Finally here is the new cheese grater that can no longer innovate, my ass comes to the new Mac Pro. You've probably already seen many unboxings of this on YouTube, but this is not an unboxing because why take it out of the box when you can take the box this is a revelation let's take this apart and see

what

's inside the box assembled in the United States of America it's already a little unusual because there's a handle on the top where you can turn it and open the machine that's not something the Most of us Apple users are used to including on other Apple Pro products like the iMac Pro, but turn this handle if you can and you'll see that the case actually rises a bit above the frame. a little disappointed, it's kind of a rough rotation, it doesn't feel as good as I'd hoped, but the case pops right up and you're presented with the computer, that's the back, this is the front and as you can see, We got the base model, the six thousand dollar version, there's a reason we got that and I'll explain that later in this video and later in the week, but if we go back to the main chassis here, there's really only one thing: it's nice.

Silly little aluminum case, you'll notice there are no dust filters. Interestingly, Apple said they didn't need them, they've left it on the record, so we'll see if that holds up and then you'll notice there are two Thunderbolts. three ports, but they are not actually in this part of the chassis, they are mounted inside the frame. You'll also notice that there's a power button and that's something that communicates to the main case through this little copper connector right here. as well as these four pogo pins that are on the case itself, so if the iMac or Mac Pro case is not closed, the machine won't turn on, so I'm going to need these pogo pins that illuminate the power indicator. to turn on the machine and then you have your two Thunderbolt three ports right there, other than that I guess we're starting to look at things that you can actually replace pretty easily if there's something that Apple has allowed end users to replace. in the past, your memory or RAM and Mac Pro are no exception, they are covered by these two little ones you might wonder why they are there and the answer is actually quite simple: cooling through these small holes, cold air is sucked into The computer case along with the main compartment has large intake fans and then all the hot air from the entire system is expelled by this blower style fan at the back of the case so they help direct the airflow , but if you need to access the memory slots, you simply pull this little latch and this little door opens, which you can remove and reveal one of the 12 memory slots.

Now the 12 memory slots can be filled with all the CPU models that Apple allows you to configure your computer. I asked why I have the base. model, I only have four dimmers of 8 gigs each, a pretty low spec, but you can add more memory and Apple even shows you how to do it so you can put them in the proper channel settings on the back of these little covers. which is pretty cool, their own website also tells you how to mix and match memory sizes, if you choose to do that, it was pretty cool, it's 29.33 megahertz memory, which is pretty advanced, that's actually the clock speed faster than these Supports Intel It is accessible to the user, but technically from a physical level.

It's the SSD you can find there right now. I only have one of them. If you have a larger setup you will find that the drives are in raid 0 and therefore very, very, very fast and these are the exact same SSDs that are inside the iMac Pro now, the reason I say that they are not user accessible it is because while I can access and delete them, they are keyed, they are not soldered, they are linked to the t2 chip and authenticated specifically on this machine. What that means is that if I go on eBay and find an old iMac Pro SSD, it won't work.

The only way to upgrade and replace these SSDs is directly through an Apple Authorized Service Provider, which is actually quite annoying, but I have a pretty sneaky idea. If you suspect you'll be able to upgrade the storage on your own using these SATA ports and PCIe slots inside the case, stay tuned for this and you might want to subscribe so we can check it out later this week, now that this main compartment is really where things get exciting because at the end of the day this is an open modular PC, which is a strange thing, but a modular PC, however, is strange in part because there are PCIe slots, but not any number of eight PCIe slots, which is more than double the standard.

ATX motherboard in the PC realm, this is a huge motherboard with tons of expansion capabilities, one of the slots is pre-populated and this will be the case on all models with Apple's strange IO card, so in This card will have two USB a. ports two Thunderbolt ports three and a headphone jack, then at the bottom of the case you have two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports built into the motherboard, right next to the power supply and then above that any GPU that configure from Apple and any other PCI slots you now decide to add on your own. What's unusual and a little interesting about the way Apple did this is that it actually encourages users to add their own cards and modify them, so Apple provides numbers on how to add and remove cards from its cards. . chassis now in classic Apple style, this is made very very well, there are captive thumb screws so you don't have to worry about twisting or losing things, it comes out nice and easy and this is really where I think things are quite specials.

Latch is not only cool because of the way it sounds, get this, it's not just because of that, but also because of the way it works on a standard graphics card or any PCIe device on a PC. You have this little hook here. and this hook is there to stay attached to the PCIe slot inside your motherboard. Now on the PC they have these little shoes that come on top, but the problem with these shoes is that if you are in a very tight computer case or if you have a bunch of other cards on top of it or nearby, it is often very difficult to access to these little shoes to free up your PC, a device or a graphics card from your computer, it must look like Apple thought of that because this change is a master version for all PCIe cards and instead of latching from the motherboard, it simply uses These little hooks above to hook onto graphics cards or PCA devices.

It's so Apple, I mean, it's not really something inherently unique or good, it's unique, I don't know. It's special, it's not that advanced a system, but it's just one of those things that only Apple would have thought of looking to standardize everything, why don't we do it better? And they did it. This slot is amazing and I want all my PCs in the future to have it, I don't see that happening, although now let's move on to the other strange innovation in these machines, so let's unlock that I could hit that switch all day, that's cool, we have this little plate here that locks this side of the cards, you might be wondering this side of the cards and yes, by the way, these are all grub screws, that's because behind this plate are the MPX modules, now on a card standard graphics card has a PCI B slot than PCIe via headers or external power connectors.

Now Apple, in a surprising turn of events, has admitted it. This is an open standard, so if you want to use your own GPUs you may need to purchase an $80 Belkin cable kit that allows you to use these power headers on the motherboard, but there are Molex power add-ons that seem really little ones. PCIe connectors that allow you to supply power to external graphics cards and other PC devices if you need power, which is really awesome, but if you're using Apple GPUs, like most of us, let's throw this one in you're ready, so here there is the number 4 that pushes this, this little lever comes out, oh it's a magnetic lever, it's very designed but it's so amazing and if you pull it, the card releases, you can pull it right out and you'll see that our old Radeon 5 ATX graphics card It looks pretty strange. and that's because here you have your standard PCIe x16 and then here you have your MPX which is used for external power and then in the case of some of the higher end GPUs that Apple has, like the dual Vega 2 cards, these they are actually used. for data as well as I'm away which is pretty unique and great this thing is very heavy because it's just a big massive heatsink on top of the GPU there is no active cooling on this GPU unlike basically all the others. the graphics card or graphics card available on the market, which means that this should really run silently like the rest of the computer if you look at the PCIe slots, the MPX slots themselves, there are 2 MPX slots, some of the cards graphics that Apple sells our double height because they get very hot because they are literally GPU arrays on the same card, they need a lot of cooling, so they will actually be double height and will cover one or two of these slots depending on your configuration, but if you have 5 standard ATX or a regular GPU, technically you'll have access to seven because this I/O card will probably stay in the PCI slots, which is really cool, let's talk about the power supply because it's also removable and it's also

complete

ly Well, yeah I can find this here, there is a screw which is a bit annoying, it is

complete

ly replaceable by the end user and it is completely sealed which is good.

The iMac Pro and iMac have large open, exposed power supplies that are very dangerous if you can't find them. I don't know

what

you are doing, but this is not the case. It slides out and allows you to remove the power supply if it ever fails. This 1000+ watt 80+ Platinum power supply is available on all Mac Pro models and that's one thing that's important to keep in mind besides the CPU GPU Ram and another thing: what was SSD, it's all upgrade from the user or should I say everything is standard so whether you buy the six thousand dollar macro or the $52,000 Mac Pro, all the hardware except those four components CPU GPU Ram and storage are exactly the same thousand dollar power supply watts and that's really cool.

Another interesting thing is that it has a port for ventilation and presumably for cooling and there is a large gasket that connects it to this left compartment, right where the fan is. The style of the cooler is so that all the heat from the power supply is absorbed out of the power supply and exhausted by the back of the case without ever heating this inner compartment because it is a gasket, that is a really cool design , it has its power connector. here, this PC looks good, pretty empty, but we can still remove more, not technically based on what Apple suggests users do, but when have we done what Apple suggests users do?

Let's stick with the active cooling and the Mac Pro is very unusual in that at least if you're used to building PCs instead of using active fans on your CPU cooler and on your GPU everything is passive except for the three intake fans on the front and the exhaust fan in the back, now these things are connected with six. screws there's one here in the corner there's two here at the top and then there's three at the back which are right here here and oh right here once you've found these six strange screws seemingly placed at random you can pull the fans straight out of the case maybe there we go and they slide out now the nice thing about them is they are a snap fit there are no cables or connectors you have to worry about you just see them right there there and there Now, the actual design of the fan is really unique and look.

I'm not a thermal engineer so I couldn't explain why they did this, but I guess part of the reason the fans were designed the way they are is that the blades don't actually run against the shroud at all times. The full cover rotates is to reduce the type of air vortex where you have parts that rotate very quickly and that are rigid next to areas that do not make any noise. Generally, among the PC crowd, you'll know that the less severe the stroller, the fan. profile, the quieter they are and I think Apple just mitigates this completely by making the entire fan shroud rotate around the chassis.

It's a strange design, but it's really quiet and these things, in part probably because of how thick they are, bring in a lot of air. Throughthe case and ejecting the back, you put your hand on the back even where it's not expelling air and there's a big draft and the computer is basically silent but still, the question is: can it keep all this hardware cool ? and under its thermal limitations I don't know, but from a silent point of view it passes the test. I've been trying to decide the best way to remove the CPU cooler to get to the CPU and in my search I discovered this, what is this?

It looks like another RAM module, well it's not, if you pull this thing it's very scary, you pull it very firmly, you can pull it straight out generally and what will be revealed is none other than a set of speakers. Fourth Mac Pro, yes, Mac Pro has a speaker and a subwoofer I don't know if it's there many people said this the Mac Mini has a speaker two very, very small one in people say oh well, it's for boots I know not, there's no Mac OS boot chime anymore, so this is really just for listening to some good tunes through your $6,000 Mac Pro speaker with the speaker fine, so presumably this is the socket backplate or the Mac equivalent, The thing is that they are always a little scary because you can slightly misalign the chip when reinserting it, but this time I found something that I had not seen on any previous Mac and that is that behind this little cover for the CPU cooler there are two holes for very, very deep screws that house t15 Torx screws at the bottom.

Now I have a screwdriver that was too big for this hole, it was the only one I had, so bear with me, who needs the paint on the inside of those holes, I mean it doesn't affect the cooling, let's loosen it up and see if we can take out this refrigerator. and get to the chip underneath, unfortunately there is no repair guide on this and that is really the problem with this Mac Pro, most of it as you can see is user, it is user accessible, you can remove this stuff without much difficulty , but Apple's guides and instructions really only support replacing RAM and PSU and graphics cards beyond that, you're basically expected to be on your own, that's a bit unfortunate with a machine that's so easily accessible and With an architecture meant to serve professionals, why not let the professionals get it? what they want and we provide them with full service manuals and instruction manuals, there you have it, we have our rugged refrigerator to show up, it's basically the LTT Black Edition, the Noctua, what's that called NH 15?

It's a very robust cooler and in fact you can see that there are eight heat pipes across this chip, so this is a very robust and probably overkill cooling solution for this eight core chip that we have, but it will definitely be useful for the 24 and 28 core variants and there is the CPU, let's take a closer look. Instead of a traditional, heavy-duty plug door that you would find on a PC, we have this cable system which I've actually seen in some server installations before, so Apple wasn't the first to invent it, but if you can get it done then we have access to the chip itself and holy shit this thing is a monster, this is probably the largest and least efficient eight core chip.

Your efforts now let's look at the actual model number because the entire Intel Xeon w line is a bit strange. Apple seems to have chips that are not available to other manufacturers and also chips that Intel doesn't even have listed on their own site. Well, it looks like this chip is Intel w3 2 to 3. The Intel Xeon line has eight core options. This is the lower end. the two are near the bottom of the barrel and Intel this chip or others, so you should basically be able to drag and drop any of the chips supported by this chipset into the Mac Pro and not have any other problems.

I did this with our Mac Pro and it worked great. Next, we have something that surprises me. We're at the back of the machine again and we've got this pretty substantial heatsink and I thought surely underneath there must be the Intel chipset for this CPU, but that's actually not the case. It is marked on the front of the motherboard, but when you do a web search. Look it up, not much information appears. I'm assuming it's a PCIe switch for your devices or a power controller, since all external power is routed through the motherboard instead of being handled directly by the power supply unit.

It's interesting though, there's not much left inside this machine, all we're left with is this little door cover and the purpose of this is pretty simple: it's covered by these very small T-50 torques, which is a snap-fit ​​bracket for these ribbon connectors and these ribbon connectors just go to our little module that contains the three Thunderbolt ports as well as the power LED and the power button, so that's all the bandwidth for those that are flush mounted, you can pry them up with a spudger and that's basically it, we just have to remove the motherboard, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Mac Pro

2019

.

There is a little bit of flex in that motherboard, in part because the motherboard is gigantic. I've seen many desktop PCs in my time and none as big as the motherboard here. This is actually the size of a server motherboard. It's huge, not only because of the PCI Ace 8 slots, but because all power is controlled through the board. Plus, it's quite beautiful and there are a number of interesting chips you might want to use. Take a look at what's behind this little heatsink. I assume there are multiple CPU VRMs. This doesn't seem like a good way to distribute heat, but I don't know, I guess so.

Apple has never really focused on VRM cooling but they're all down here, you'll notice there's an Apple t2 chip so obviously this is the SSD controller and it also handles some of the Thunderbolt performance, handles boot security and a number of other things that you have on your Intel C. 621 right here, this is obviously the motherboard chipset next to the motherboard CMOS battery, you have the power headers that we talked about before, there are two here down to up here and then one at the top and then here you have two SATA ports that are easily accessible inside the case, which is great, but unfortunately it also has to be said that it is on when running a hard drive or an SSD and it uses this weird proprietary 10-pin connector that looks like at least a recording point that Apple only sells.

Pegasus hard drive caddy insert which costs $400, there is also a USB 2.0 header and this is for many Pro applications like avid and other pro workflow applications that require a hardware or lice serialized key and it is instead of having that hanging and hanging off the back of your computer, you can just insert it here and forget about it in the back. Well, there isn't much. We have that chipset we talked about earlier that needs to be actively cooled again. I'm not really sure what this is. I fixed it. I don't know either, they call it PC icon driver and that's probably accurate.

I'm also hoping it's a power controller since it's actively cooled and a couple of other little things here, these are their 2a quanta 10 Gigabit Ethernet LAN chips. which need to be cooled, they are passively cooled through the case frame and then you have your 12 RAM slots here and other than that that's basically all that's important on the motherboard, it's a big motherboard, but it's better than be given. the high price of this machine Apple somewhat hilariously announced during the presentation that this computer would be available with wheels, not a bad idea for a computer that is so heavy, but when the order page went up people discovered that the wheels They cost $400.

Obviously you didn't buy them, I'm sure a lot of people didn't, but what's even crazier is that if you didn't buy the $400 wheels when you bought the computer, you would have to send them to Apple if you ever decided to upgrade your computer. wheels, most people including myself thought this meant that the entire frame was created with wheels or without wheels and that a complete computer

disassembly

would be required, that is not the case, there is only a four hex screw millimeters that you can remove yourself and then pull off the foot. These are definitely user removable and now I have the entire computer disassembled.

If you had it all together, you could still do it. There is enough clearance on a regular hex wrench, but it's a little fiddly, but the feet are removable. You can bet I hope I can put this back together. This machine is absolutely over-engineered to give you a good example of this. This is a high-end server PCIe support cover. In fact, it was a $30,000 server a couple of years ago. it's just stamped steel and look at this Benz immediately, the one Apple uses is milled aluminum, it weighs half as much as this thing and I can't get it to bend even barely after an extraordinary amount of pressure, it's absolutely absurd because when you look at the sum of parts, the price of this machine is starting to make a little more sense now.

I'm not saying it's a good value. I'm not saying that if you're going to spend six grand like me, you should get it back. You probably shouldn't and you'd probably be better served with an iMac Pro. I'll talk about that in a future video coming soon. Apple charges more to upgrade the CPU than Intel recommends retailers charge for a new one. Rama remains extraordinarily expensive. It's not a cheap computer and it's not a great value, but if you need a Mac Pro, a high-end one, not only is it a decent twenty thousand thirty thousand fifty thousand dollar computer, but it's really great, folks, that's all for me.

If you enjoyed this video, give it a like, if not, that other button seems to work fine too. We have some crazy things going on as this thing goes to pieces. We have some crazy videos planned for this machine, assuming I can get it back together. Stay tuned and subscribe and as always, stay stylish, see you later friends.