New Mac Pro with Pro Display XDR Might End Up Costing $50,000

Apple has officially unveiled a new Mac Pro during the WWDC 2019 yesterday with a staring price of $5,999 for the base option that arrives with an 8-core Intel Xeon processor, 32GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. 

The price is already steep to begin with, for the most minimal specs, so it begs the question: how much would a high-end new Mac Pro actually get to cost if one would choose to opt in for all the good stuff?

The answer is that even almost $34,000 barely scratches the surface in terms of specs – if you would want to add in a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor, 1.5TB of RAM 4TB of SSD storage and four AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Dupa GPUs, you can expect the price to go up to around $45,000. 

Apple also launched a new high-end reference-grade LCD HDR display alongside the MacPro, dubbed the Pro Display XDR, which you’d need if you would really want to get the best out of your Mac Pro, though it jacks up the price quite a bit, all by itself. 

It measures 32 inches and has a 6016 x 3384 6K native resolution with 20 million pixels. It’s around 40% larger than the iMac 5K display and supports P3 wide color. The design allows it to keep up 1000 nits of brightness indefinitely and up to 1600 nits of peak brightness. 

Its glass comes with anti-reflective coating but the users can opt in for a matter option if they need it, am option that they’d also have to pay extra for, of course. 

It can generate extreme brightness thanks to an array of blue LEDs that are individually calibrated thanks to an algorithm that can modulate each on of them based on the content, custom lenses and reflectors shape in order to control the light. 

Of course, that produces a lot of heat and, according to Apple, it would be impossible for a typical system to keep up with it for more than a few minutes. So the company chose to turn the back pattern of the display into a heat sink that can extract the heat from the LEDs. 

Other specs for the display include a Thunderbolt 3 one-cable connectivity and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The price for the Pro Display XDR starts at $5,000 but it’s worth mentioning that the display doesn’t come with the optional stand or the nano-textured glass, both of which round up to $1,000 each. If you want the true high end version of the display, then you’d have to cash out $7,000. 

Opt in for a mouse and keyboard, Twin AMD Radeon Pro Vega II GPUs that can cost up to $12,000 for the quad-GPU setup, you’ll easily go up to no less than $50,000. 

Apple also announced an Afterburner card as an optional accessory but no price was mentioned for it just yet. 

For $50,000, any creative type will get all the firepower they need – that is if they can even ever afford it to begin with.