Apple has put the most powerful configuration of the new Mac Studio on sale in its store: the M5 Ultra chip with 512GB of unified memory, starting at $22,299. It is aimed at people who want to run large AI models directly on their desk without relying on the cloud.
The price is that of the US model and sits well above the base Mac Studio, which early announcements put at $2,499. The jump is steep and depends almost entirely on memory: with 512GB, the machine can host language models that would otherwise need a dedicated server.
What the 512GB configuration offers
Unified memory is shared between processor, graphics and AI accelerators, so a model loaded into RAM is immediately accessible to all components. This is what makes the Mac Studio interesting for local inference: models do not have to be split across several cards.
Wired's review, published at the end of September, describes the machine as able to run frontier-level models on the desk and to deliver unprecedented AI and gaming performance on Mac. It praises the small size and the wealth of ports, which support up to four 5K monitors. The downside is heat: according to the same review, the machine can get very hot.
The more affordable configurations
Apple's site also lists other combinations, with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips and smaller memory options. One detail needs flagging: the address of one of the Mac Studio pages carries the code of a configuration with 30 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores and 96GB of memory, not the 512GB advertised. The information comes from the link structure rather than the price shown on the page, so it should be checked on the product listing.
The 512GB option had already been anticipated in October by mezha.net, which reported a starting price of $22,299 for the M5 Ultra model. The price is consistent with what Apple publishes.
Context: local AI and competition
The Mac Studio with M5 Ultra fits into Apple's strategy of bringing AI out of the cloud. On AlexTech we covered how the M5 Ultra improved prompt processing times over the previous generation, but with higher power draw and temperatures. The same chip was at the centre of the first 3D rendering benchmarks, where it came close to high-end gaming graphics cards.
In terms of competition, HP has set the price of a laptop with 192GB of unified memory at $7,449, while Lenovo and other mini PC makers target the same users looking for AI power locally. A direct comparison is hard, however: the Mac Studio's memory is larger and the platform is different.
Who it is for
A price of $22,299 is not aimed at the general public. The model is for developers, researchers and professional studios that need to run very large models locally, for reasons of recurring cost, privacy or latency. For those with more modest needs, the lower-memory configurations remain the entry point to the line.
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