Mac Pro Build-to-Order Upgrade Pricing Revealed

mac_pro_2013Late last week, we noted that Apple's business sales staff have been offering customers price quotes for build-to-order configurations of the new Mac Pro, providing the first glimpse at what these machines will cost beyond the $2999/$3999 base configurations shown on Apple's site.

Since our initial report, we've heard from a few other business customers who received price quotes, and that information has helped us to piece together what we expect retail pricing to be for the various upgrades. Due to varying discounts for business customers included in the quotes and in some cases currency conversions that we have attempted to take into account, we consider our listed prices to be estimates, but they should be very close to Apple's retail pricing for U.S. customers.

For upgrades beyond the $3999 high-end stock configuration, here is our estimated pricing (all prices relative to the stock model):

CPU (Stock: 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5)
- 3.0GHz 8-core: +$1500
- 2.7GHz 12-core: +$3000

Graphics (Stock: Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5)
- Dual AMD FirePro D700 with 6 GB GDDR5: +$600

RAM (Stock: 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC - 4x4GB)
- 32GB (4x8GB): +$400
- 64GB (4x16GB): +$1600

Flash Storage (Stock: 256GB PCIe-based)
- 512GB: +$300
- 1TB: +$800

As an example, for a customer looking to buy an 8-core Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the machine would cost $3999 base + $1500 processor upgrade + $400 RAM upgrade + $300 storage upgrade, yielding a total price of $6199.

At the lower end, Apple's $2999 base Mac Pro model carries a quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12 GB of RAM, and dual AMD FireCore D300 graphics, compared to the $3999 high-end stock configuration with 6-core processor, 16 GB of RAM, and D500 graphics.

We have not seen any exact breakdowns of how much each of those changes contributes to the overall $1000 price difference between stock configurations, but expect roughly half of the price difference to be represented by the processor upgrade, a somewhat smaller amount for the graphics upgrade, and a relatively nominal amount in the range of $100 for the bump in RAM.

The new Mac Pro remains scheduled to launch sometime this month, but Apple has yet to announce an exact date for either initial orders or availability.

Related Roundup: Mac Pro
Buyer's Guide: Mac Pro (Neutral)
Related Forum: Mac Pro

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Top Rated Comments

rosalindavenue Avatar
147 months ago
Meanwhile I'm agonizing over $300 bucks on storage and RAM for a macbook air. Not even a Mac Pro rounding error.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lesser Evets Avatar
147 months ago
I'll take a dozen of the ones in black and… do you have a half-dozen in teal?

WHAT?? NO TEAL?!?

Cancel my order.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mozumder Avatar
147 months ago
:eek: Wow, expected it to be less.
Not me. This is about right price for workstations, and similar to prices of previous Mac Pros and other workstation vendors like HP.

Remember, these use Xeon-class CPUs - ECC memory, ECC cache, etc.. They're high reliability devices to protect against soft bit errors. These aren't desktop CPUs at all.

I still use my old PowerMac G5 from 12 years ago.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macs4nw Avatar
147 months ago
I believe the concept is forward looking, but let's put these machines through their paces, and we'll let the pros decide if we have a winner on our hands.

4k monitors please.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Heltik Avatar
147 months ago
As a "prosumer" this really takes the MacPro out of range. I wonder how much of this price is a result of "made in America".
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Nunyabinez Avatar
147 months ago
I priced out buying the processor, graphics, RAM, and storage from the base model separately and came up with roughly $2600. Even if those specs are for the $4,000 configuration, that's not a bad markup, considering everything else that goes into it.

I think most of the people who are complaining about the price don't really have a grasp on what the actual components are that go into these bad boys. I had a friend show me how he could build a comparable machine for much less and he chose an i7 processor and standard RAM modules, etc.

I haven't heard many true pros balk at the price, because they understand what is in this and the differences between workstation quality components and standard desktop parts.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)