It's funny to read about folks on HN where the audience is likely in the top eschelons of earning percentiles complain about a bespoke vertically integrated solution like the Apple computers. Sure you can build a bespoke, quiet, watercooled or aircooled, system for a fraction of the Mac Studio but that's not the audience the thing was designed to target. Its existence does not prevent one from doing just that, finding parts, and building a pc oneself. This is for folks that need OSX, that like the build quality, and want ARM performance without the hassle. :Shrug:

> It's funny to read about folks on HN where the audience is likely in the top eschelons of earning percentiles complain about a bespoke vertically integrated solution like the Apple computers.

Just because you can afford an absurd $4000-8000 Apple computer doesn't mean you want to waste your money on it. I have a finite amount of money and choose to spend it on other things.

Apple is fine for like, a $1500 laptop. The macbook air is a fine product.

Not for an actual workstation.

Depends on how much you value the exclusive[1] ability to run OSX.

[1] hackintoshes need not apply.

Or you can buy one off the shelf from, say, Puget Systems.

They're not vertically integrated, they're sourcing and assembling the same parts you and I could get (and some we can't: they have graphics cards in stock!)

That's for folks that don't need OSX, that like build quality in the form of sturdy, repairable, maintainable tools rather than glossy but glued-together disposable ones, and want Ryzen or Intel performance that will beat a Mac Studio without the hassle.

The 28-core Xeon W-3275M is similar or even slightly better than either the 5950X or 12900KS on multicore workloads, so it won't change the picture much. Overall, M1 Ultra CPU is comparable to a Zen3 32-core Threadripper if you aggregate over various workloads, with the difference that the Ultra is a more flexible architecture and thus will be more capable in mixed scenarios.

Edit: I'd say that the Ultra is a much better bang for your buck than the Threadripper, unless you absolutely need humongous amounts of RAM or macOS does not work for you.

The other difference is that the M1 Ultra uses less than one quarter the power.

Over a few years of usage, that cost is not insignificant, especially if you are using air conditioning part or all of the year.

So far, Apple is the only vendor that makes really pragmatic hardware with true linear scaling. Cache sizes, RAM, power consumption, compute cluster configurations — everything makes sense and everything is balanced. It's a really refreshing take compared to the mainstream PC industry that was predominantly relying on increasing power consumption to improve performance ein the recent years (AMD being a noteworthy exception, but they are struggling too).

Of course, the argument can be made — and it is not without merit — that power consumption is secondary to performance for a power or professional user. But the low power consumption of M1 series allows Apple to deliver pretty much unprecedented performance for the given size. Ultra offers performance of large workstation tower in more compact form factor than the smallest HTPC. My M1 Max 16" has the performance of a large workstation laptop with the portability and battery life of an ultrabook — and I can use all that performance while working untethered. It's quite interesting to see all these benchmarks where folks show that the latest ALD laptops can marginally outperform the M1 Pro/Max on the desk, under ideal conditions, while in reality the performance will plummet really fast when you actually want to be mobile. In the meantime I enjoy my desktop-level build times while working on my sofa or on the train.

Low power consumption is so important to me, because the best thing about my M1 over my previous x86 MBP is that it doesn't overheat and melt down and freeze up all the time, rendering all that expensive CPU and GPU power and memory and pixels and other hardware completely useless.

I've had to take frozen peas out of the freezer and rub them desperately against the bottom of my x86 MBP to quickly cool it down enough to use, in order to make important Zoom meetings on time. It totally ruins the peas, and can't be good for the computer!

Even if they were both the same speed, it would still be so much better, just because of how cool it runs. How fast and long it runs on batteries is just icing on the cake of not getting fucked by speedstep's "kernel_task % CPU 798.6" all the time.

Sure, but how many watts of power would those beasts need?

As much as it needs. My time is worth a lot more.

You basically just said, "I don't care about the planet or any of the people that live on it, as long as I can get my work done slightly faster".

The power requirements of the machine you describe would easily be more than double that of the Mac, but you probably aren't getting anywhere close to double the performance.

No one who cares about the environment should buy a Mac, where you can't upgrade anything and the entire machine is e-waste when a single component gives up the ghost. I like Macs and the Apple Silicon CPUs but let's be honest here.

No one just throws away a perfectly functioning, fully supported Mac. They hold their value well enough that an “upgrade” is selling your old computer and buying a new one.

Besides, if you care about performance, you’re going to want to do more than just replace the RAM

You completely ignored the part of the sentence where I said "when... a single component gives up the ghost"

No one throws away an entire Mac when a single component fails either. They get it fixed.

>I don't care about the planet or any of the people that live on it, as long as I can get my work done slightly faster

Unless you live in a cave and using your excrement as manure I could apply the same logic to your lifestyle.

Realistically the only practical difference is virtue signaling (I've seen a bunch of hipsters bring up these kind of irrelevant talking points while discussing their vacation in some exotic destination 5 minutes later).

And like someone else said, Apple devices are the definition of throwaway consumer products designed for a limited shelf life.

A difference between 200W and 500W for a single computer in your home isn't going to save the planet.

It's barely going to make a dent in your energy budget, if you use 4 kW/day running a 500W computer for 8 hours (assuming it's pegged at 100% CPU and GPU continuously, which it's not), that's the same as driving 5 miles or as turning down your A/C by 2 degrees.

That is not what he said at all. That's a perfect example of a straw man. Apple has brainwashed you so much that you think you are also saving the planet with its 'amazing' machines. You are not. Collective power saving from computers alone is a drop in the ocean of what all those mega corporations could do if they would just stop pointing the finger of waste management and energy saving on customers.

I wish I had a 5950X that requires less power. I don't. I am going to choose this CPU over any mac any day because it's faster. A lot of other CPUs consume less electricity, I don't use them neither. End of the story.

Maybe the user lives in a place with 100% hydroelectric power.

meanwhile my car's engine is rated for 200kW

I'm gonna hyperventialte to emit more CO2 just to spite you.

Time would be a primary reason to not build your own machine, though.

Who says it is my time? You can just buy custom workstations.

OP did. The original comment was about building your own machine for the cost of a Mac studio.

It's not the same kind of time saving. When I'm working on a particular task having a fast machine lets me stay in the flow with good iteration speed. Realistically I only have X ammount of concentrated effort available and that X is < 8h, building a PC doesn't really bite into that time/energy. But if it's a chore for you - you can just buy prebuilt or even rent bare metal.

No need to assemble. There are services for that.

You need to add the cost of your time into sourcing those parts, assembling it all, troubleshooting issues and then any long term warranty issues that come up.

Just pay Microcenter their $200 fee to do that for you.

My local computer shop did it for $30. It's $60 per hour, and it took them 30 minutes.

To do all the parts research, order them all , build it, troubleshoot and install the OS? Do you get a warranty?

I got a warranty, yes. I live in Australia, so there's a government-enforced 2-year minimum warranty period for durable goods such as electronics.

PS: I once worked on a project where 10 consultants sat around burning money for over a month because the customer couldn't figure out how to spin up a lab environment. We walked down to the local computer shop across the street, ordered the beefiest Xeon workstation tower we could build, packed it with drives, put VMware ESXi on it, and then the work could finally start. The "research, ordering, build, and troubleshooting" took half a day. It saved hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost time and money.