The iMac Pro is Apple’s most powerful desktop PC ever and, six months after its announcement, Comes to stores this Thursday. Nnew systems should be available at some retail locations as well as through Apple’s website
Apple’s iMac Pro AIO workstations are aimed at professional users with demanding workloads, such as video editing, 3D animation, scientific research, software development, etc. To a large degree, the iMac Pro addresses the same crowd as the Mac Pro introduced four years ago, which was never majorly updated since then.
Yhis time around we get a 27” AIO featuring modern multi-core CPUs, up-to-date GPUs, loads of RAM, plenty of solid-state storage and advanced connectivity that includes four Thunderbolt 3 ports and one 10 GbE header. The company is still working on an all new desktop computer that will replace the Mac Pro sometimes in 2018, but for for the first part of 2018 the new iMac Pro will be Apple’s most powerful PCs.
The Apple iMac Pro comes in aluminum space gray chassis and is outfitted with a 27” display panel with a 5120×2880 resolution, up to 500 nits brightness that supports the DCI-P3 color gamut and 10-bit spatial and temporal dithering (Apple has said anything about HDR10 support though). Since many professional workloads require more than one monitors, Apple proposes to use two out of four Thunderbolt 3 ports to connect two additional 5K displays.
The system is based on Intel’s Xeon W processors with eight, ten, 14 or 18 cores and up to 42 MB of L2+L3 cache. The 14-core iMac Pro was not a part of Apple’s original announcement, but a blogger was told by Apple that the fourth iMac Pro SKU would be available as well. Apple does not disclose exact CPU models that it intends to use with the iMac Pro, but it looks like we are dealing with off-the-shelf Xeon W CPUs with up to 140 W TDP.
By default, an entry-level iMac Pro is to be equipped with 32 GB of DDR4-2666 ECC memory, but it is expandable to 64 GB or even 128 GB, if needed. As for storage, 1 TB SSD is the default option, but the iMac Pro can be equipped with 2 TB or 4 TB SSDs as well. All the drives use the NVMe protocol, a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and up to 3 GB/s peak sequential read speed. While it looks like Apple is going to use standard memory modules, the iMac Pro does not seem to be user-upgradeable, unlike regular iMacs.
On the graphics side, Apple will use AMD’s latest Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8 GB of HBM2 or the Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16 GB of HBM2.
| Apple iMac Pro Brief Specifications | |||||
| iMac Pro 27″ | |||||
| Display | 27″ with 5120 × 2880 resolution 500 cd/m² brightness DCI-P3 support 10-bit spatial and temporal dithering |
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| CPU | Intel Xeon W-2145 8C/16T 3.7/4.5 GHz 8 MB L2 11 MB L3 140 W |
Intel Xeon W-2155 10C/20T 3.7/4.5 GHz 10 MB L2 13.75 MB L3 140 W |
Intel Xeon W-2175 14C/28T 2.5/4.3 GHz 14 MB L2 19.25 MB L3 140 W |
Intel Xeon W-2195 18C/36T 2.4/4.3 GHz 18 MB L2 24.75 MB L3 140 W |
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| PCH | C422 | ||||
| Graphics | AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8 GB HMB2 or Radeon Pro 64 with 16 GB HBM2 | ||||
| Memory | 32 GB DDR4-2666 with ECC Configurable to 64 GB or 128 GB DDR4-2666 with ECC |
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| Storage | 1 TB SSD (NVMe, PCIe 3.0 x4) Configurable to 2 TB SSD or 4 TB SSD |
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| Wi-Fi | IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi + BT 4.2 | ||||
| Ethernet | 10 GbE | ||||
| Display Outputs | 4 × Thunderbolt 3 | ||||
| Audio | Stereo speakers Integrated microphones 1 × audio out |
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| USB | 4 × USB 3.0 Type-A (5 Gbps) 4 × USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C (via TB3) |
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| Other I/O | FHD webcam SDXC card reader |
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| Dimensions | Width | 65 cm | 25.6″ | |||
| Height | 51.6 cm | 20.3″ | ||||
| Depth | 20.3 cm | 8″ | ||||
| PSU | ~ 500 W (to be confirmed) | ||||
| OS | Apple MacOS High Sierra | ||||
The iMac Pro will ship with space grey wireless Magic Keyboard with a numeric keypad as well a choice between the Magic Mouse 2 or Magic Trackpad 2. The iMac Pro pricing starts at $4999.
