You can spend $8,000 on the new Mac Studio if you want to

If you want to max out the new Mac Studio, it’s gonna cost you

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Appleannounced the newMac Studioat itsMarch 2022 hardware event,powered by its all-new M1 Ultra SoC. While it starts off reasonable (for Apple), at $1,999 in the US, if you want to beef it up with the best specs you can possibly buy, it’s going tocost you a whopping $7,999.

That will get you anM1 Ultrawith a 64-core GPU and 20-core CPU, 128GB of RAM and a ludicrous 8TB SSD. That’s a lot of money, but to be honest, that’s a lot of computer, too.

It’s unlikely that most people would ever need this spec, but the option is definitely there for folks that want the absolute best Mac Studio that money can buy. Especially ludicrous is the 8TB SSD, which adds a huge $2,200 to the Mac Studio’s price tag from the 1TB base spec.

The most egregious, though, is that when you buy the Mac Studio, the only thing you’re getting in the box, even if you spend $7,999, is the Mac Studio itself and the power cord. Apple really wants you to spend extra cash on its peripherals.

Don’t worry, you don’t need that much

If you’re looking at that price in disbelief, take some comfort that it’s a bit overkill for what most people will actually need. The base spec is actually going to be more than enough for most people, with its 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Even most video editors should get by fine with a 64GB configuration with a 1TB SSD, especially considering that the Mac Studio supports Thunderbolt 4, so you can use external SSDs without losing much storage performance.

128GB of RAM is only going to be necessary for people that are doing heavy rendering workloads. If you’re not making a big budget movie or doing heavy data science work, you probably don’t need 128GB of RAM. And if you are doing that stuff, your company is probably paying for the Mac Studio anyway.

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN. Previously, she was TechRadar’s US computing editor. She is fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but she just happens to be a satanist. If you need to know anything about computing components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don’t be afraid to drop her a line on Twitter or through email.

The M4 Mac mini has removable, modular storage – and an important SSD upgrade

Apple iMac 24-inch M4 (2024) review: the best, and most colorful, all-in-one computer levels up

NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Sunday, November 10 (game #252)