Apple adds Radeon 5600M 16-inch MacBook Pro & Mac Pro SSD upgrade kits [u]

AppleInsider

A week prior to the start of the 2020 WWDC, Apple has added a new 16-inch MacBookPro GPU configuration, and is now selling user-installable SSD upgrades for the Mac Pro tower.

Interior of Apple's Mac Pro

The Radeon 5600M upgrade to Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro was made available on Monday morning. It comes at a premium, however -- the enhanced chipset sells for $700 more than the base model.

Apple says that the upgrade will provide up to 75% better performance over the 5500M configuration.

The Mac Pro SSD user upgrades come in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB sizes. The order page notes that the 1TB upgrade retails for $600, the 2TB kit sells for $1000, with the 4TB kit coming in at $1600. The 8TB upgrade retails for $2800.

When initially purchased, 1TB of storage is a $400 premium versus 256GB. The larger 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB configurations add $800, $1400, and $2600, respectively

The purchase page notes that "software reinstallation requires a second Mac running Apple Configurator 2 and a USB-C cable. Compatible with Mac Pro (2019)," suggesting that a Time Machine backup or similar may not be sufficient to move to the upgraded drives. AppleInsider has reached out to Apple for more information on what this means to the end-user.

Update June 15, 2:00 P.M. Eastern Time Added the purchase page on Apple.com going live, and information on what may be required to migrate to the new drives.

Update June 15, 2:22 P.M. Eastern Time Updated the post with upgrade pricing.

tht

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

CheeseFreeze

$800 for a GPU upgrade is offensive. It's like Mr. Cook randomly pulls a lever and takes that value. As an upgrade price, $400 would be more reasonable.

KITA

Radeon Pro 5600M - 5.3 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5500M - 4.6 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M - 4.1 TFLOPS

(All numbers are FP32)

Nelson1986

The updates for the 16” better be more substantial soon.  Tech upgrades usually mean newer parts for the same price (I.e. a CPU upgraded their latest Generation, Faster RAM, etc.)

This isn’t an update, it’s just another add-on option for more $$.

Apple, while i still love their products & think they are quality has definitely completely lost its vision & has turned more into a corporate $-grabber

rob53

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

cornchip

rob53 said:

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

And once they go to ARM there’s 0% chance. Bye bye upgradability. 

ne1

Do we think the 5600 will address the graphics / fan / external monitor issues with the 16 inch model?

tht

rob53 said:

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

I think the low end ARM Macs will be quite integrated, SiP-like integrated where the RAM will be in the CPU package like in iPhones and iPads, or on the CPU like in iPad Pros. For the desktop and expensive laptops, will be interesting to see how they handle it.

prismatics

rob53 said:

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

additionally, Apple thinks nobody else except them is smart enough to replace an M.2 SSD or that SO-DIMM modules magically don't work except when they're designed by Apple themselves and 1:1 blueprinted onto the Mac Logic Board. But whatever, don't hope. I stopped "hoping" and started buying other Notebooks.

sflocal

prismatics said:

rob53 said:

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

additionally, Apple thinks nobody else except them is smart enough to replace an M.2 SSD or that SO-DIMM modules magically don't work except when they're designed by Apple themselves and 1:1 blueprinted onto the Mac Logic Board. But whatever, don't hope. I stopped "hoping" and started buying other Notebooks.

Apple does this because 99% of buyers will never upgrade their machines after the initial purchase, not because of what you describe.  Fact.  Why should Apple add additional engineering, height, etc to accommodate The < 1%?  Makes no sense.

prismatics

sflocal said:

prismatics said:

rob53 said:

tht said:

Nice to see!

Just keep making incremental updates and options. Hopefully upgradeable SSDs will be available for all of the other Macs in the future.

They won't be unless Apple makes a total change in the enclosures. You can open a current MBP and iMac but the iMac is not that easy. We'll see if Apple goes back to an easy to open front or rear case for the iMacs but I don't see them changing from soldered RAM and SSD on some of the MacBooks or changing back to a screwed on case. Most CPUs are also soldered to keep the height of the motherboard as thin as possible. Adding a CPU socket doubles the height of the CPU.

additionally, Apple thinks nobody else except them is smart enough to replace an M.2 SSD or that SO-DIMM modules magically don't work except when they're designed by Apple themselves and 1:1 blueprinted onto the Mac Logic Board. But whatever, don't hope. I stopped "hoping" and started buying other Notebooks.

Apple does this because 99% of buyers will never upgrade their machines after the initial purchase, not because of what you describe.  Fact.  Why should Apple add additional engineering, height, etc to accommodate The < 1%?  Makes no sense.

Maybe it's just a feeling that it's 99%. I have a different feeling, more like 50%.

Eric_WVGG

prismatics said:

sflocal said:

Apple does this because 99% of buyers will never upgrade their machines after the initial purchase, not because of what you describe.  Fact.  Why should Apple add additional engineering, height, etc to accommodate The < 1%?  Makes no sense.

Maybe it's just a feeling that it's 99%. I have a different feeling, more like 50%.

no offense, but that’s ridiculous. 99% of modern users have never even seen a motherboard before. It's not the nineties anymore.

blastdoor

CheeseFreeze said:

$800 for a GPU upgrade is offensive. It's like Mr. Cook randomly pulls a lever and takes that value. As an upgrade price, $400 would be more reasonable.

Compared to what? How is $800 offensive but $400 just fine? Doesn't it depend on what you're getting for the money? 

Upgrading to the highest spec, especially in a laptop, is often very expensive and makes sense only for a small minority of users. If you don't see the value in the option, don't choose it. Otherwise, why should you be "offended" that this option (and it is an OPTION) is made available to people who might appreciate it? 

KITA

AppleInsider said:

The Mac Pro SSD user upgrades come in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB sizes. The order page notes that the 1TB upgrade retails for $600, the 2TB kit sells for $1000, with the 4TB kit coming in at $1600. The 8TB upgrade retails for $2800.

Update June 15, 2:22 P.M. Eastern Time Updated the post with upgrade pricing.

As if the machine wasn't already overpriced.

These numbers are ridiculous.

entropys

Nelson1986 said:

The updates for the 16” better be more substantial soon.  Tech upgrades usually mean newer parts for the same price (I.e. a CPU upgraded their latest Generation, Faster RAM, etc.)

This isn’t an update, it’s just another add-on option for more $$.

Apple, while i still love their products & think they are quality has definitely completely lost its vision & has turned more into a corporate $-grabber

It’s the difference between wanting to make money by making good computers, and wanting to make good computers to make money.

rob53

Eric_WVGG said:

prismatics said:

sflocal said:

Apple does this because 99% of buyers will never upgrade their machines after the initial purchase, not because of what you describe.  Fact.  Why should Apple add additional engineering, height, etc to accommodate The < 1%?  Makes no sense.

Maybe it's just a feeling that it's 99%. I have a different feeling, more like 50%.

no offense, but that’s ridiculous. 99% of modern users have never even seen a motherboard before. It's not the nineties anymore.

The only way it would be less than 99% would be if you counted the number of Macs that have been altered instead of the number of users altering them. I've upgraded Macs and fixed iPhones and iPads for at least ten different people (not counting work related) and I'm not a licensed service technician. 

rob53

I noticed the comment about Apple Configurator so I opened mine up and searched Help for software installs. I didn't realize I could use Apple Configurator on an Apple TV. It can be enrolled just like an iPhone or iPad. I never really got into setting up MDM (did some at work years ago) on my personal devices but when you start adding devices for family member and want to control, or limit control, certain functions it might be a very good app to try out. It could make life a lot easier when dealing with the 99%ers equipment.

joe28753

Configurator was recently updated to support restoring firmware on the new Mac Pro. I believe because of the T2 chip or some other boot protections, swapping in this new SSD requires Configurator to finish setup. 

aegean

It is interesting to see how SSD prices are coming down. 2TB SSD for $1000, something I paid for 256 SSD (max available at that time in 2007) for my 17-iinch MacBook Pro.

Marvin

blastdoor said:

CheeseFreeze said:

$800 for a GPU upgrade is offensive. It's like Mr. Cook randomly pulls a lever and takes that value. As an upgrade price, $400 would be more reasonable.

Compared to what? How is $800 offensive but $400 just fine? Doesn't it depend on what you're getting for the money? 

Upgrading to the highest spec, especially in a laptop, is often very expensive and makes sense only for a small minority of users. If you don't see the value in the option, don't choose it. Otherwise, why should you be "offended" that this option (and it is an OPTION) is made available to people who might appreciate it? 

At first I figured it must be AMD setting the prices but other manufacturers are pricing this line of GPUs much lower. Here's a laptop with a faster RX 5600M laptop for $879, $1299 for 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-dell-g5-15-se-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5505-laptop/gn5505dyics
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-dell-g5-15-se-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5505-laptop/gn5505dymms

Apple's cheapest option for the 5600M is $3199. Given that manufacturers can sell an entire laptop with a faster version of that chip for $879 and still make a profit, Apple charging $800 just for the GPU upgrade seems a bit excessive.

They are using HBM memory instead of GDDR, which adds something to the cost but it shouldn't be all that much extra.

They might be pricing it to avoid it being a mainstream option if it runs hotter than the lower performance GPUs. If they priced it reasonably, more people would buy it and possibly complain about thermals. We'll see when the reviews come in if it runs hotter.

It's nice to have the option at least. I hope this doesn't mean they'll be skipping RDNA2 GPUs (September) until next year though. RDNA2 is supposed to come with a 50% performance-per-watt increase. If that turns out to be true, I'd rather have an entry model with RDNA2 in September.