Apple will let you add 256GB of RAM to an iMac Pro for $5,200 | Hacker News Reader

Apple will let you add 256GB of RAM to an iMac Pro for $5,200

theverge.com

41 pointshsnewman23 comments

You can get a 128GB from OWC for $1679. I have used their RAM sticks for my old Mac Pro not once but twice (as prices came down) and they work great, and they will give you a credit for RAM you send back to them. That's not 256GB but it's also not $5200...

ECC Server RAM can be found dirt cheap on ebay, since enterprises use it and toss the stuff on a regular basis. You could easily fine 128Gb of ECC DDR4 for like $800. If you find an older (but still extremely powerful) Xeon that takes DDR3, you can get the stuff for pennies on the dollar. It's also quite easy to run a hackintosh on Xeons, if that floats your boat.

Finally enough ram to run SVG blur filters in Safari!!!

Why would a blur filter require a lot of RAM? It's a convolution isn't it? Shouldn't require any RAM at all.

At least on the iPhoneX some SVG blur filters can easily crash the whole browser. And it depends on the image size, so it is most probably a memory issue. But of course I do not know for sure because there was never any reaction on my bug report on Webkit.

Anyway, now there is a great solution for this issue and it is only $5200.

Unlike the iMac, the iMac Pro is not designed to let the user upgrade its memory. I guess it takes a "pro" to take it apart and do it anyway (it's possible) and pay 7€ per GB instead of 25€ per GB.

Btw the link should be changed from news.google.com to theverge.com

What's the street price for that much ram?

Hard to say... I'm not sure that you can get 64GB PC4-21300 sticks anywhere else at the moment.

They are available all over the place in Europe: https://tinyurl.com/yyohl585

The prices start at 6.84€ per GB (versus 25€ per GB at Apple)

Yes, it would also be better in topic to use price per GB than total price.

The couple places I found some it was about $570-$860 per 64Gb memory module, so ~$2280 to ~$3450. NewEgg is having a sale, looks like real street is about $2000 if the modules they carry are compatible. But officially, for RAM upgrade, the iMac Pro is not user-serviceable, you have to take it to a service center to get the memory upgraded -- and if you go to Apple, they will probably not install 3rd party RAM.

OK - apples price, while crazy isn't as bad of a markup as I expected.

Serious question: what are legitimate use cases for 256GB RAM on a Mac? ETL loads? Graphic editing? Running as a server? I guess I’m ignorant of who the customer is here. Or is this more just enthusiast?

I have pretty unsurprising compile jobs that I run locally in a normal working day that could be run concurrently and make useful work of at least 256 GB. Instead I have to run them sequentially and they take forever. I have enough cores, not enough RAM.

Why not setup an autoscaling cluster in AWS for your build jobs? It is cheap as hell these days.

If the compile tasks depends on OSX, things get crazy. Even if you can avoid OSX for iOS (here be dragons, but it's possible)

3d rendering can eat up all of your RAM. This is a decent computer for a freelance 3d artist. Although, not the best option.

Seems like anyone editing video would benefit from a ton of RAM.

Multi tab browsing (sorry, couldn't resist)

You also need 64 cores at a minimum /s

Full asset cook on our (big) UE4 project can use up ~150GB of RAM

But why use a mac pro for that? It's not like UE4 only runs on mac or even has an advantage running on mac.

Url changed from https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEJeVXSlrlay6HQiVhn9J5tY..., which points to this.

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