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Comment by jotm | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, will Apple be blocking non-certified CPUs and RAM? Cause those princes are kinda high, would be cheaper to get the base config and upgrade it yourself...

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It's possible that it is like the Macbook Air and even the RAM is soldered on. The thing about the air was that everything was so jampacked, so they were forced to do that. Hopefully not the case with Mac Pro :<

I don't think so - the RAM is definitely removable based on the pictures on the Apple website, and I believe Xeons are PGA only, no BGA version like with mainstream chips.

But if Apple limits the processor and RAM models/types in the BIOS, it would make it very hard to upgrade...

I would be shocked if Apple sockets the CPU, they haven't done that in their other Macs for years, why would this one be any different?

Looking at Wikipedia, there are BGA Xeons - a couple of new quad core, low power E3 models. However, all other Xeons are socketed, including the ones used in earlier Mac Pros. And all the 6/8/12 core Xeons are using either LGA-1356 or LGA2011 sockets (not PGA, my bad)...

Their product page for the new Mac Pro lists the RAM as "User accessible". And the Pro is traditionally the one that's designed to let you tinker with/replace/expand stuff, as opposed to the laptop line which is far less serviceable in pursuit of aesthetics.

That'll be so you can look at it. It'll be glued in though...

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