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How much cheese does one person need to grate? Mac Pro pricing unveiled

El Reg checks all the boxes. Dell: 'Hold my beer'

Apple's Mac Pro turned up on the company's website this week and, yep, it's eye-wateringly expensive.

However, the shrieking over the price of the fully loaded cheese-grateresque device would be to miss the point. It is aimed squarely at the professional workstation market for which the £22,500 ($30,000) 1.5TB RAM option is not unheard of.

Sticking 1.5TB into a Dell Precision 7920 rackmount workstation will, after all, set you back £36,318.10. Heck Dell will go all the way to 3TB if you've got £72,877.35 ($96,000) burning a hole in your pocket.

Of course, the Apple machine has some natty £360 wheels as an option, whereas all Dell can muster is a £14.30 Rack Chassis CL. Apple plans a rackable version for another £500.

For the record, we managed to get our Mac Pro to £47,588 ($63,000) by checking all the boxes (bar the software). We gave up ticking all Dell's boxes as the price soared past £135,000 ($180,000) (although Mike's team will knock 35 per cent off) and the configuration options became ever more byzantine.

Dropping the Dell's RAM back to 1.5TB got the price closer to Apple's, although the Dual NVIDIA Quadro silicon was hard to resist. Apple's graphics currently top out with two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards, and plans are afoot to shove in two W5700X cards.

Sadly, you can't pop into your nearest Apple Store and flash your Apple credit card in order to pick up a unit specced to the max. Instead you'll need to wait until between 11 and 17 Feb (or spank a fiver in order to get your nearly £50k's worth of Apple kit a few days early). Dell ships its chippery in a similar 34 to 36 business days.

Naturally, Apple doesn't include a monitor (just like Dell) but will collect £5,499 if the freshly released 32-inch Retina 6K monitor is your thing. Don't forget the £949 stand – Apple famously doesn't include one in the box.

If this was a consumer device, the price would be shocking. As a workstation? Perhaps less so. And after the lengthy wait endured by fanbois for a refresh of the Pro line, the faithful will likely be up for a remortgage or two in order to plonk a cheesegrater under the desk. ®

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