Apple Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) review: Local model citizen outpaces DGX Spark and Threadripper

Apple's latest Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) model has been making waves in the tech world, outperforming other top-tier systems like DGX Spark and Threadripper. The M5 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio is a powerful addition that makes the system a strong contender for creators such as video editors, photographers, and game designers. Starting at $2,499 with the M5 Max chip, the Mac Studio can also serve as a robust enterprise device or remote server, handling any task with ease, including local AI work.

Apple has retained the design of the Mac Studio, keeping it a sleek silver, squared-off block measuring 7.7 x 7.7 inches on the desk and standing 3.7 inches tall. The aluminum chassis features a shiny Apple logo on the top, and the system weighs 8 pounds, a 2-pound increase from the M5 Max variant. This weight gain is due to the heavier copper fin stack and vapor chamber used in the M5 Ultra version.

The Mac Studio's backside houses the power button and numerous air holes to aid in heat dissipation. Air intake is provided through small stand-built-in holes at the bottom of the system, which also includes a Kensington lock slot. Ports on the front include two Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports and an SD card reader (UHS-II), while the rear ports are more extensive, featuring four Thunderbolt 5 ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, a 10Gb Ethernet jack, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Unfortunately, the Mac Studio is not upgradeable, as the RAM is soldered to the board, and Apple does not sell replacement SSDs. However, third-party vendors may offer reverse-engineered NAND storage, though this voids the warranty and is not officially supported.

The M5 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio is Apple's first quad-die chip, with two dual-die M5 Max SOCs connected via UltraFusion. This connection increases bandwidth between the dies to over 4.4 TB/s, and the memory bandwidth reaches up to 1.2TB/s, enabling large language models (LLMs) to run entirely on-device. The chip boasts 80 GPU cores with neural accelerators and a 32-core neural engine, along with hardware-enabled media capabilities such as H.264, HEVC, AV1 decode, and four ProRes encode and decode engines.