Apple’s $6,500 rack-mounted Mac Pro hits store, topping out at $53,900

If the $5,999 base version of Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro wasn’t enough for your personal or professional needs, the company had no shortage of options to cover the bases — a fully tricked-out $52,599 version included enough CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, and extra video rendering horsepower to sate the most demanding video professionals. Today, Apple officially opened orders for an even more deluxe version with a rack-mountable chassis and higher price tag, starting at $6,499 and climbing to $53,899 before adding external accessories.

Just like the tower-styled Mac Pro, the rack-mounted model uses an aluminum and stainless steel enclosure, but here it is designed to be inserted horizontally within a server rack. Apple notes that this model includes rack-mounting rails that ship in a separate box, but otherwise the design looks similar to the other Mac Pro from the front, with a prominent grid of circular ventilation holes flanked by steel handles, locking switches, and two holes for indicator lights.

While the base model continues to ship with a 3.5GHz 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, 32GB of RAM, a Radeon Pro 580X, and 256GB of SSD storage, users can choose to upgrade to a 2.5GHz 28-core CPU, 1.5TB of RAM, twin Radeon Pro Vega II Duo memory cards, 8TB of SSD storage, and an Apple Afterburner video rendering accelerator. The 8TB SSD option was added after the Mac Pro tower’s announcement, further goosing the model’s top price. Additionally, Apple now lists single and double Radeon Pro W5700X GPUs as “coming soon” options at unspecified price points.

Base and fully customized models currently show U.S. delivery dates ranging between February 6 and 13, which is to say roughly a month and a half after the tower-styled Mac Pros began arriving for U.S. customers. Users can choose to add accessories ranging from the Magic Trackpad 2 to the Pro Display XDR for $50 to $5,999 premiums, depending on their needs. Interestingly, both the “standard” and “nano-texture glass” Pro Display XDR models are currently backordered, with delivery dates starting the week after the rack-mounted Mac Pros.