There was no Mac Professional with an M2 Extremely launched in March 2023. It by no means got here regardless of the clamor and the hopes of Apple followers that work within the inventive trade and it’s no shock that a few of them are planning to maneuver to Home windows altogether to ease their transition to newer and quicker know-how reasonably than ready for upgrades which will or might not come. I surveyed the US Home windows workstation market, 17 corporations, from boutique suppliers to international manufacturers to seek out out one of the best Mac Professional different and located one clear winner.
Thinkmate shouldn’t be a family identify (though one may confuse it with Lenovo’s standard Thinkstation model) however this boutique vendor covers the US, Canada, the UK and the EU. Its VSX R5 760S1 fitted the invoice when in search of a substitute for the Mac Professional. What’s extra, it’s whisper-quiet because of a intelligent alternative of parts; the chassis is a dual-chamber one which, in keeping with the seller, “reduces warmth and noise by rising airflow effectivity and isolating the ability provide from the remainder of the system parts”.
Home windows vs Mac: The low down
Beneath is a desk that compares the essential specification of Apple’s product versus its ThinkMate new nemesis.
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Apple MacPro | ThinkMate VSX R5 760S1 |
|---|---|---|
| Value USD | 49,799 | 39,901 |
| Processor | 1x Intel Xeon W-3275M | 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6230R |
| Cores | 28 | 52 |
| RAM | 1.5TB DDR4 ECC | 2TB DDR4 ECC |
| SSD | 2 x 4TB (Proprietary) | 1x 1TB Micron PCIe 4.0 Gen4 2 x 3.84TB Samsung PCIe 4.0 Gen4 |
| GPU | 2x AMD Radeon Professional W6800X Duo (64GB) | 2x PNY RTX A6000 Ada Era (48GB) |
| PSU | 1.4Kw | 1.6Kw |
| Guarantee | 1-year (carry-in service, mail-in or DIY) | 3-year guarantee with superior elements substitute, onsite service and RSL |
| Working system | MacOS | Selection of Linux OS |
On paper, Thinkmate’s workstation ought to simply trounce Apple’s Mac Professional. It has extra compute energy, sports activities a pair of the quickest graphics playing cards available on the market, has higher storage and a 3rd extra system reminiscence. If that wasn’t sufficient the onsite guarantee ought to win it.
MacOS is the place Apple has the higher hand. Its working system has been superb tuned for the {hardware} (nicely maybe a bit much less for the x86-based Xeon) and Linux merely doesn’t compete however, the wonder with ThinkMate’s workstation is that you would be able to at all times swap OSes (or run them in twin boot).
May Apple be planning to launch a refreshed Mac Professional on the forthcoming WWDC in June 2023? Perhaps, however I received’t maintain my breath until then. Maybe a refreshed Mac Studio with an M2 Extremely or an M2 Max CPU will likely be what is going to lastly put the x86 Mac Professional to relaxation.