iMac Pro Review – a PC Guy’s Perspective
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,628 words · ~8 min read
0:00
apple prides itself on its courage the
0:03
courage to do what no one else does the courage of our convictions to solder
0:07
everything down courage to remove features pushing your willingness to pay more
0:13
for less but sometimes sometimes they
0:17
falter sometimes innovation rears its ugly head
0:22
and today we have the imac pro
0:26
the upgradable imac the workstation imac
0:30
the mac for legitimate creative
0:33
professionals
0:36
who saw that one coming
0:44
today's video is brought to you by us
0:48
check out the LTT merch store at the link in the video description we've got
0:51
shirts mugs hats stickers and more
0:54
so the base eight core configuration of the imac pro is 4999
1:00
us dollars let's take you for a tour then and break
1:04
down what you get for that money and how that would compare to buying components
1:08
off the shelf the most obvious feature of any aio is the lcd spec wise there's
1:15
really not much out there like it with lg's ultrafine 5k being the closest
1:19
analog with p3 wide gamut color support
1:22
500 nit maximum brightness Thunderbolt 3 input and a 1700 price tag
1:29
moving under the hood the next most expensive component is an 8 core Intel
1:34
xeon w2140b a slightly down clocked version of the
1:38
xeon w2140 that can be swapped out for up to a xeon
1:42
w219518 core for very heavy workloads
1:48
now with a xeon comes ecc or error correcting memory and even our base
1:53
model has a healthy 32 gigs of it
1:56
interestingly unlike previous 5k imacs
2:00
the pro is using full-sized dimms rather
2:04
than so dims theoretically great news for upgraders
2:08
but alas apple giveth and apple taketh
2:11
away to take full advantage of the xeon's quad channel memory controller all four
2:17
of the imac pro slots are populated and
2:20
there is no access hatch on the back a little bit more on that later
2:25
one of the most underwhelming aspects of the base imac pro is probably the GPU a
2:29
vega 56 i mean it's not terrible but considering that previous mac pros used
2:35
fire pros rather than consumer cards
2:38
and the price point you might reasonably expect better and the same could be said
2:43
for the upgrade options your GPU is soldered directly to the motherboard so
2:47
the only way to max it out with the marginally faster vega 64 is to pay
2:53
upfront AMD's full msrp for a standalone
2:57
card on top of what you already paid theoretically for a vega 56.
3:03
thanks cryptocurrency miners so bottom line with a comparable
3:07
motherboard equivalent 10 gigabit networking a terabyte of very fast pci
3:12
express storage a power supply a case cooling and some decent peripherals the
3:17
apple tax on this particular model even ignoring that computers do not assemble
3:21
themselves and that ongoing software support and warranty coverage both have
3:26
a value is a whopping negative two hundred
3:29
dollars so why is it that apple has this
3:32
reputation for having overpriced computers
3:36
we're going to get to that first let's talk about the experience of using the
3:40
imac pro it is essentially identical to that of a
3:45
regular imac the display is gorgeously retina and very bright
3:50
but with fat bezels and no HDR support for reasons that likely have everything
3:54
to do with supply chain and nothing to do with courage it declutters your life
3:59
with only a single cable needed for power as long as you don't need to plug
4:03
anything into one of the conveniently located usb 3 or Thunderbolt 3 ports at
4:07
the back and the included wireless peripherals
4:11
are more than usable ranging from pretty darn good for a low profile chiclet
4:15
style at least it has a numpad too the built-in touchpad is really cool for
4:19
gestures but how have they not fixed this charging port yet really similar
4:24
except for one big difference the imac
4:27
pro uses workstation class and modern
4:32
hardware something you can't take for granted so you'd probably think then that tools
4:37
like logic pro and final cut pro that have been tuned for years for outdated
4:43
mainstream or mobile cpus would run like
4:47
billio on this thing and you'd be right this is the fastest
4:52
mac ever built in every respect you kind of have to feel it to believe how quick
4:58
and responsive it is across the board safari launches instantly even at 5k
5:04
desktop animations never drop a frame and even adobe premiere as much of a dog
5:09
as it can be launches every bit as quickly as the fastest test benches
5:13
we've ever built oh and also 10 gigabit
5:16
Ethernet means that the imac pro is a real mac that is finally able to
5:22
work with large files and networked resources right out of the box something
5:27
that is essential to our production workflow where we keep all of our
5:31
footage on a redundant protected high-speed storage device on the network
5:38
as for how well it performs elsewhere well it should come as no surprise that
5:42
it tears through most of our professional tests with relative ease
5:46
cinebench scores landed about where they should luxmark spat out some very
5:50
respectable numbers and blender ran very
5:53
well
5:57
except when it didn't we're kind of hoping that the performance issues with
6:01
blender's cycles renderer are just growing pains that will be dealt with in
6:05
short order with all those rosy results in mind
6:09
though it should be noted that the xeon w didn't quite match the performance of
6:13
our similar cnw or our similarly priced desktop grade
6:18
core i9 and that even our base model CPU throttled
6:24
under sustained loads with the imac pro's cooling system staying inaudibly
6:29
quiet rather than holding the CPU temperatures
6:32
at a more comfortable 70 to 80 degrees
6:36
we'd like to see apple ramp up the fan more aggressively
6:40
though with that said given the placement of the exhaust with air
6:43
basically being blown back into the intake anyway it's kind of hard to tell
6:47
how much it would help and what we also don't know at this time
6:51
is how a higher spec CPU would affect any of this let's get back to that
6:55
discussion about upgradability now apple may officially void your
6:59
warranty and getting inside the imac pro
7:02
is a real chore but it appears as though the CPU RAM and
7:08
proprietary ssds there are two of them running in raid 0 could all be swapped
7:13
out for compatible replacements so this is something that we plan to explore in
7:17
a follow-up video bottom line then it feels like apple is finally listening to
7:23
its professional users there are a few things missing maybe
7:27
kind of like the soviets after the 1969 moon landing they've decided to just
7:32
let microsoft have it as the only one with a sexy aio with a digitizer by
7:37
leaving out support for the apple pencil but they gave us 10 gig Ethernet and
7:42
truly professional grade performance and they did it in a form factor with a
7:46
level of polish that nobody does quite like apple
7:50
so thermals aside i guess it's pretty
7:54
magical and our major gripes with it are really just the usual stuff about the
7:59
restrictiveness of the apple ecosystem in general
8:02
one without any obvious reason the imac
8:05
pro doesn't support target display mode which would allow you to get more
8:09
mileage out of it as a monitor once the internals become outdated
8:13
2. other than Thunderbolt 3 there is no way
8:17
to add an expansion card in spite of the CPU's massive 48 PCIe lanes and 3 while
8:24
on paper the specs and pricing actually
8:27
look really attractive compared to an apples to apples diy solution a big part
8:33
of the reason for that is apple's manner of choosing expensive options that not
8:38
everyone would necessarily spring for if given the choice
8:42
better performance per dollar can be achieved with some compromises in a diy
8:47
box now it's possible that when the true
8:52
standalone workstations arrive perhaps later in 2018
8:56
that we'll see some more flexibility here NVIDIA gpus anyone they've got
9:01
drivers but i wouldn't hold my breath
9:05
speaking of breath do you find yourself as a small business owner or freelancer
9:10
having a hard time catching your breath at the end of the day especially when
9:13
you go oh now i have to sit down and do accounting well freshbooks is the solution for you
9:18
it's the simple way to be more productive more organized and get paid
9:22
faster you can create and send professional looking invoices in less
9:26
than 30 seconds you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks
9:29
and get paid up to four days faster you can see when your client has seen your
9:33
invoice putting an end to the guessing games and you can take all kinds of
9:37
great functionality like their time tracker and their expense tracker with
9:41
you on the go on your Android or iOS
9:44
smartphone so for your unrestricted 30 day free trial go to freshbooks.com tech
9:48
tips we'll have that linked below and enter Linus tech tips in the how did you
9:52
hear about us section so thanks for watching guys if this
9:56
video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like
9:59
button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
10:02
description also link down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like
10:05
this one and our community forum which you should
10:09
totally join