New Mac Studio: M5 Ultra Goes Up to 512GB of RAM
Apple's new Mac Studio starts at $2,499 for M5 Max and $5,499 for M5 Ultra, scaling to 512GB of RAM for AI and video workloads far beyond what most families need.
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Apple’s Most Powerful Desktop Just Got More Powerful
Alongside the Mac mini refresh on August 25, 2026, Apple also updated the Mac Studio — its most powerful desktop, sitting well above the mini in both price and raw capability. Two chip tiers: M5 Max, with up to an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, and M5 Ultra, Apple’s largest chip yet, with up to a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU.
AdApple Mac Studio (M5 Ultra, 256GB) (opens in a new tab)
The new flagship, starting configuration — for the household actually running local AI models or heavy video work at scale.
Apple’s own performance claims for this generation lean heavily on AI workloads: up to 3.9 times faster prompt processing on M5 Max versus the previous M4 Max for models run locally on the machine, and roughly 4 times the acceleration on M5 Ultra versus the outgoing M3 Ultra. That framing tells you exactly who this refresh is for — running large local AI models, heavy 3D rendering, or video work that genuinely needs dozens of cores working simultaneously rather than a handful.
M5 Max vs. M5 Ultra: the Real Gap
| M5 Max | M5 Ultra | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU cores | up to 18 | up to 36 |
| GPU cores | up to 40 | up to 80 |
| Base RAM | 36GB | 256GB |
| Max RAM | 128GB | 512GB |
| Max displays | 5 | 8 |
| Starting price | $2,499 | $5,499 |
The jump from Max to Ultra is not a modest step up the way M6 to M5 Pro was on the Mac mini — it roughly doubles GPU cores and RAM ceiling for more than double the price. That gap exists because the Ultra chip is genuinely two Max chips fused together, which is also why the base Ultra configuration starts at 256GB of memory rather than scaling up gradually the way the Max does. Apple is not positioning these as “buy whichever you can afford” — they are two different tiers of professional workload, and most buyers who actually need a Studio at all will know which one from the software they run daily, not from the spec sheet.
Why This Almost Certainly Isn’t Your Next Family Computer
We say this as a household that already runs a Mac mini as our main desktop workstation, photo-editing workflow included: the Mac Studio is not the Apple desktop most families should be looking at, even a family that takes its photography seriously. At $2,499 to start — and $5,499 if you want the Ultra chip at all — you are paying for sustained, professional-grade throughput that a family desktop simply never asks for. Culling and editing RAW photos from a Nikon Z8, running a Plex server, even fairly involved video editing for a YouTube channel: a Mac mini with the M5 Pro chip announced the same day handles all of that comfortably, at roughly a third of the Mac Studio’s starting price.
The honest audience for this machine is narrow and professional: studios doing heavy 3D or film work, developers training or running large AI models locally rather than through the cloud, or a home office that has genuinely outgrown a Mac mini’s ceiling — not “photography is a serious hobby,” but “photography or video is the income.” If that is not your household, the price difference buys you nothing you would ever actually use.
AdApple Mac mini (2024, M4 Pro) (opens in a new tab)
What we actually recommend to a family before a Mac Studio ever enters the conversation — the same Apple silicon, a fraction of the price.
The Dadnology Take
The M5 Ultra is a genuinely remarkable chip, and 512GB of unified memory in a desktop this size is not something any competitor is close to matching. But it is a professional tool priced and specced for professional workloads, launched on the same day as a Mac mini refresh that covers everything a family actually needs. Unless your work genuinely saturates dozens of CPU and GPU cores at once, the Mac mini is still the Apple desktop worth your money — read our Mac mini M6 coverage instead.
How much does the new Mac Studio cost?
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Disclaimer: This review and its visuals were created with the help of AI. Some links may be affiliate links – we may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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