Here’s why YOU should buy this INTEL Mac!

With Apple Silicon stealing the spotlight in the tech world these days, I think it's time to highlight a hidden gem in the Apple lineup of yore. Specifically, it's been my primary machine for nearly 3 years, my 18 core iMac Pro! Prices on these machines have plummeted ever since the Mac Studio with M1 Max and M1 Ultra launched in March, and now they've become some of the best deals on used Apple Macs you can find! Maybe your next high end Mac could be a loaded iMac Pro instead of a Mac Studio and Studio Display, who knows!

Gear:
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[theartistchair_]

Nothing beats the space gray colour and the Xeon’s and Vega 64 graphics in these things are still bananas fast compared to some M1 family chips… that’s incredible that prices are going down!

[Epicgamer_Mac]

100% love your take here Luke. Can’t believe how good of value this is when you really break it down like you did in this video. And the speakers in this thing might just be one of the most impressive I’ve ever heard in a computer, aside from the new MacBook Pros (simply bc of their size-to-speaker volume/quality ratio). Thanks for taking the time to make this vid instead of just up and selling the iMac Pro.

[krunge]

I bought an iMac Pro base model 1, 5 year ago but after about six months I noticed that the fans started spinning up a lot more (=more noise) and temperatures rising. First I thought it was because of recent MacOs updates but some months later just for fun I tried blowing condensed air into the vents and exhausts on the back and holy moly a ton of dust came out of it alongside big chunks of fluff. After that "cleaning" the temperature and noise has gone down a lot so I highly recommend this procedure if you like me don't have the skills to open it up completely.

Also another thing I really like about this Intel based iMac Pro is that I can still use boot camp for gaming 😀

[andrewm]

Every time I see the space grey and black accessories it makes me wish Apple brought them back. Hopefully they do so with the 202X iMac Pro.

[deltah]

Hi Luke, thanks for this fantastic video. I just recently bought an Imac Pro 8C with 64GB Ram, 2TB SSD and the Vega 58 for €2100 here in Hamburg, Germany. I am super happy with it, I mounted it to the wall behind my desk and I love the space grey colour of it. It still has enough power to run Battlefield V at 1440p, Anno1800 and even X-Plane 11 at decent settings via Bootcamp. The display is phenomenal and the webcam is fantastic. I wanted to replace my 16" macbook pro (2019) with it but sadly noone wants to buy that laptop for more than €1300. For that little money I will keep it, since that also is a very good machine. Keep up your very good work. Always looking forward to looking new videos. Best regards, Dominik.

[transitengineer]

This is an outstanding post! When Apple, Inc. discontinued the 27-inch iMac Pro and their prices started to drop, I was saying to others ow appears to be the time to buy. Then after Apple, Inc. discontinued the last version of the 27-inch iMac and the prices of the iMac Pro's continued to drop, I said time to jog not walk and pick-up a used model. But, after the introduction of the new Mac Studio and Studio Display and the prices of the iMac Pro's kept dropping, I said from the "hill tops" ...time to buy a used iMac Pro. A few months ago, I had to decide between a $2, 200 base 8-core 27-inch iMac Pro and a 2014, $1, 200 trash can size 6-core D-700 Mac Pro. Only picked-up the 2014, Mac Pro because, I all ready had an Apple 27-inch Cinema LED (none thunderbolt) display. However, within the next three (3)-year's, I will be added for sure the 27-inch iMac Pro to my desktop collection (smile...smile).

[RicardoDawson]

Hmmm, i would say that the 2020 iMac 27" 5K is the better deal as it outperforms the base iMac Pro in most tests while being cheaper. I bought one yesterday to upgrade my (similar) 2015 model.

[leonardrillig]

The iMac pro is a wonderful package. Right now, there's nothing like it. Sure there is the smaller M1 iMac but I really prefer the luxury, throwing any peripherals I like. 4x USB-A's + 4 USB-C's + Card Reader + Headphone Jack on the back and all that with a beautiful 5K display. That alone makes it an absolute work horse. Performance wise it's more than enough for most 'PRO' use cases.

[WarriorsPhoto]

I am not surprised this computer is still decent. These high end Macs do last a long time. I was shocked how many years I was able to get out of my 2010 Mac Pro. Good video Luke and see you at the next one.

[MaxTechOfficial]

Completely agree! You can score some killer deals on these (better than 2020 iMacs) so as long as you don't need really fast single-core performance these can do a great job. We just sold ours to a photographer for $2000 and it's going to do a great job for lightroom classic.

[bigbubba]

2:12 Indeed, Luke. I'm watching this whilst playing modded Minecraft with 84 mods on my 2009 8-core, 14 gigs of ram Mac Pro. The machine is quite capable of gaming despite being close to a decade and a half old

[hollowtrance]

I bought my iMac Pro 14 core with 64gb ram vega 64x and 1 tb ssd for $2800 total after taxes in September of 2021 off ebay. fantastic deal. Its a juggernaut. Theyre even cheaper now, so i should have waited a little longer but theyre great computers.

[zgold]

I'm a freelance video editor and colorist, so I mainly work in Adobe and Davinci Resolve. I have a 16 inch MacBook Pro, the 8 core i9 version with 64 gb of ram and 8gb of video ram. Works well for a mobile machine. But my desktop was getting pretty weak, its just a normal 5k iMac from 2017, quad core i7 with 32 gb of ram and the graphics isnt too bad with the radeon 580 also with 8gb of video ram. I was considering the Mac studio and getting a separate monitor. But ultimately for various reasons and the price, I felt it best to skip it for now. I had considered the iMac Pro, as it felt like a solid middle ground between the Mac Pro and what I have now, especially with the machine I needed basically being the holdover until my next big upgrade. But admittedly with iMacs, I don't like buying used. Never know how well someone cared for it, mainly in regards to utilizing fan speed apps to keep the cpu as cool as possible (apple allows CPU temps to get way too high), and also dust build up. I thought about refurbished from apple, but it was still very expensive. So I did some digging, and OWC is selling refurbished iMac Pros right now, for less than half the price. Some of the specifics confuse me, but OWC is obviously very reliable so I trusted them, and I don't regret it. What it seems is that I got refurbished unit, sealed by apple, but then upgraded by OWC, so it's as close to a new machine as possible. All of these refurbished models come with the 10 core xeon(my personal favorite since it has the highest turbo boost and still above 3ghz base clock) and the radeon Vega 56 graphics card, and 1tb of storage. This tells me these are base model machines from 2019 when apple cut off the 8 core model. The nice part however is OWC will open the machine up and upgrade the ram for you. So I put in 128gb of ram. Buying this exact model from apple wouldve cost nearly $7000, I got it for $2500. It runs very well, installing a fan speed app and setting it to max speed when it begins to heat up keeps temps below 75C under load, and ultimately it just works great for what I do👍🔥

[armingeiss]

Hi Luke, great video and overview about difference between apple silicon and this last high power intel machine. Since 3 years i have moved from windows based Thinkpad workstation to an Macbook pro 15" both are using Intel technology, but MACOS is much efficiently and the windows 10 bootcamp was used less and less. Can you tell which wallpaper to you use at you PC comparison ?

[aelaan]

The microphone on the iMac Pro is WAY better. Amazing!! It is actually something I am keeping my eye out for one of these. The only thing is the newest ones are now already 2-3 years young, how long will Apple keep supporting the Intel platform.... These are big unknowns. At some point they will optimize the OS to no longer have support for X86.

[detailsmove]

I'm debating whether I should get an M2 Macbook Air with 16gb ram and 512gb hd for $1690 or a base M1 Macbook Pro with 16gb ram and 512gb hd for $1978. Any recommendations?

[alfredalcala]

Very informative video, Luke! Always enjoy the videos

[richardharrell]

Backward compatibility is a concern. Ventura has dropped the highly valued pre-butterfly Macs. I lived through the PowerPC to Intel (PowerBook to MacBook / black polymer to aluminum) transition. That was jarring and yet it had better backward compatibility than we are seeing now. At least that is how I remember it.

[DeTechTive]

Craziest part is that they're even cheaper in Belgium. I bought one with the same specs for 1675 euros (1704 dollars) and there are many of them for sale.

[guyjordan]

Comparing at price also gets us a better comparison at performance. However, how does your iMac Pro compare to a buffed up m1 iMac?