You Can Finally Order a 512 GB Mac Studio (For the Price of a Car)
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Apple has just opened preorders for all of the new products announced this week, from Monday’s OLED iPad mini to the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display announced this afternoon. But it also has another slightly shocking surprise in store: the 512 GB Mac Studio is now available — and that single upgrade will cost you more than a completely tricked-out 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Although the new Mac Studio was unveiled in August and went up for preorder right away, it didn’t land in stores (or customers’ hands) until September 22. Perhaps more significantly, Apple also held back its highest-end 512 GB configuration.
To be clear, the “512 GB” here refers to the amount of unified memory in the Mac Studio, not the SSD storage. That’s a staggering amount of memory, of course, although it still pales in comparison to the old Intel Mac Pro, which could be configured with up to 1.5 TB of RAM.
It’s not the first time Apple has offered a 512 GB RAM configuration. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio that debuted in early 2025 raised the bar from the 192 GB cap of the old M2 Ultra model, but Apple quietly discontinued that highest-end configuration in April in the midst of skyrocketing chip costs.
Now, the 512 GB option has finally returned, but it’s clearer than ever how hard “RAMageddon” has hit.
When the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra debuted about 18 months ago, you could take it up to 512 GB for what we then called a “staggering $4,000.” A fully loaded Mac Studio in those days would have set you back $14,099, for the most powerful M3 Ultra chip with 512 GB RAM and a 16 TB SSD.
Today? That’s nearly $1,500 less than the cost of upgrading to 512 GB of RAM on the current model.
The 256 GB RAM upgrade that’s been available since the M5 Ultra launched in August already carried a $4,000 price tag. We could have expected the 512 GB configuration to double that, but it turns out we’d have been tragically wrong.
The cost of 512 GB of RAM on the new Mac Studio is an absolutely eye-watering $15,500. However, since you’ll also need the most powerful M5 Ultra chip to get there, there’s actually a $1,300 premium on top of that. Every other configuration is available with the 30/64-core M5 Ultra, but the 512 GB RAM requires that you move up to the 36/80-core version of the chip.
To bottom-line that, this means you’ll pay a minimum of $22,299 for a Mac Studio with 512 GB of RAM, assuming you’re content with a 1 TB SSD (which isn’t unreasonable, considering the wealth of Thunderbolt 5 ports). Still, if you want to go crazy and take that to the maximum 16 TB SSD, you’ll be looking at nearly $30,000 ($29,799, to be precise) — although Apple is happy to lease that to you for 36 months for only $697.21 a month. Or, you can finance it for 12 months for the price of a new iPhone Duo each month.
While preorders are now open, the first Mac Studio models in the 512 GB configuration aren’t expected to arrive until December 3.
