- Yesterday at 8:45 p.m.
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- Medhi Naitmazi
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It was THE surprise of yesterday’s Apple event, the latest chip in the M1 family, the M1 Ultra processor. For now, this chip will only be available for the all-new Mac Studio – a desktop computer that sits between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro. While waiting for the first deliveries scheduled for March 18, taking a closer look at the specifications of this new device, we can see that the version of the Mac Studio equipped with the M1 Ultra chip weighs a kilo more than the M1 Max version. And Apple just explained why.
What weighs so heavily in the Mac Studio M1 Ultra
In an email to The Verge, Apple explained that the two M1 Max chips alone do not add up to the extra kilo (900 grams precisely) reported on the data sheet. A spokesperson told our colleagues:
They have the same 370W power supply. The extra weight is because M1 Ultra has a larger copper thermal module, while M1 Max has an aluminum heatsink.
It only means that the M1 Ultra uses heavier metal in its heatsink. You should know that at room temperature, copper weighs 8.96 grams per cubic centimeter, while aluminum weighs 2.70 grams. This means that, if the design of the heatsinks is exactly the same, the copper version would be more than three times heavier than the aluminum one.
Here are the dimensions of the Mac Studio:
- Height : 9.5cm
- Lenght : 19.7cm
- Depth : 19.7cm
- Weight (M1 Max): 2.7kg
- Weight (M1 Ultra): 3.6kg
Copper tends to be more widely used in high performance applications. Copper, being denser, has greater thermal mass and conductivity than aluminum, allowing it to retain more heat and move it more quickly. That’s why it’s not uncommon for PC heat sinks to use a copper plate directly above the CPU. Apple knows that by placing two M1 Max chips side by side (to create the M1 Ultra), the heat will be much more important, which is why it has created an equally efficient heatsink to combat this phenomenon.
The M1 Ultra has a 20-core processor that offers 16 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores. With a 32-core neural engine, it can perform 22 trillion operations per second, and with a 64-core GPU, it’s eight times faster than the M1 chip introduced in 2020. Additionally, the M1 Ultra was able to beat Intel’s 28-core Mac Pro in its Geekbench score.