Mac Pro 2019

The 2019 Mac Pro marked Apple's successful comeback to a fully expandable, professional-grade Mac after the unsuccessful cylindrical design from the previous generation. In numerous ways, the 2019 Mac Pro line is one of the most expandable Macs ever released by Apple. With twelve RAM slots and eight PCIe slots, it offered remarkable capabilities for professional users.

This particular model -- the Mac Pro "Eight Core" 3.5 (2019) -- features a single 3.5 GHz Eight Core Xeon W (3223) processor with Turbo Boost reaching 4.0 GHz and 24.5MB of cache and originally was equipped with 32GB of RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and AMD Radeon Pro 580X graphics with 8GB of GDDR5 memory (as of March 8, 2022, Apple updated the standard configuration to a 512 GB SSD and an AMD Radeon Pro W5500X with 8GB of GDDR6 memory).

In its default configuration, connectivity options include two USB 3 ports (via a pre-installed Apple I/O card), four Thunderbolt 3 ports (two on the Apple I/O card and two at the top of the chassis), two HDMI 2.0 ports (on the video card), two 10Gb Ethernet ports and a 3.5 mm headphone jack with headset support along with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. Additionally, additional connectivity can be expanded using PCIe expansion cards.

As the base model of the highly anticipated 2019 Mac Pro tower, this machine marked a triumphant return to expandability. [6, 30] The 8-core Xeon W processor offered a high clock speed, making it very capable for a wide range of professional tasks, from graphic design to audio production. [6, 17] While positioned as the "entry-level" model, its performance was anything but, and it was praised for providing a powerful and, most importantly, a modular platform that could be expanded and upgraded over time. It was welcomed as a fantastic starting point for pros re-entering the Mac Pro ecosystem. [36]