Now that people have started to get their hands on the new Mac Pro, naturally the first thing they do is to tear it apart to see what makes it tick. Since the announcement of the Mac Pros specs and hardware, potential buyers have been lamenting the lack of user-upgradeable components in the sleek, black cylinder. It may be one of the reasons Apple was able to make it so small, but that is little consolation to pro users who are used to having more flexibility with their hardware. So far it was believed that the only internal part that could be upgraded was the memory. Apple expects all other expansion to be done through the Mac Pro’s six, high-speed Thunderbolt 2 ports.
AppleInsider points to a teardown of the Mac Pro by Other World Computing, an online retailer of technology products, discovered an interesting feature that Apple failed to mention;
“A closer look at the parts inside Apple’s late 2013 Mac Pro were offered in teardown photos published on Friday by Other World Computing. They show that the Intel Xeon processor found inside the Mac Pro is socketed and can be removed from the system, should a user choose to do so.”
It should be noted that this doesn’t ensure that Apple has any plans to offer processor upgrades, or that the hardware is capable of handling newer and faster processors, but we can always hold out hope. In fact, this really isn’t anything new. Many past tower models from Apple have had removable processors, but this was for repair purposes. I’ve worked on more than a few Macs that blew their processor for some reason and had to have them replaced, but you’d have to go through Apple to get the replacement.. Trying to put a different processor in those models typically resulted in a very unstable machine. I’m sure we’ll here more about this as people start to tinker with the hardware.
Do you have one of the new Mac Pros? Let us know in the comments and tell us what you think so far.