Mac Pro Teardown: An Apple Rig You Can Actually Tinker With

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It looks like a waste paper bin, costs a fortune and is, perhaps, the best workstation you’ve ever owned. But what lurks beneath that shiny black shell?

Fortunately, you must ponder no longer, because iFixit has kindly ripped apart the new Mac Pro and spread its guts out on the floor for all to see. Here are some of the highlights:

• On first look, the build of this thing looks promising: simply sliding the lock switch allows you to remove the outer casing. Might this be… repairable?
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, dual graphics cards dominate the inside, flanked by RAM and sandwiching an SSD.
• Its RAM is, wait for it… easily accessible and replaceable! Only one screw need be removed to get to the SSD, too, while four need to come out to swap over the graphics cards.
• Even the CPU is user-replaceable, with a bit of fiddling.
• It’s rated for 100-240 volts AC, which means you can travel with it. If that’s your thing?
• Inside, a giant triangular heat sink cools the graphics cards and CPU.
• The whole lot is tied together at the bottom using a proprietary, circular daughterboard.

All in, the new Mac Pro is easily opened and (fairly) easily fiddled with. Certainly, it’s a far cry from Apple’s laptops, and that’s enough to snag it an iFixit repairability score of 8 out of 10. Now, go read the full teardown over on iFixit. [iFixit]