I'm not fond of MacPro7,1's steel frame because it looks like a mini
food trolley. Otherwise, it's pretty good. The cooling design is excellent, only possible with a system vendor as vertically integrated as Apple. I'm a believer of the next Mac Pro being a beast! Thus don't waste the R&D spent on MacPro7,1. Simply reuse and refine the chassis design. I do wish it looks a bit more boxy. All design refreshes currently are trending this way. So appears promising.
Some ballpark numbers of power consumption to put things in perspective:
Anandtech found M1 Max consumes about 92W when CPUs fully loaded and GPUs to the best they could (i.e. not fully loaded yet). So likely M2 Extreme (4x M2 Max) will be > 370W. The heatsink for the SoC is definitely going to be bigger than the one for Xeon processors. 28-core Xeon about 205W in sustained workload.
So 370W vs 205W.
Assume there are two slots for Apple dGPUs. What would be the power consumption? Anandtech had limited software to push M1 Max's GPU to 46W, meaning optimised software in future should be able to push higher. Let's assume M2 Max's GPU max out 60W. An Apple dGPU module of one 'M2 Ultra GPU' is 120W and a Duo version is 240W. An Apple dGPU module of 'M2 Extreme GPU' is 240W and a Duo version is 480W!
So 120W, 240W, 480W for Apple dGPUs.
There is little headroom for Apple to scale down on the chassis.
Some elements of MacPro5,1 such as CPU tray may come back in the new Mac Pro. Or shall we call it SoC tray? A SoC tray facilitates easier SKU management and increases repairability of the machine. If Apple decide to abandon dual side logic board as you suggested, then seems to me a SoC tray very likely and will house the SoC, LPDDR5 chips, DDR5 DIMMs, and two sticks for SSD.
I’m too afraid to even think about pricing…
I would think the contrary. Expect a cheaper entry ticket. But get your limbs ready for customisation.
M2 Extreme SoCs should have three main variants: M2 Max equivalent, M2 Ultra equivalent, and M2 Extreme (4x M2 Max). Perhaps the option of M2 Max equivalent won't be available.
Base model starts with 'M2 Max' or 'M2 Ultra' version of the M2 Extreme SoC, 512GB SSD, an empty chassis with empty DIMM slots, empty dGPUs slots, empty PCIe slots.
Should be cheaper than current MacPro7,1, right?