Help with spec of Mac Studio M2 Ultra…

[Shadow Puppets]

I purchased a M2 Ultra Studio from
Apple this week to test out in a quiet composer recording studio environment. The main aim was to determine how big a project we could run with the Ultra remaining basically silent.

Very impressed so far (both with insane performance and silence).

Question… the spec on the machine we’ve been testing is 24/60 M2 Ultra, 64gb ram, 1TB SSD…

… We would like custom order a machine and future proof it as much as possible so that would entail either 128 or 196GB ram and a 4tb or 8tb SSD.

Would increasing those thing affect the thermals of the machine to any noticeable degree? Do larger RAM and SSD sizes make it run hotter?

 

[casperes1996]

Would increasing those thing affect the thermals of the machine to any noticeable degree? Do larger RAM and SSD sizes make it run hotter?

Not to any noticeable degree. A little. But I don’t think it’d be enough to hear the difference in fan spin even if you had them lined up in adjacent rooms and walked back and forth. In most cases I don’t think there would be a difference in fan spin. The ram is very low powered and thus low in heat production. And unless there’s physically more chips of ram on die each larger chip will be very similar in total consumption.
The NAND chips for bigger SSD are spread out inside the machine so while it’s more total heat in the machine it’s not all condensed in one spot.

 

[Boil]

Since you currently have a M2 Ultra Mac Studio, I would wait and see if the next few months or so brings about the M3-series (M3 Max/M3 Ultra) of Mac Studios...?

 

[Shadow Puppets]

Not to any noticeable degree. A little. But I don’t think it’d be enough to hear the difference in fan spin even if you had them lined up in adjacent rooms and walked back and forth. In most cases I don’t think there would be a difference in fan spin. The ram is very low powered and thus low in heat production. And unless there’s physically more chips of ram on die each larger chip will be very similar in total consumption.
The NAND chips for bigger SSD are spread out inside the machine so while it’s more total heat in the machine it’s not all condensed in one spot.

Thanks for this. Trying to convince the boss to spring for as much ram and storage as possible 👍

 

[Shadow Puppets]

Since you currently have a M2 Ultra Mac Studio, I would wait and see if the next few months or so brings about the M3-series (M3 Max/M3 Ultra) of Mac Studios...?

I only “have” it as a test unit. We need a computer in the next few weeks, and the performance of the M2 Ultra is incredible 👍