alt Hacker Newsi believe you meant something like US$9999 for the 512GB. otherwise, i'm going to feel like QUITE the fool for choosing the 96GB variant at the same price
i believe you meant something like US$9999 for the 512GB. otherwise, i'm going to feel like QUITE the fool for choosing the 96GB variant at the same price
The referenced article specifically says $4000, but reading it more carefully now that's the UPGRADE price, not the full price of the machine.
Checking also...
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/05/mac-studio-no-512gb-ram...
... confirms that, but I'm not clear on which config the $4000 upgrade was starting from, but I think it's from the M3 Ultra's standard 96 GB.
Both articles say that previously 256 GB RAM was a $1600 upgrade from 96 GB but "now" is a $2000 upgrade.
Now "now" even 256 GB isn't available and 96 GB is the only option with the M3 Ultra.
M3 Ultra is currently $3999 with 96 GB and 28 core CPU 60 core GPU, or +$1500 with 32 core CPU 80 core GPU. If the base price was the same prior to March then yeah $3999+$1500+$4000 = $9499 would have been the price for a maxed out CPU/GPU/RAM config with a 1 TB disk.
I wasn't looking at Mac Studio prices back then so unfortunately articles such as these are my only clue. I'm still more than happy with my original M1 Mini with 16 GB RAM as I don't work with local LLMs — only on my little NUC-like RISC-V "K3" machine with 32 GB RAM and regular RISC-V cores with 1024 bit vectors as the "NPU", doing around 7 tok/s on 32B models while using 14W of power.