As expensive as a fully-loaded iMac Pro is, it’s actually well-priced

Today, Apple released the new iMac Pro that they announced back in June, and for Apple fans it's just one more thing to drool over. But with every new Apple product comes PC-faithful coming out of the woodwork ready to tell you how you're paying way too much for the same thing they could build on PC. "I could build the same thing for a quarter the price," is a common sentiment among PC users. In many cases, they might be right and even as an Apple fan, I'm willing to admit that. I generally say that I'm willing to pay more for the operating system. But in this case, Apple is actually pretty on point with their pricing, operating system aside. 

The iMac Pro’s standard configuration comes in at a healthy $4999, but that’s far from as much as you could pay for this desktop computing behemoth.

If you’re feeling particularly spendy, you could drop as much as $13,199 after maxing out the graphics card, storage and processor. That’s an absolute ton of money. That’s actually more than my car is presently worth, and more than half of what I would want to spend on a new one. It’s almost a down payment on a house.

But is it too much?

Turns out, making your own computer with comparable parts in PC format would actually cost you more. To get the CPU, CPU cooler, motherboard, memory, storage, video card, casing and power supply to match the specs of the new fully-loaded iMac Pro, you’re looking at about $13,687. Oh, and that doesn’t include a monitor, keyboard or mouse.

Sure, you could probably find some of these parts used for less, but then again you could probably find the iMac Pro used for less in a few months too. It’s not entirely fair to compare used pricing to new pricing.

Is the iMac Pro worth that kind of coin? Maybe not to me, maybe not to you, but to someone it surely is. But what is pretty clear is that it’s not asking too much for the power that it packs. Heck, it may actually be kind of a bargain.