Apple has announced new versions of the Mac Mini and Mac Studio desktop computers, along with the introduction of the M6 and M5 Ultra chips. The update marks the first appearance of the M6 processor, which is expected to appear in future MacBooks. Neither desktop has changed physically, but the release brings these Macs back into stock after being difficult to purchase for most of the year. The new systems are available for preorder starting today, with shipments beginning September 22.
The Mac Mini now comes in two configurations: the M6 and the M5 Pro, skipping the M5 entirely. The M6 is the first Apple Silicon chip built on 2-nanometer process technology and features a 12-core CPU, a first for Apple, with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. Apple says the performance cores are designed to speed up multithreaded tasks while preserving efficiency, and claims the M6 is 20 percent faster than the M5 and 40 percent faster than the M4 in multithreaded performance. The GPU has two additional cores for a total of 12, and the M6 Mac Mini is the first to include Neural Accelerators for on-device AI, a feature that debuted in the M5 chip last year.
Apple claims the M6 Mac Mini is twice as fast as the M4 model, with higher gaming throughput and a dual 16-core Neural Engine that doubles peak AI performance. The price has increased by $200, with the base model starting at $899 for 16 GB of unified memory. The Mac Mini can be configured with up to 32 GB of unified memory, and Apple says bandwidth is now up to 170 GB per second, making the desktop 40 percent faster. The M5 Pro chip in the other Mac Mini model is the same processor currently found in the MacBook Pro.
The Mac Studio is also receiving a significant update, with two versions available: the M5 Max and the new M5 Ultra. This is the fourth generation of the Mac Studio, following the M3 Ultra and M3 Max models released in early 2025. Apple describes the M5 Ultra as its most powerful chip ever and the first to use a quad-die architecture. Previous Ultra chips connected two Max dies together using UltraFusion technology, but the M5 Max already has two dies, resulting in four total. The next version of UltraFusion increases inter-die bandwidth to over 4.4 TB per second, allowing the array to function as a single CPU.
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio has 36 CPU cores, an increase of four, and retains 80 GPU cores, the same as the M3 Ultra, but benefits from M5-specific GPU improvements. During a briefing, Apple discussed connecting multiple Mac Studios over Thunderbolt 5 to run frontier-level large language models with over a trillion parameters locally, allowing four systems to share memory. Apple said four Mac Studios can be connected this way and run over a standard wall outlet. Both the Mac Mini and Mac Studio will ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate preinstalled, and Apple indicated the September 22 shipping date does not reflect typical delivery times for these new systems.
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