Malcolm Owen
The Studio Display features a lot of electronics behind its screen, a teardown of the new Apple monitor reveals, complete with a dual fan cooling system to thermally manage the dense screen.
Following the release of new Apple products, a teardown of the hardware usually ensues, showing all of the company's design choices for inside the devices. For the new Studio Display, it has gone through the same customary treatment via repair outfit iFixit.
Accessed by removing the screen, the Studio Display is shown to be a very densely-packed monitor. Housing a variety of components, including an A13 Bionic chip, 64GB of storage, and a six-speaker audio system, the monitor is packed with a lot of electronics.
In fact, at first glance, the new Studio Display may actually look more like a computer than Apple's new Intel-based iMac. Based purely on internal complexity, many people guessed that the Studio Display was a computer and the 24-inch iMac was a display.
While the Studio Display doesn't have the iMac "chin," it's certainly evident that Apple had to find places to put the circuit boards and other components used in the screen.
High in the assembly are a pair of fans, which are used to cool down the arrangement. This is not dissimilar to thermal management systems Apple used in earlier iMacs, such as the iMac Pro.
Also immediately visible once the screen is removed are the circuit boards, which congregate towards the base of the main unit. To the corners are speakers, while flex cables connect the 12-megapixel camera to the main board.
Speaking of the camera, the setup itself is virtually identical to the camera in the iPhone 11. The display itself is the same display as the one seen in the 5K iMac.
iFixit also notes that the Studio Display is about 50% thicker than the iMac, largely because of the internal power supply. If Apple went with an external power supply, the Studio Display could have been the same thickness as the 24-inch iMac.
The speaker setup in the new iMac is "impressive," iFixit notes. However, the speaker units are glued down, which could make removal or disassembly difficult.
Overall, the internals of the Studio Display and the monitor's build in general stands as an "impressive testament to Apple's ability to solve problems."
iFixit has yet to complete a full teardown of the device, however, so additional findings may be on the horizon.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
10 Comments
I’m still curious about the supply chain rumor that Apple had a discrete GPU in the works code named Lifuka in addition to what we now know as the M1 (Tonga), M1 Pro (Jade C-Chop), and M1 Max/Ultra (Jade C-Die) cores. The other chips were real products, so this must be one last surprise. Could it be a GPU for a Pro Display XDR 2 that uses on display processing to get around Thunderbolt 4 bandwidth limits? Could it be a Mac Pro add on card for ray tracing acceleration? A companion chip for an XR headset or handheld game console? Multiple of these things?
It is also strange that the Max has an extra disabled 16-core neural engine and the Ultra has extra 32-core neural engine. The extra neural engines are only disabled in software. They don’t seem to be used for binning. Maybe a secret feature Apple will turn on later? In theory it could be used for real-time raytracing. The matrix math is similar to ML. Maybe will be introduced in an upcoming release of Metal for immediate use?
Of course ifixit threw in their jab at the end about non-repairability. After looking at the Studio Display’s ultra thin power supply I’d rather trust Apple’s engineering staff than a mall repair person trying to fix any problem in this display. It’s built to last and not fall apart, especially with all the adhesive. Apple makes things that work and last, especially after getting rid of junk (Seagate) HDD. Other than frying their computers spilling water on them, the latest Macs should almost never need a repair. Want an upgrade, spend the money upfront.
Curious as to why the screen is the same old iMac screen. Those specs re contrast etc are nothing special anymore. Brightness is good, but overall not as good spec as the latest LG IPS panels.
So Apple Silicon Dev kit had an A12Z and could drive a XDR 6K display and be a reasonable Mac.
Studio display has A13 which is higher spec and benchmark CPU but about 20% down on GPU with a similar reduction in pixels to drive. The board design doesn't look like the video signal is skirting around the SOC to the panel but is being driven by the SOC.
Seems odd amount of power for the Webcam and speakers yet can't directly run the software you'd want the webcam and speakers for.