Current Mac mini Performance Question

feynman

So I am putting together my entertainment server (all my music which is about 155 days worth), movies (about three hundred plus movies) and TV on DVD (which is about 50 or so) and I would like to get a Mac mini attached to RAID and I was wondering if the 1.6 GHz Core Duo with 2 GBs of memory would be able to be smooth enough to handle all that media.



The system would serve no other purpose but to house and play the media.



When I was using iTunes on my ancient G4 400 MHz it would choke and when you plug in your iPod forget about it. iTunes runs pretty well with all the music but I do not have any other media in there besides podcasts (and more than a thousand of em at that) and it's a G5 2.0 GHz with 512 MBs of memory.



Anyway, just looking for a cheap but strong entertainment server and just need your advice on the configuration I mentioned above. Thanks!

ipeon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feynman


iTunes runs pretty well with all the music but I do not have any other media in there besides podcasts (and more than a thousand of em at that) and it's a G5 2.0 GHz with 512 MBs of memory.

You lost me there... "and it's a G5 2.0 GHz with 512 MBs of memory"

feynman

Quote:

Originally Posted by iPeon


You lost me there... "and it's a G5 2.0 GHz with 512 MBs of memory"

How did I lose you there? That's my current machine, not entertainment server. Oh, I guess it's a 2.1 GHz, my apologies.

marvin

The Mini would be fine though I'm curious as to why you'd put 2GB Ram in your media center and use just 512MB in your main machine. It should be the other way round but I'd put 1GB minimum in both.



One thing you should note is that the Front Row in Tiger is terrible compared to the one in Leopard. If you won't be using Front Row, it should be a decent little media center - also don't be surprised to see the Mini keeping up to speed with your G5 in running general apps, so you can use it to help out with encoding tasks.

feynman

Thanks for the response Marvin.



I plan on updating my personal at some point, just been lazy but I do plan on it



Oh I won't be using FrontRow, just iTunes and maybe eventually an Apple TV. Basically it will just be running iTunes 24/7 and no other applications. Heck I will probably do a reformat/install with just the main applications that I would need and iTunes and not have anything else on the system.