The mac mini is the best macintosh computer, actually the best PC, I've ever owned. I own a 2009 mac mini, and last year I bought a 2012 quadcore i7 mac mini and upgraded it to 16 GB RAM.
Couldn't be happier with it, yes sometimes the fan is hearable (a little) when it renders my videos, while the 2009 was pure silence due to not having a fan, but the speed-increase and ergo saved time makes up for it multiple times over.
Couldn't be happier with it, yes sometimes the fan is hearable (a little) when it renders my videos, while the 2009 was pure silence due to not having a fan, but the speed-increase and ergo saved time makes up for it multiple times over.
The 2009 has a fan. There is no way to passively cool those chips. It may not have ramped up to an audible level.
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
64GB requires all 16GB sticks, but more importantly I'm pretty sure the 4K 21" imac has soldered ram. As I have mentioned before, ram requirements haven't grown that fast. It's just that in some areas that involve editing large files such as image and video editing, the requirement was really there for years.
A lot of software would write things to disk similar to swaps in virtual memory swaps. If a lot of ram is available, there's no need to do that. Ram performs better anyway, but most users won't catch up to those requirements for a long time.
When I had my 2010 Mac Mini with 8 GB or RAM I very rarely ran out of RAM. I edit photos although I don't edit videos, so that might be part of the reason. I now use a 2014 Mac Mini with 16 GB of RAM. I only got 16 GB because I could not upgrade the memory once I bought it. I pretty much never use all the RAM. I have used this Mac for a year and I expect to keep using it for at least three more years.
When I had my 2010 Mac Mini with 8 GB or RAM I very rarely ran out of RAM. I edit photos although I don't edit videos, so that might be part of the reason.
If you did this 10 years ago, you might have been stuck with 4GB of ram, and my explanation would have been similar. Both of those applications vary immensely in terms of their requirements from user to user. They blow up very quickly if you use a number of history states and a large number of layers/nodes. The application has to somehow cache a large number of states so that they can be accessed if necessary with minimal lag.
Also note that some applications do allow you to specify the maximum amount of ram available to that application. If it's set at a reasonable level they won't drain all your ram, but they will write things to disk. My earlier point was that some of the potentially memory hungry applications today use it to improve performance. They can simply work with less by doing a greater number of swaps at the application level.
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
If you can't identify a need for all that extra RAM you likely would be wasting money buying a Mac simply because it has upgradeable RAM. There are people that can use all the RAM that they can throw in a machine, the majority of the people out there can't however. With 8 or 16 GB of RAM the machine will be very outdated for most people before RAM becomes an issue.
This is especially the case right now when we will start to see major transitions to new technology in the next few Mac releases. For example video cards will likely have HBM installed in a year or two. The transition to USB-C / TB3 has been half assed to say the least but eventually that technology will be rolled into the Macs. There are other things to be concerned about but the reality is that we are near a major restructuring of PC architecture and that means that next year or possibly 2017 current Mac technology will look very very dated.
Actually as I got to know more about enterprise stuff, I got to think Mac Mini may actually continue to exist, rather then disappeared as I previously thought. It would have disappeared if it was still Steve Jobs's Apple, but under Tim Cook, Apple wanted to have a piece of Enterprise.
The Kuwait iPhone 6s and 6 Plus help both new and seasoned iPhone users rediscover the thrill of owning a smartphone. The 64-bit processor makes video, games, and web pages load quickly and smoothly, and the Retina HD display supports an impressive level of color and clarity in every image. Kuwait user love this phone. thanks a lot apple.
Actually as I got to know more about enterprise stuff, I got to think Mac Mini may actually continue to exist, rather then disappeared as I previously thought. It would have disappeared if it was still Steve Jobs's Apple, but under Tim Cook, Apple wanted to have a piece of Enterprise.
At work they have been implementing compact PC's similar to the Mini from Lenovo. For an office desktop they aren't too bad. However Apple won't do well in enterprise if they can't keep the hardware current and give buyers the confidence that the Mini will be around for awhile. If not the mini as it is today at least something similarly downscaled designed to work with third party monitors If there is one thing obvious about business that is the need to size the monitor to the task.
There were people who said they'd never want to switch from IMB to Intel. If Apple can do a switch-over as seamlessly as they did that and ARM reached desktop-rivaling performance, then why not?
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
I don't think the Mini is ever going to be what you want/need.
I've thought that maybe a 5K iMac.
2016 is the year GPUs get a serious kick in the pants performance wise for 4k and 5k display pushing. Who knows. Maybe intel may get out of bed and give us a real cpu update.
I'd use the extra time to save up and get what you really want. At least you're entertaining the though.
A 5k retina with quality gpu, i7 processor with 16 gigs of ram with SSD.
You'll be happy. Rather than wishing for a Mac Mini that may or may never come. It's always going to be that bit limited.
Wait on the rest of 2016. There's a lot going on tech wise that will give whatever system you buy a real boost in ports, system, memory, SSD (drives will be getting cheaper and faster), cpu, gpu...
2015 was pretty static tech wise. Look at the current 395 ati chip in the iMac. Just a rebadged 295 with the 'same' performance. SSDs are still pricey with Apple creaming a creamium. Intel have done nothing much with cpu gains. Memory? Still 8 gigs as standard.
I don't have high expectations for the mini. I didn't get a 2012 quad-core because I just got my dual-core mini a year earlier and was happy with it once I upgraded with 8 GB of RAM and put in my own SSD (a Samsung 470 128 GB). I guess all I want is for them to update it with a dual core processor that has the Iris 540 or Iris 550 graphics. I thought about getting a 21.5" iMac but the max is only 16 GB of RAM and you can't upgrade it yourself.
The only thing that would make the 27" 5K retina perfect for me is an nVidia graphics card. The 960M would be awesome. I'd be sold but the issue would just be affording it. : p
If a Mac mini were to be released in 2016 (probably in the later part of the year), what would be the most likely graphics chip to be used in it?
I honestly don't think it would be the Iris Pro 580 as that would be reserved for the retina 4K iMac given that it's already using the Iris Pro 6200. It's also likely the 580 will be used in the 15" MacBook Pro but hopefully there will be two models utilizing both the 580 and a dedicated chip.
This leaves two choices the Iris 540 or Iris 550. The Iris 540 is attached to two i5 U chips and two i7 U chips that operate at 15 watts. The 550 is attached to one i3, two i5, and one i7 U chips at 28 watts and those would probably go in the 13" MacBook Pro.
Came to the Mini after a 27" iMac out of warranty mother board failure.
I have the I-7 and bumped the RAM from 4 to 8. After one of the 1T Hard disks failed, I updated to SSD 1T.
I LIKE it. Really notice when machine has to go to the other 1T to get something there.
So next: Bump RAM to 16+ and stay with SSD for performance. Old HD are cheep but I really notice the performance. I suspect a Fusion drive would show the same performance hit when going off the SSD side especially since it is not as big as my full 1T SSD.
Driving a 32" monitor off the HDMI.
Just need another 12+ USB's to feed all the things connected.
Would I have paid 2X as much when I bought it for the SSD? At the time NO!
Even now I would cringe but know what I would be missing without it.
The idea of the HTPC isn't dead. See I feel Apple didn't go with a quad-core Mac mini partly because of Intel's focus on the GPU on certain chips. The mobile quad-core chips had HD 4600 and were also 2 watts higher than the Ivy Bridge mobile quads.
End of year found our company needing to spend a little money. Went for the top of the line Mac Mini Apple store stock model (8GB and 1TB fusion drive). Not enough time to wait for order delivery to spend the cash. I hope for one they never discontinue the Mac Mini. Our new one is happy on a shelf running Rumpus as an FTP server, Web Server and Mail. Most reliable performance in a small package format you can find.
I wish they had not starting hard soldering the Ram on the motherboard, I would have loved the option to have taken the Ram higher like I did the previous mini we had, but 8GB should be good for its lifetime.
Comments
The mac mini is the best macintosh computer, actually the best PC, I've ever owned. I own a 2009 mac mini, and last year I bought a 2012 quadcore i7 mac mini and upgraded it to 16 GB RAM.
Couldn't be happier with it, yes sometimes the fan is hearable (a little) when it renders my videos, while the 2009 was pure silence due to not having a fan, but the speed-increase and ergo saved time makes up for it multiple times over.
Couldn't be happier with it, yes sometimes the fan is hearable (a little) when it renders my videos, while the 2009 was pure silence due to not having a fan, but the speed-increase and ergo saved time makes up for it multiple times over.
The 2009 has a fan. There is no way to passively cool those chips. It may not have ramped up to an audible level.
The 2009 has a fan. There is no way to passively cool those chips. It may not have ramped up to an audible level.
Yeah i also understand that it may not have ramped up to an audible level.
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
64GB requires all 16GB sticks, but more importantly I'm pretty sure the 4K 21" imac has soldered ram. As I have mentioned before, ram requirements haven't grown that fast. It's just that in some areas that involve editing large files such as image and video editing, the requirement was really there for years.
A lot of software would write things to disk similar to swaps in virtual memory swaps. If a lot of ram is available, there's no need to do that. Ram performs better anyway, but most users won't catch up to those requirements for a long time.
When I had my 2010 Mac Mini with 8 GB or RAM I very rarely ran out of RAM. I edit photos although I don't edit videos, so that might be part of the reason. I now use a 2014 Mac Mini with 16 GB of RAM. I only got 16 GB because I could not upgrade the memory once I bought it. I pretty much never use all the RAM. I have used this Mac for a year and I expect to keep using it for at least three more years.
When I had my 2010 Mac Mini with 8 GB or RAM I very rarely ran out of RAM. I edit photos although I don't edit videos, so that might be part of the reason.
If you did this 10 years ago, you might have been stuck with 4GB of ram, and my explanation would have been similar. Both of those applications vary immensely in terms of their requirements from user to user. They blow up very quickly if you use a number of history states and a large number of layers/nodes. The application has to somehow cache a large number of states so that they can be accessed if necessary with minimal lag.
Also note that some applications do allow you to specify the maximum amount of ram available to that application. If it's set at a reasonable level they won't drain all your ram, but they will write things to disk. My earlier point was that some of the potentially memory hungry applications today use it to improve performance. They can simply work with less by doing a greater number of swaps at the application level.
If you can't identify a need for all that extra RAM you likely would be wasting money buying a Mac simply because it has upgradeable RAM. There are people that can use all the RAM that they can throw in a machine, the majority of the people out there can't however. With 8 or 16 GB of RAM the machine will be very outdated for most people before RAM becomes an issue.
This is especially the case right now when we will start to see major transitions to new technology in the next few Mac releases. For example video cards will likely have HBM installed in a year or two. The transition to USB-C / TB3 has been half assed to say the least but eventually that technology will be rolled into the Macs. There are other things to be concerned about but the reality is that we are near a major restructuring of PC architecture and that means that next year or possibly 2017 current Mac technology will look very very dated.
Actually as I got to know more about enterprise stuff, I got to think Mac Mini may actually continue to exist, rather then disappeared as I previously thought. It would have disappeared if it was still Steve Jobs's Apple, but under Tim Cook, Apple wanted to have a piece of Enterprise.
The Kuwait iPhone 6s and 6 Plus help both new and seasoned iPhone users rediscover the thrill of owning a smartphone. The 64-bit processor makes video, games, and web pages load quickly and smoothly, and the Retina HD display supports an impressive level of color and clarity in every image. Kuwait user love this phone. thanks a lot apple.
At work they have been implementing compact PC's similar to the Mini from Lenovo. For an office desktop they aren't too bad. However Apple won't do well in enterprise if they can't keep the hardware current and give buyers the confidence that the Mini will be around for awhile. If not the mini as it is today at least something similarly downscaled designed to work with third party monitors If there is one thing obvious about business that is the need to size the monitor to the task.
There were people who said they'd never want to switch from IMB to Intel. If Apple can do a switch-over as seamlessly as they did that and ARM reached desktop-rivaling performance, then why not?
I'd like a new Mac mini but I'm wondering if I should just get a 4k or 5k iMac. At least with the 5k iMac, I can upgrade the memory and have it for a while longer. 16 GB is good for a long time but I can have up to 64 GB in this thing. I'll give it some time and think about it and see what happens.
I don't think the Mini is ever going to be what you want/need.
I've thought that maybe a 5K iMac.
2016 is the year GPUs get a serious kick in the pants performance wise for 4k and 5k display pushing. Who knows. Maybe intel may get out of bed and give us a real cpu update.
I'd use the extra time to save up and get what you really want. At least you're entertaining the though.
A 5k retina with quality gpu, i7 processor with 16 gigs of ram with SSD.
You'll be happy. Rather than wishing for a Mac Mini that may or may never come. It's always going to be that bit limited.
Wait on the rest of 2016. There's a lot going on tech wise that will give whatever system you buy a real boost in ports, system, memory, SSD (drives will be getting cheaper and faster), cpu, gpu...
Lemon Bon Bon.
2015 was pretty static tech wise. Look at the current 395 ati chip in the iMac. Just a rebadged 295 with the 'same' performance. SSDs are still pricey with Apple creaming a creamium. Intel have done nothing much with cpu gains. Memory? Still 8 gigs as standard.
Big meh.
Lemon Bon Bon.
The only thing that would make the 27" 5K retina perfect for me is an nVidia graphics card. The 960M would be awesome. I'd be sold but the issue would just be affording it. : p
I have the I-7 and bumped the RAM from 4 to 8.
After one of the 1T Hard disks failed, I updated to SSD 1T.
I LIKE it.
Really notice when machine has to go to the other 1T to get something there.
So next: Bump RAM to 16+ and stay with SSD for performance. Old HD
are cheep but I really notice the performance. I suspect a Fusion drive would show
the same performance hit when going off the SSD side especially since it is not
as big as my full 1T SSD.
Driving a 32" monitor off the HDMI.
Just need another 12+ USB's to feed all the things connected.
Would I have paid 2X as much when I bought it for the SSD? At the time NO!
Even now I would cringe but know what I would be missing without it.
I wish they had not starting hard soldering the Ram on the motherboard, I would have loved the option to have taken the Ram higher like I did the previous mini we had, but 8GB should be good for its lifetime.