lorin schultz

mr minsky said:

Great article - thanks. Did you (or will you) get a chance to check out the TB3 ports (bandwidth constraints, which ports go to which controller, why only 1x 5K monitor and not 2 since there are supposedly 2 controllers ...)?

Mike Wuerthele said:

lorin schultz said:

vadimyuryev said:

larz2112 said:

Great info and article. It's nice to see that the new Mac mini does a decent job of managing the CPU performance and throttling. Did the fan get noisy during this testing? I ask because I use my Mac for music production, and a noisy Mac mini would not be welcome when recording vocals.

It was surprisingly quiet. I think quieter than either the 13" or 15" 2018 MacBook Pro. 
But of course, it's subjective. You may think it's loud. 

How does the noise level compare (subjectively) to the 2014 version under similar load?

I don't have a 2014 anymore, so I can't compare it directly to that one, but I can say that it is a bit quieter than my i7 2012 under load, and a lot quieter than a 5,1 12-core Mac Pro under load.

Mike Wuerthele said:

lorin schultz said:

nht said:

mike54 said:

"The office was a steady 21C throughout the duration of the test." - Thanks for mentioning the ambient temperature. That is quite cool though even for an office. With temperatures >32C for half of the year here, it won't bode well for the thermals.

"Unfortunately, graphics performance is where the Mac Mini suffers" - Your dead right. And buying an eGPU to make up for it is not a reason for the low spec internal graphics.

After 4 years of nothing, Apple had the time and certainly the resources for a re-design to improve thermals, to add in better graphics (or at least an option) and with the capability for an optional fan filter. (I know some companies stack these, but using this is an excuse)

Disappointed in the almost relative minimal effort Apple has put into this, and far from the best that Apple could of done and is capable of. It seems to me a half-hearted effort and far from reflects what this company could and should do. For those want it, it's Apple only reasonably priced headless mac they offer.

Add a GPU and the mini performs worse from a CPU perspective and other than turn it into a jet turbine or much larger you can’t fix that because physics.

An eGPU is an excellent engineering trade off as not everyone needs one and the performance hit is the same as cramming it into a thermally challenged chassis like the iMac or MBP.

Apple did an excellent job and these results show that.

I don't know if I heard this in the keynote or read it here, but somebody claimed the most common uses for the mini don't include a monitor at all. If that's true, there's not much point in making buyers pay for graphics capability they'll never use. Particularly when it has Thunderbolt 3, which allows those who want more graphics grunt to buy whatever they want and just plug it in.

Anecdotally, about half of the hundreds of Mac minis I've supported since the launch of the G4 have been headless, with probably half of those remote accessed into from another machine.

nht said:

mike54 said:

"The office was a steady 21C throughout the duration of the test." - Thanks for mentioning the ambient temperature. That is quite cool though even for an office. With temperatures >32C for half of the year here, it won't bode well for the thermals.

"Unfortunately, graphics performance is where the Mac Mini suffers" - Your dead right. And buying an eGPU to make up for it is not a reason for the low spec internal graphics.

After 4 years of nothing, Apple had the time and certainly the resources for a re-design to improve thermals, to add in better graphics (or at least an option) and with the capability for an optional fan filter. (I know some companies stack these, but using this is an excuse)

Disappointed in the almost relative minimal effort Apple has put into this, and far from the best that Apple could of done and is capable of. It seems to me a half-hearted effort and far from reflects what this company could and should do. For those want it, it's Apple only reasonably priced headless mac they offer.

Add a GPU and the mini performs worse from a CPU perspective and other than turn it into a jet turbine or much larger you can’t fix that because physics.

An eGPU is an excellent engineering trade off as not everyone needs one and the performance hit is the same as cramming it into a thermally challenged chassis like the iMac or MBP.

Apple did an excellent job and these results show that.

larz2112 said:

Great info and article. It's nice to see that the new Mac mini does a decent job of managing the CPU performance and throttling. Did the fan get noisy during this testing? I ask because I use my Mac for music production, and a noisy Mac mini would not be welcome when recording vocals.

GeorgeBMac said:

lorin schultz said:

GeorgeBMac said:

lorin schultz said:

GeorgeBMac said:

mac_dog said:

Or, it could be that Apple wants to maintain some semblance of quality control. And how does someone infer “planned obsolescence”? All that does is fuel the fire of apple’s detractors. 

Yes, quite true...

Even here at ai in a recent article on upgrading the MacMini (probably in the comments) we were told that we should re-install the original memory in the Mac Mini after we break it and ask Apple to fix it for us under warranty -- so Apple wouldn't know we were doing some DIY on it.

And that's from the cult of the faithful!

You've got the actions right but not the intent.

You're right, the advice is If you have third-party RAM in your Mac, you should put the stock Apple RAM back in before sending the machine to Apple for repair. The reason for that is not to be deceptive, though. It's to allow an orderly, thorough, timely diagnostic and repair process. First, it's possible the third-party RAM is the problem. Putting the stock RAM back in will expose that. Second, since Apple justifiably won't assess products it didn't sell, leaving third-party parts in the machine just delays getting the problem resolved.

Apple doesn't care if you install third-party RAM. All they're saying is don't expect them to fix it while components outside their control are installed. That's reasonable.

Uhhh, yeh....   That's the theory....

But, when you just broke the machine and you're trying to get Apple to fix it for you, 3rd party memory is a dead giveaway that you busted it.   I doubt you'll much sympathy at the genius bar.

If the user breaks the machine, it will be pretty obvious with or without the presence of third-party RAM.

The point is there is no rule against a user installing their own RAM, period. If you're like me and do damage in the process, that's on you. If you install your own RAM and the machine fails for reasons not related to you doing that, Apple will cover it. When the optical drive failed in my cheese grater, no one at the Apple Store even mentioned that I'd forgotten to swap out the third-party RAM I'd installed. First, it wasn't relevant to the issue. Second, Apple had expressly blessed third-party upgrades by providing the slots. They could have made me go home and reinstall the factory RAM before they assessed it (and that would be fair), but the fact that I'd changed it didn't affect the warranty.

Agreed, that it's not inherently the 3rd party RAM (although Apple can rightly refuse to work on it if the machine has been modified). 

The point (at least my point) is that upgrading the RAM in a 2018 MacMini is a difficult and risky task that invites permanent damage to the machine -- particularly if you, like most, don't have all the training, skills and special equipment needed to do it correctly.

So, people take it back to Apple and expect them to fix it -- perhaps under warrenty.  Apple is well within their rights to either refuse or to charge accordingly.