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My Next Mac Mini

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Re: My Next Mac Mini

#31

Post by rwmj »

nottorp wrote: post #17

Speaking of NUCs, are there any that are (a) quiet at load (b) have the PSU integrated in the case? Those are about the only redeeming qualities of a Mac Mini right now, and it pisses me off to no end that no one bothers with (b) on the Wintel side. Edit: please don't explain to me how a power brick that's sometimes as large as the NUC doesn't bother you, it does bother me.

The Gigabyte Brix [edit: the base model] is fanless, and if you use an SSD it's completely solid state. I have two next to me right now and they are completely silent as you would expect.

However it has a small external power brick. It's only about 1/4 the size of the machine (at least that's for the UK PSU).

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#32

Post by manarth »

orbitur wrote: post #4

Blog post leaves out an important point: is it easy to get macOS running on that particular model? edit: The mini hasn't competed on a purely specs/price level since, perhaps, its first year or two of existence. There have long been better, similarly sized options if you don't care about OS X.

According to the Lifehacker article on building a Hackintosh, the process is a lot less fiddly than it used to be, and a lot more hardware is now supported.

Other guides suggest that the NUC is mostly supported, bar a few issues (e.g. on-board mic doesn't work, not the infra-red sensor).

However, even if you have a totally legit paid-up copy of OS-X, it's only licensed for installing on Apple hardware.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#34

Post by finstell »

Nowadays, I kind of enjoy seeing posts about people abandoning Apple ecosystem. Although it's painful, I myself have been yet another avid fan of pretty much Apple offered, it feels like this is not going to last forever.

When they do the math, iPhone might seem the most lucrative (they seem not to care about anything else) but since they are killing the ecosystem with no Mac Pro, no Mac Mini and with so called pro MacBooks, developers will abandon Apple eventually. Even if iPhone becomes/remains the most technologically advanced smart phone on the market, it would be like a distant paradise island with no airports. Airplanes (developers and subsequently the end users) will be landing on alternative airports on emerging islands, letting them prosper. Consequently, Apple island will be deserted.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#35

Post by washadjeffmad »

rwmj wrote: post #12
Marazan wrote: post #3

Apple's attitude to the Mac mini truly confuses me. Many years ago I was interested in getting one for eithet iPhone development or as a media pc but every time I looked they kept seeming to jack the price or downgrade the spec (relatively speaking).

TBH I've never understood what Apple gets out of selling the Mac Mini. It cannibalizes their own low-end laptops/desktops, and at the same time must be quite a marginal product mainly sold to a small number of hackers who probably put Linux on them.

Headless systems, digital signage, PVR/HTPC, and testing farms are what we mainly use them for. They're crammed behind every conference TV and in every AV cabinet, but I doubt too many people use them as their primary device.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#36

Post by lebrad »

Joeri wrote: post #14

One of the big selling points of the mini is that it's really quiet. Does anyone with actual experience know how the NUC compares? From what I've read it's significantly louder, which is not what you want from a living room PC.

I have a 2011 Mac Mini and the fan gets annoyingly loud when under load. I was also annoyed by the fan in my NUC so I put it in a fanless case. It's dead quiet, and stays cool enough to run under load without throttling.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#37

Post by CydeWeys »

coldtea wrote: post #10

> Well, perfect except that six years in this machine is very creaky. It needs a reboot every week or so (otherwise it will refuse to launch anything). That sounds totally unrelated to the age of the machine, and totally related to what's installed, the mini running out of disk, etc. Maybe do a clean install of the OS? Aside from the mechanical parts (CD ROMS, Hard Disks, etc), the "digital" parts of a PC do not age…

There is one factor that heavily affects performance that you haven't addressed though: Software demands on hardware increase over time. MacOS today is more demanding than the MacOS of six years ago. Even if the hardware is in perfect condition, you can't run all six-year-old software, so it's going to be slower.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#38

Post by windexh8er »

pmorici wrote: post #23
caleblloyd wrote: post #5

The NUC has full Linux support out of the box. You can configure them with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB-512GB SSD for $400-$500, especially if you go for the old model (Gen 6 Skylake instead of Gen 7 Kaby Lake, not much has changed)

Are you sure? I have one and the wifi definitely doesn't work out of the box and there are a couple other annoyances the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. I haven't spent time to investigate but that isn't the definition of "works out of the box"

Since there are a number of iterations of NUC I suppose you could have one that doesn't. However most of the Intel wireless chipsets are some of best supported. I own two Intel NUC and two Gigabyte Brix machines - all of them were specifically selected to run Linux and all of them work flawlessly out of the box under any major distro.

One of my favorite desktop machines is the Intel Skull Canyon (NUC6i7KYK). It has an i7-6770HQ, supports 32GB of RAM (all of the newer, i.e. Skylake and greater do) and the real difference I wanted was the fact that it has two M.2 slots AND a true Thunderbolt 3 port (for support of the Razer Core external GPU enclosure).

Highly recommended if you want a performant machine in a small form factor with multi-monitor support and flexibility given it's size.

I only hope that Gigabyte continues to make the Brix line, especially when Ryzen drops from AMD. As much as I like the Skull Canyon I'd love to drop Intel from a pure privacy standpoint.

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#39

Post by rwmj »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #35
rwmj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH I've never understood what Apple gets out of selling the Mac Mini. It cannibalizes their own low-end laptops/desktops, and at the same time must be quite a marginal product mainly sold to a small number of hackers who probably put Linux on them.

Headless systems, digital signage, PVR/HTPC, and testing farms are what we mainly use them for. They're crammed behind every conference TV and in every AV cabinet, but I doubt too many people use them as their primary device.

Wouldn't a NUC or Brix running Linux be a better choice for this?

Re: My Next Mac Mini

#40

Post by arachnophobe »

nottorp wrote: post #17

Speaking of NUCs, are there any that are (a) quiet at load (b) have the PSU integrated in the case? Those are about the only redeeming qualities of a Mac Mini right now, and it pisses me off to no end that no one bothers with (b) on the Wintel side. Edit: please don't explain to me how a power brick that's sometimes as large as the NUC doesn't bother you, it does bother me.

I've used a gigabyte Brix n2807 - it's slightly larger than other Brix models as it takes a 2.5" drive (using an old laptop drive to save costs). It's not powerful, but it runs Kodi and Windows 10 okay. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth don't work (or didn't when I first tried) with Linux out of the box. Up to 8gb LPDDR. No power brick. £80 on offer a couple of years ago.
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