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Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

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Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#101

Post by ianferrel »

dehugger wrote: post #95
spiderfarmer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, when I wanted to sell my Mac mini after 5 years of 24/7 use, I found a buyer within one hour. Try that with any other maintainable PC.

Your counterpoint is a bit weak. You sold a 5 year old Mac Mini, the OP literally just wrote how the old Mac Mini held its value precisely because it could be upgraded with replaceable components, while the updated Mac Mini is not. I doubt a current gen model will hold its value nearly as well as the older models because parts cannot be replaced down the line.

I've never had trouble using craiglist as an upgrade path for any Mac, even the everything-soldered to the board Macbook Airs.

Old Mac Minis didn't hold their value because they were upgradeable.

All macs hold their value longer.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#102

Post by rsync »

nicolaslem wrote: post #84

Apple can be proud of using plastic recycled at 60 percent but a not easily serviceable computer will end up in a landfill way sooner than it should. What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails? Between paying an absurd amount of money to replace the whole board and getting a new one I bet most people will go with the landfill option. My Mac mini 2012 got a second l…

"What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails?"

I was immediately dismayed to see that storage is not upgradeable/replaceable ... but now that the device has USB3 ports, would it not be possible to boot, and run, in a performant manner, from a USB3 thumb drive ?

It seems to me that you should be able to keep these new USB3 minis in service "forever" with a little nub sticking out the back ...

I guess I don't know what the state of installing OSX to boot from external media is, circa High Sierra ... ?

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#103

Post by Angostura »

environment wrote: post #91

The new mac mini makes a constant electrical noise when I move the mouse. It is audible and irritating >2 meters away from the mac. I have tried hubs, different ports and nothing else connected. It is ok with a wireless mouse, lower polling rate. The fan is quiet, not irritating. I might have sensitive hearing. Many modern gadgets are a pain in the ear. This type of noise digs deep and ruins the mood. I am sending it…

Take it back, get a replacement.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#104

Post by giobox »

rayiner wrote: post #34
OskarS wrote: post #2

A bit disappointing to see that the storage is not user-upgradable. I guess it matters less on a device like this where you could more easily use external storage, but still. I wish Apple stopped soldering in stuff and just made things a centimeter taller if that was the tradeoff.

The trade-off isn't height--an M.2 slot takes up a relatively large amount of floor space on the motherboard. There's nowhere to put it: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/ZLFbiRsOdiemeWLA.h... .

Given previous versions of this enclosure (with I believe the same exterior dimensions) managed to fit the computer plus two 2.5” old school hard disks, Apple clearly could engineer the interior of this device to fit a much, much smaller m2 SSD. This is a question of engineering choices, not physical space limitations.

In this case the engineering choice was probably driven at least in part by the desire to take advantage of the T2’s line rate encryption features, which so far has never been supported on removable/upgradeable storage mediums (at least as far as I am aware - the T2 drive encryption is a separate feature from FileVault, which is supported on removable media). Even on the iMac Pro which technically has removable flash storage, to my knowledge no one has yet managed to produce a T2 compatible after market third party upgrade.

Thankfully thunderbolt 3 removes much of the advantage internal storage media traditionally enjoys, at least in performance terms, so there are reasonable upgrade paths.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#105

Post by jamesu »

rsync wrote: post #102
nicolaslem wrote: post #84

Apple can be proud of using plastic recycled at 60 percent but a not easily serviceable computer will end up in a landfill way sooner than it should. What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails? Between paying an absurd amount of money to replace the whole board and getting a new one I bet most people will go with the landfill option. My Mac mini 2012 got a second l…

"What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails?" I was immediately dismayed to see that storage is not upgradeable/replaceable ... but now that the device has USB3 ports, would it not be possible to boot, and run, in a performant manner, from a USB3 thumb drive ? It seems to me that you should be able to keep these new USB3 minis in service "forever" with a little nub…

I've booted my iMac from an external thunderbolt SSD for years. Once you set it to boot from an external SSD, it will happily continue doing so.

Much faster than the real slow hdd it came with at least, plus I don't have to open it up to clear out the data when I'm finally done with it.

I still have yet to figure out how to create a similar hassle-free "live" booting environment which works across various hardware for windows and linux.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#106

Post by Roboprog »

qaq wrote: post #93
ddtaylor wrote: post #50

That thing has like $400 worth of hardware in it.

How much would you value MacOS license at ?

Bingo. Its worth a few hundred dollars to me to never see MS Windows again.

And I can’t run my music hobby software on Linux, at least not easily.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#108

Post by Roboprog »

Roboprog wrote: post #106
qaq wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would you value MacOS license at ?

Bingo. Its worth a few hundred dollars to me to never see MS Windows again. And I can’t run my music hobby software on Linux, at least not easily.

I also used to run DR DOS decades ago to avoid MS then, too.

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#109

Post by stcredzero »

jamesu wrote: post #105
rsync wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What happens three years down the line when the device is out of warranty and the storage fails?" I was immediately dismayed to see that storage is not upgradeable/replaceable ... but now that the device has USB3 ports, would it not be possible to boot, and run, in a performant manner, from a USB3 thumb drive ? It seems to me that you should be able to keep these new USB3 minis in service "forever" with a little nub…

I've booted my iMac from an external thunderbolt SSD for years. Once you set it to boot from an external SSD, it will happily continue doing so. Much faster than the real slow hdd it came with at least, plus I don't have to open it up to clear out the data when I'm finally done with it. I still have yet to figure out how to create a similar hassle-free "live" booting environment which works across various hardware fo…

Once you set it to boot from an external SSD, it will happily continue doing so.

What happens when the soldered-on SSD fails? Can you alter a setting in the PRAM or SMC to let the system completely disregard the failed SSD?

Re: Mac mini Late 2018 Teardown

#110

Post by AceJohnny2 »

riobard wrote: post #29

I really hope someone could figure it out if Mac mini with the i3-8100B CPU can work with ECC memory. According to Intel the CPU is ECC-capable, but I’m not sure about the mobo. If it works with ECC, it would be a truly mini Mac Pro. The higher-end configs with i5 and i7 CPU are not ECC-capable, only the entry-level i3 CPU is ECC-capable.

ECC is starting to show up inside the RAM chips themselves. Don't know if it's reached consumer devices like this Mac Mini though.

Edit: I mean the ECC logic is self-contained inside the module, with no support requirements on the host CPU.

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