151–160 of 259 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get a new Mac Mini and a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU for $1500 or less.
Thanks, I had no idea eGPUs were a thing!
It's the only non-Pro designated Mac that has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. I don't think you'd find this level of I/O in any other machine in this price range.
That incredibly powerful I/O makes for tons of expansion possibilities. Storage, GPU, etc.
(Edited to say "non-Pro designated")
The Mac Minis are still expensive and underwhelming (even when maxed out) when compared with the top of the range NUCs with even AMD GPUs. The Skull and Ghost Canyon NUCs are great for Linux CIs or building large projects or I could even go far to either Hackintosh a few NUCs to surpass the need to buy a Mac Mini anyway for next 5 years. Thanks, but I would skip this Mac Mini and go for the latest maxed out NUC inste…
Are Hackintosh a practical reality? (genuine question)
Anyone has experience with Mac Mini + eGPU combo and can share a bit about it (e.g. as alternative to Mac Pro or iMac?)
I use a 2018 Mac mini with an OWC Helios FX enclosure with a stock AMD Vega 56 GPU. My workload is some light gaming (Mac only no windows/boot camp) and 3x4K displays in scaled modes for web/software dev. The mini itself is compact, fast, and generally great. Handles VM based dev workloads well. It’s small and quiet (not always silent though). I used the machine with just the built in integrated GPU for a few months.…
This is probably because the integrated GPU is dipping into your system RAM to drive those displays. I think people who've upgraded to 32GB of system RAM have far less issues running the stock GPU and 4k/5k screens.
I myself am using a stock GPU with a 2018 Mac Mini and an LG 5k Ultrafine + another 2k screen with no issues at all. Amazing machine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel NUCs are even better for home server use cases. Similar form factor, much cheaper, and you can put your own memory and storage in them. Just built my own last week and it idles at 5W, it's great.
Out of curiosity, how do you measure its idle power?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's the point: if you can ship 16" MacBook Pros with dedicated GPU you could do the same with MacMini; why don't you give me such option? ("you" stands for "Apple" here btw)
desktop grade cpus and gpus have very different thermal characteristics. it quite impossible to have silent + desktop cpu + desktop gpu + very small space.
Still got my fingers crossed for a desktop machine that isn’t a Mac Pro and isn’t a Mac Mini. Would love iMac Pro firepower without being tied to a set display. I’ve been alive 30 years. A good portion of that was growing up as a PC user, overclocker, teenage hacker, etc. My professional career however has been on Unix and MacOS, and as much as I try to get back to desktop Linux and open source OS’s I just find them…
Because the current Mini serves a lot of Pro needs with the crazy powerful I/O it has.
With eGPUs in a fairly mature state, the Mac Mini can serve pretty powerful video/graphics workloads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, I had no idea eGPUs were a thing!
That's the whole premise of the Mac Mini. It's the only non-Pro designated Mac that has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. I don't think you'd find this level of I/O in any other machine in this price range. That incredibly powerful I/O makes for tons of expansion possibilities. Storage, GPU, etc. (Edited to say "non-Pro designated")
* Mac Pro
* Mac Mini
* iMac Pro
* MacBook Pro 16"
* MacBook Pro 13"
It used to be that Apple charged a lot for RAM and Storage, but you could save a bundle by bringing your own. For example, my 2012 i7 Mac mini has maxed memory and a 2TB SSD. When Apple began soldering stuff in, they failed to reduce their punitive prices on expansion, which really hurts reusability and resale value. In other words, they are far less green than they could be since they must now be disposed of earlier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be enough to be suitable for your needs. If it were for being a gaming machine with macOS then a 16-inch MacBook Pro + AMD GPU would be also fine. For a CI or compiling machine, neither are good enough.
It's funny that you this mention this; Apple recommends Mac Minis for Xcode build farms right on their page! What could be better? A mac pro? An iMac pro would clearly be a waste given the cost of the screen (although some CI for a Windows app I worked on in the past required a monitor to be turned plugged-in).
Well of course Apple recommends this. It's like asking a barber if you need a premium haircut, but the price is expensive with poor performance, but will do just fine for most people.
A less expensive CI for achieving better CPU performance would be a quick Hackintosh setup with a powerful Intel NUC for 1/2 of the price of a maxed out Mac mini. This isn't for everyone, but it saves me money and even more if it were my existing computer.
The expectation here for a in-house hackintosh CI is that if you can install and setup a Linux machine and configure X11/Wayland, etc it is pretty much the same with a Hackintosh these days.