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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#131

Post by nextos »

naoru wrote: post #104
nextos wrote: post #9

I use Linux, but I think the cheapest M4 Mini offers an incredible value and efficiency per €. With education discount, it's around €650, including VAT. It's pretty hard to find such a silent and powerful machine for that little. Any comparable options? A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore…

A comparable option in my opinion would be Minisforum 790S7. They also have a separate mini-ITX motherboard from that one if you want to DIY. The CPU in it is faster in raw multi-thread performance, single-threaded it's a bit slower, but still quite impressive. The only problem I had with Minisforum is that they couldn't supply the exact hardware I ordered and their suggested solution was either to wait for 1+ month…

That's a good suggestion. How are the cooling systems supplied with Minisforum in terms of noise and efficiency?

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#132

Post by talldayo »

mcv wrote: post #97
no_wizard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all you need is a .edu address If I recall correctly. you can buy them on alumni addresses. That said, a far chunk of HNs never completed college, like myself and lost access to any email accounts of this sort, which only further supports your argument directly, as the EDU discount isn't universally attainable

Does that mean the discount is only for Americans? I don't see anything about it on the Dutch version of the Apple site. Still looks pretty affordable. Until you look at the upgrades. € 230,00 for +8 MB RAM?! There are places you can get that for a tenth of that price. I suppose doing your own upgrades isn't an option anymore? (My last Mac was a 2011 unibody.)

> € 230,00 for +8 MB RAM?! There are places you can get that for a tenth of that price.

"Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent [...] because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture."

- Bob Borchers, Apple vice president of worldwide product marketing (who apparently never heard of zram)

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#133

Post by IshKebab »

favorited wrote: post #103
IshKebab wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Upgradable" if you are willing to desolder and replace the BGA chips. You can't just swap the module out.

The storage is not soldered to the M4 mini SOC.

No, it is soldered to the storage module. You have to desolder the flash chips from that module and replace them. You can't just order a bigger storage module from Apple (or anyone else) and plug it in.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#134

Post by GeekyBear »

winwang wrote: post #40
GeekyBear wrote: post #23

Also interesting, the M4 Mini has the flash storage on a replaceable module, instead of being soldered to the motherboard, although the NVMe controller is still integrated into the SoC. iFixIt and others have already posted videos showing that the flash storage is now upgradable. > M4 Mac mini Teardown - UPGRADABLE SSD, Powerful, and TINY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rtdGxBeSkz8

The controller being decoupled is an extremely interesting idea! Makes a lot of sense. I wonder if it includes a (nontrivial) cache.

Apple bought a company that designed enterprise SSD controllers over a decade ago.

> Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-br...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#135

Post by icedchai »

tredre3 wrote: post #44
nextos wrote: post #9

I use Linux, but I think the cheapest M4 Mini offers an incredible value and efficiency per €. With education discount, it's around €650, including VAT. It's pretty hard to find such a silent and powerful machine for that little. Any comparable options? A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore…

> With education discount I don't understand why so many people use the discounted price as reference. Surely very few of us on HN are still in college? So let's use the actual price when making comparisons.

We're all students of Internet University.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#136

Post by 00deadbeef »

rgovostes wrote: post #22

> If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom. I can't tell if anyone is being serious about the "Powergate" issue. The thing is 5" wide and weighs 1.5 lbs, it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little. And there are highly practical workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/1gncek7/nailed_the...

The comment in the article is in the context of rack mounting them which is a common thing to do with Mac minis. Having it on the bottom makes it hard to press as you can’t lift them up when they’re secured in a mount.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#137

Post by nextos »

giobox wrote: post #105
mcv wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean the discount is only for Americans? I don't see anything about it on the Dutch version of the Apple site. Still looks pretty affordable. Until you look at the upgrades. € 230,00 for +8 MB RAM?! There are places you can get that for a tenth of that price. I suppose doing your own upgrades isn't an option anymore? (My last Mac was a 2011 unibody.)

They have variations of the program in some European countries. It's been a long time for me, but in the UK they used to just whitelist university domains (we didn't use .edu TLDs either).

AFAIK, in most of the EU they validate you are a student or an academic through UNiDAYS.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#138

Post by gre »

rgovostes wrote: post #22

> If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom. I can't tell if anyone is being serious about the "Powergate" issue. The thing is 5" wide and weighs 1.5 lbs, it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little. And there are highly practical workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/1gncek7/nailed_the...

power button on the bottom means kids/cats won't accidentally press it

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#139

Post by josephg »

wkjagt wrote: post #19
wslh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought the first MacBook Air M1 with 8GB because it was the only option available in my area. Initially, I had doubts, especially after using notebooks with more than 16GB of RAM in previous years. But I was genuinely surprised by how well the M1 performed. My takeaway is that there’s a lot of room for similar improvements in Linux!

I'm still very happy with my 8GB Air M1 as well. It's incredible how well it still works for a 4 year old entry level laptop. I see all these new M's come out, and I'm sure they're fantastic, but I'm not at all tempted to upgrade.

Yeah, I don’t know why 8gb base models get so much hate online. 8gb is 64 billion bits of memory. If you’re writing everyday software and you need more memory than that, you’re almost certainly doing something wrong.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#140

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #123
rgovostes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a few minutes looking up whether a Mac could be booted from a Bluetooth keyboard but couldn't find any documentation of that. Back in the day some(?) Mac models could be booted by a USB keyboard, see https://www.projectgus.com/2023/04/griffin-imate/ for technical details.

I just bang on the spacebar, and it starts up. It's a Bluetooth keyboard, so I guess the system is listening to BT. I did that with the laptop, forever. The Mini starts up a lot faster than the laptop. That said, I should actually do a test, to make sure that the system is in real shutdown...

Nah. I'm wrong. The laptop started that way, probably because the keyboard is attached to a CalDigit dock, and tapping on the keyboard probably sent power to the device, which starts it.

That doesn't happen with the Mini, if I actually do a shutdown from the menu.

Apple has something I think they call "Deep Sleep," which is basically a shutdown, and that wakes from the keyboard.

That said, it's not a big deal to reach under the left side, and tap the button. The laptop was a pain, because I had to open it up.

But I've only had this thing a few days, and haven't had a chance to really torture it, yet.

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