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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#171

Post by yzydserd »

mrtksn wrote: post #160
tredre3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A lot of people have a relative or something still in education, just buy it through them. It's not like this is government subsidy, just a promotion to increase sales and maybe hope to have long term customer by hooking them at younger age. Probably much less immoral than blocking ads on YouTube.

It seems viable that doing so increases the price for those of us who don't.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#172

Post by rowanG077 »

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…

I can at least attest to linux nix on arm working pretty well as I use NixOS asahi linux. Unfortunately M4 support is not there yet.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#173

Post by ghaff »

opdahl wrote: post #148
ghaff wrote: post #49

I may have to break down after the holidays. I have a 2015 iMac and I've been holding off (and haven't really been using my Apple Silicon MacBook as intended) so it may be time to do the upgrade.

This seems like one of the best times to do it as long as you get your own monitor. You will probably be set for 10 more years with this thing.

I have a 5K monitor for the Apple Silicon MacBook which I could easily switch to a MacMini and would be ergonomically better. My other MacBook is also about 10 years old and it's a question of how long I stretch everything out while it's all basically working even if not on the current OS.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#174

Post by cguess »

cguess wrote: post #170
sourcepluck wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever thought that maybe people understand "market segmentation", but at the same time, they'd like to know how broad a range of computing options one would have on these general purpose computers, with price tags in the many-hundreds to thousands range?

Sure, but to complain that a Mac, which, come on, at this point is a known quantity for 20 years, doesn't run Linux is just looking to complain. If you want more options there's endless x86 choices, and if you want ARM then demand better from other manufacturers as well. Apple showed its possible, why doesn't Dell come out with something comparable? I'm not a fanboy, I run systems of all stripes, but Macs aren't desi…

Oh, and there's Asahi, which does run on Macs (not the M4 yet, but it'll come).

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#175

Post by baq »

josephg wrote: post #151
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Upgradeable" is too big of a word here, specially considering that they're using different form-factors even between the models released on the same year (e.g. pro vs non-pro) ; and also different from models released on the previous year (e.g. studio). This almost certainly means that next year's model will also use a different interface, so you won't be able to upgrade your storage at all.

You might be able to. You just need to make sure you get a compatible module somehow. I wonder if 3rd parties will start selling them. If the memory controller is in the cpu, there’s no reason for the little board housing the ssd to have any proprietary chips…

If you can get a 2TB chip for ~50% of what it retails at Apple the M4 mini would be the absolutely 100% totally best computer ever made.

At the moment it's only the best computer ever made, but too expensive if you want any sort of storage.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#176

Post by AshamedCaptain »

GeekyBear wrote: post #164
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Upgradeable" is too big of a word here, specially considering that they're using different form-factors even between the models released on the same year (e.g. pro vs non-pro) ; and also different from models released on the previous year (e.g. studio). This almost certainly means that next year's model will also use a different interface, so you won't be able to upgrade your storage at all.

The M4 Pro Minis support higher capacity modules, so it's not too shocking that they are not identical. We've already seen videos from the usual suspects showing that people who are sufficiently skilled with a soldering iron can replace the flash chips in the modules with higher capacity chips, in addition to replacing the whole module.

> We've already seen videos from the usual suspects showing that people who are sufficiently skilled with a soldering iron can replace the flash chips

Sure, but I don't think soldering skills is exactly what I'd have in mind when I think "upgradeable".

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#177

Post by matt-p »

steeleduncan wrote: post #29
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...

Because minis are very commonly racked in bulk, and its both very irritating for that use case, and entirely unnecessary

In that case then they should be on switched pdu ports and plugged into permanent kvm.

I'm sorry but this is nonsense, if you're really racking them in bulk the above is obvious.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#178

Post by mrtksn »

yzydserd wrote: post #171
mrtksn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have a relative or something still in education, just buy it through them. It's not like this is government subsidy, just a promotion to increase sales and maybe hope to have long term customer by hooking them at younger age. Probably much less immoral than blocking ads on YouTube.

It seems viable that doing so increases the price for those of us who don't.

Why would that be?

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#179

Post by throawayonthe »

talldayo wrote: post #132
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.)

> € 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)

windows also uses memory compression

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#180

Post by benoau »

vetinari wrote: post #61
nextos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a NUC as a daily driver. The problem with NUCs is that cooling is suboptimal, the fan is small and thus noisy. It can be fixed with a third-party case, but that's at least €60-100 more for a much slower machine. Plus, you may void the guarantee by transplanting the motherboard.

I have i7 NUC13 mounted on a back of monitor and I can barely hear it. It's not that bad, previously (NUC7-era) it was much worse.

They're usually the same 30 - 50 watt processors used in x86 laptops, once we got past the "dual-core" ceiling they became extremely capable.
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