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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#201

Post by matt-p »

astrange wrote: post #120
steeleduncan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In that case wouldn't you rather have a managed power switch / iDRAC / restart over ssh, than send someone to go press buttons in person? (I've only ever racked things remotely, so don't know if this is common.)

Can't do idrac of course but you can do managed power port, kvm and ssh.

The most efficient is managed power + serial + ssh and probably the best to go for.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#202

Post by astrange »

toast0 wrote: post #90
bryancoxwell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never tried turning a Mac into a home server. What features do you need that it’s missing?

Depends what 'home server' means. MacOS would need syncookies to be a viable tcp server on public IPs, IMHO, but MacOS pulled FreeBSD's TCP stack a couple months before syncookies were added, and they never rebased or otherwise added syncookies later. I haven't looked into if they pulled any scalability updates over the years, but I kind of assume they haven't, and the stack would have a lot of lock contention if you…

The network stack is very different now - BSD doesn't run on cell phones after all. But no syncookies, no.

But IMO the real advantage of ARMv8 for a server is that it has better security.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#203

Post by SoftTalker »

josephg wrote: post #108
foobarian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point maybe the main benefit of an x86 machine is it has a spot to plug in an Nvidia GPU :-)

That and Linux support is better, if you need it.

And you can pick up a used one for less than 1/10 the cost of a Mac Mini and it will be perfectly adequate for most people.

I appreciate the technical achievement of the M4 Mac Mini for what it is, but an old x86 machine is more than adequate for my home or even work needs.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#204

Post by kopirgan »

I bought a no brand mini PC really small with older Intel CPU. It runs Debian quite well. But noisy and slows down a lot, perceivable once it gets hot. But it's cheap around $100,-150 on Chinese e-commerce websites with memory, disk.

Apple does amazing stuff. But it's very pricey in most markets and unaffordable to those on budget.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#205

Post by VancouverMan »

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…

> Pricewise, things start favoring PCs if you need more RAM, as Mac upgrades are costly.

That's the position I'm in, along with some other people I've talked to recently, too.

For our situations, the M4 would likely offer more than enough processing power, and the efficiency and physical size are attractive, but a maximum of 32 GB of RAM definitely isn't sufficient.

The M4 Pro's 64 GB of RAM is somewhat better, but the cost of those upgrades are very hard to justify.

I'd also prefer to use the system for at least 5 years, and likely up to 10 years, if not longer. Even if 64 GB is tolerable now, I can easily see it becoming insufficient for my needs before then.

The lack of reasonably-priced internal storage, while easier to work around than the lack of sufficient and reasonably-priced RAM, doesn't help matters, too.

Even if future Studio models, for example, might allow for a more ideal amount of RAM, I have to expect that unjustifiable upgrade costs will likely still be an issue, and then there's the wait on top of that.

I can easily see myself and the others I've talked to settling for PCs, rather than making unjustifiably-expensive Mac purchases.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#206

Post by MBCook »

vetinari wrote: post #35
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…

NUC 14th gen with i3 is around 400 EUR with VAT, with no RAM or storage. For the other 250 EUR, surely you can get more RAM than 16 GB and more storage than 256 GB.

RAM is completely fair.

Apple is certainly out of their mind on storage. But on a desktop it’s trivial to plug-in an external disc that you can buy at an absolutely reasonable price instead of the insane Apple one.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#207

Post by znpy »

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...

one of my favorite conspiracy theories i've picked up recently is that apple purposedly puts these kind of annoyances in their product.

things like the button on the bottom of the new mac mini or the dumb notch on the macbooks.

according to the theory, such things:

1. they catch attention of people and give them something to talk about (and to fight about)

2. they might steal attention from other flaws

it makes perfect sense: the notch, this idiotic decision about the button, the charge port on the mouse.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#208

Post by 7thpower »

josephg wrote: post #139
wkjagt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously?

What if you want to have a few browser tabs and a spreadsheet open? Or containers?

My M1 routinely rests around 22gb of RAM.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#209

Post by johnklos »

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...

I can't imagine it's anything but a silly comment. Macs have the equivalent of wake-on-LAN, plus you can configure them trivially to restart after power loss. The idea that you'd have to press the button often is just silly.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#210

Post by tshaddox »

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...

It's probably easier to find and press than the old 27" iMacs. I always had a brief moment of trouble feeling around the back to find that darn button (part of the reason is that you need to press it very infrequently).
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