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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#231

Post by xeanotods »

naoru wrote: post #200
gzer0 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a Minisforum 790S7 for anywhere near the price of the base model mac mini. I am seeing $459.00 USD and that is "BAREBONE (NO OS/RAM/SSD)" [1]. I am comparing this to the M4 Mac Mini base model, that does indeed come with an OS, RAM, and an SSD[2] at $499 USD. [1] https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-mini-itx-pc... [2] https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/apple-m4-...

Welp. You're definitely correct. But that's the only machine in my opinion that comes close (and offers some advantage like a whole PCIe 5.0 x16 slot). There are other mini PCs that are cheaper, some other commenter suggested Beelinks which are also quite popular among enthusiasts, SER8 for example: Ryzen 8745HS, 24 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD for 467 Euro. Seems competitive enough.

Maybe it's not performance-comparable but $284 (BF35 coupon discount from $319 list) for Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD [1] in my mind is a good value trade-off versus the Mac Mini. The only thing that gives me pause is the concern expressed by some that Chinese MiniPCs are susceptible to Bios malware. I've looked into Coreboot, Libreboot and System 76 open firmware to mitigate the risk of infected Minisforum firmware but there's always the possibility of it crippling the device which would be a big time-loss more than anything.

Other flavors of malware are easily removed with a quick Windows reinstall before use but potential firmware infections are a good reason to pay more for mainstream PCs.

[1] https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-um760-slim

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#232

Post by nicce »

addicted wrote: post #185
nicce wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, if people start to abuse this by getting discount while not actually being student or teacher, we can say goodbye to that discount and real students and teachers will suffer from it.

They almost certainly won’t get rid of it because people are abusing it. If they do it’s because they don’t want to offer it. If they want to end the abuse they will simply toughen the verification procedure.

> They almost certainly won’t get rid of it because people are abusing it.

It always depends on the ratio (valid cases vs abusers), if the amount of the abusers gets too high, then the discount is not correctly fulfilling its purpose.

> If they want to end the abuse they will simply toughen the verification procedure.

It also depends on how expensive or difficult it is to maintain such verification procedure. At some point it is not justified anymore.

I just personally don't like the current attitude which seems to be going on. If you can "cheat" on getting the discount, people just keep finding reasons why they are justified to cheat. "They should toughen the verification procedure if cheating is possible".

It happens everywhere. People get praised on finding such cheats. Even in Universities, people are encouraged to cheat on getting better grades with less work. Oh, clever boy! He used different LLMs with with good context that made the output look like his own writing.

Not much different than saying "get a better lawyer", if you are getting punished for breaking the law. Opposite applies and that is why lawyers can be really expensive.

Or, not much different than big tech doing morally questionable things because the law is lagging behind. "Nobody is not enforcing the law, so it is perfectly okay. Worst case is that we need to pay some fines.".

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#233

Post by e40 »

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

Someone actually doing the upgrade: https://youtu.be/cJPXLE9uPr8?si=IyTLwG9SC4r4dJXP

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#235

Post by GeekyBear »

baq wrote: post #175
josephg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on your level of price sensitivity, you can always use a Thunderbolt SSD, an external RAID array of SSDs, or just get the 10 Gigabit Ethernet upgrade and hook into local NAS.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#236

Post by ar_lan »

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 use nix-darwin on an M2 as a daily driver. It works great! A few quirks you need to go with Brew (mostly graphical applications), but my setup is almost identical between my NixOS and my nix-darwin setups other than that (and some OS toggles).

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#237

Post by macintux »

geerlingguy wrote: post #143
00deadbeef wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly this. I am working on a solution to make it easier to hit the button from the front of a rack shelf, but the fact I have to mess with 3D printing just to hit a power button is silly. Older Macs also had the power button on the back, which was also annoying, but at least a Mac that's secured to a shelf could have its power button pressed pretty easily. The Mac mini _requires_ a mechanism to press up from the b…

Serious question: why not mount it upside down?

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#238

Post by MBCook »

matt-p wrote: post #224
MBCook wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a comparison mentioned on last week’s episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, I don’t remember if it was pointed out to them or they noticed it themselves. Base Mac mini: $599, 16/256 GB Double storage and ram: $600 upgrade. Price of 32/512 config: $1199 Two 16/256 machines: $119 8 . The ram is (Apple) reasonable at $200, but $400 for the storage doubling is insane.

I think you have it the wrong way round? Ram is 400 (200/8GB) storage is 200

Oh do I? Well somehow that seems more insane to me.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#239

Post by mschuster91 »

henryfjordan wrote: post #141
1-6 wrote: post #45

“If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom.” While I think Apple was off the rocker on this particular decision, I do respect their org structure that allows this type of decision to occur. Believe me, there are companies where a dozen people or more would weigh in and prevent an unpopular choice. Consensus sometimes hinders a desired result (both good and bad).

It's a way of signaling how the product should be used. Plug it in, hit the power button, put it down, and never turn it off again. For many users that's probably the only time they will ever interact with that button (or want to). I actually think it's a really good choice and shows Apple really understands design. And with the relatively low power consumption it makes sense. It's not like it's drawing a ton of powe…

> It's not like it's drawing a ton of power on idle

Probably even drawing less than a "normal" PC PSU would just burn to heat in losses, lol. 3 watts of total idle power consumption, that's nuts how low it is...

Your average PC PSU hits up to 95% efficiency, so even at maximum efficiency at full load it would burn like 30 watts.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#240

Post by mmastrac »

philip1209 wrote: post #4

That's great - I wonder if you could get one working with Kamal [1] and Cloudflare Tunnel [2] to run public web apps from a home computer? [1] https://kamal-deploy.org/ [2] https://www.cloudflare.com/products/tunnel/

I use CF Tunnel to serve progscrape.com. It's easily the best way to serve from home infrastructure, IMO.
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