So is RAM upgradeable in this? Only offering soldered ram / SSD is reason to not buy these.....
Mac mini
31–40 of 259 posts
Re: Mac mini
#32Re: Mac mini
#33The 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…
True, but a more charitable take is that the high price goes to subsidize macOS development. Having just moved to a Windows 10 shop running on cheapest-possible Dell hotdesking workstations, I’m starting to miss macOS and all its command-spacebar glory!
Perhaps you should buy something more in the price range of the mac-mini to make a real comparison rather than the cheapest dell.
Re: Mac mini
#34Anyone 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.…
> Where it shines is in modularity with other equipment
Thanks for the insight, that's where I see it shining is sharing the GPU between a work desktop/laptop, and then a personal desktop/laptop for gaming. All whilst still being able to take advantage of the benefits a slim and light device has when moving around.
Re: Mac mini
#35The 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)
Depends on your goals, I think. I run mine for audio production, exclusively. And in that context, it's been great. I have an older firewire audio interface, multiple midi controllers, and a Nvidia GTX-1060 graphics card (I game on a different W10 drive). I run ethernet, so I can't comment on WIFI. But, the rest works flawlessly.
The caveat here is: I'm still on 10.12.6. Updating, especially in regards to audio apps, is generally done very slowly. So, I'm in no hurry to run the latest and greatest. But, upgrading to this point was pretty painless.
Re: Mac mini
#36So is RAM upgradeable in this? Only offering soldered ram / SSD is reason to not buy these.....
I assume it still is. The only thing that changed here was a bump in the default storage.
Re: Mac mini
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are Hackintosh a practical reality? (genuine question)
In the last couple years, yes. But Apple has been playing the long game and tightening the noose in order to pull the rug on all Hackintoshs one day.
People forget that the original hackintoshes had to work around the hardware security module. Where there's a will there's a way.
Re: Mac mini
#38Anyone has experience with Mac Mini + eGPU combo and can share a bit about it (e.g. as alternative to Mac Pro or iMac?)
I've got a maxed out Mac Mini with the 8th Gen hexa core i5, 64 GB ram and 1TB of storage along with a Radeon Rx 580 8GB in a Razer Core X. I think if you're using it for a specialized application with eGPU support, game development, or gaming in Windows via bootcamp it's a passable solution (albeit with lower performance than a native card). On the for something like web development, it's finicky - Chrome won't pick…
what is the xMac?
Re: Mac mini
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The performance depends very greatly on the resolution you run the 4K screen at. If you're using a non-evenly scaled resolution (i.e. not exactly 1x or 2x rendering) it's not gonna be fantastic. Running at 'default' 2x my 2018 runs 2x 24" 4Ks without issue - the problem most people have I think is that they buy much larger displays and then want to use a higher rendered resolution, which is where the iGPU will strugg…
Isn't "4K" the resolution??
Yes, but I guess just like I don't know anyone who runs their retina macbook at the native resolution, you don't need to run a 4K screen at 4K. For instance 1080p gives you perfect 2x2 scaling with no blurriness at all since every pixel perfectly translates into 4. I have no idea why you'd do that, but I can see why that's a valid consideration for some people.
Re: Mac mini
#40The 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…
True, but a more charitable take is that the high price goes to subsidize macOS development. Having just moved to a Windows 10 shop running on cheapest-possible Dell hotdesking workstations, I’m starting to miss macOS and all its command-spacebar glory!
Have you tried http://keypirinha.com/ ?