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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#331

Post by layoric »

justinclift wrote: post #310
layoric wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In same boat, I have the 5950x with 64gb memory running PopOS and there are times I'm hitting swap a lot more than I'd like. 16 or 32gb of memory is just not feasible, and even 2TB of storage would likely cause headaches, I have a 4TB and a 2TB nvme at the moment which will come with me next upgrade. I'm leaning towards an upgrade next year to the 9950x3d if reviews pan out. Sure, it's going to be a bigger machine wi…

Does your existing motherboard allow for more than 64GB ram? The 5950x itself supports up to 128GB: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_9/5950x

Mine doesn't but yes I could move to a mATX or bigger board to unlock that extending its life. I tend to go for the 'smaller' ITX cases and boards, so currently have a x570-i setup maxing out at 64GB.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#332

Post by layoric »

mh8h wrote: post #258
layoric wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for a little server or something, but with the hard to upgrade 256GB storage.. I don't get the appeal. Also 16GB of memory is extremely limited these days. Again, perfect for a little server, but not for a daily driver.

It's a desktop computer. What's keeping you from using an external SSD?

For large media, sure, but I really don't to pay a premium to then need to manage where my everyday apps are installed cause I only have 256GB of storage I can't upgrade.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#333

Post by seabrookmx »

denkmoon wrote: post #65
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…

Just put Asahi on there, or any linux you like. I'm sure the support will be there soon if it's not already.

> or any Linux you like

That's not a thing. Apple silicon doesn't use EFI so you need a completely custom ROM to satisfy the boot process, hence Asahi. And Asahi doesn't support M4 and likely won't for a while.

ARM64 support for GUI apps (via flatpak in the Fedora Asahi Remix) is also pretty poor, though your standard fair of CLI apps are present.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#334

Post by msgilligan »

rowanG077 wrote: post #172
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.

Asahi M4 support and 3rd-party SSD upgrades[1] will result in me buying an M4 Mini. Glad to hear that Nix works well on Asahi!

[1] https://wccftech.com/m4-mac-mini-ssd-already-modded-to-2tb-s...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#335

Post by okaram »

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.

But a ton of us have a friend/kid/relative in HS or college ...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#336

Post by roughly »

nicce wrote: post #86
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

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.

20 years ago I worked Apple retail and this was well known then.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#337

Post by GeekyBear »

goosedragons wrote: post #284
GeekyBear wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted above, you can simply replace that module with a higher capacity module with just a screwdriver, as iFixIt did. However, there is a real opportunity for those who do have soldering skills to make a quick buck here. You could pretty easily buy the cheap base model M4 and resell it as a custom upgrade build, as long as you were clear that the SSD was no longer stock.

The problem is getting the module... It's not an easy solder job and they are picky about what NANDs they work with and how they're configured. It's better than soldered to the board but not by much.

It comes free with the base model.

Given the price Apple charges for the high end upgrades, it's worth your time to buy the base model, do the uograde, and sell the upgraded unit.

For instance, here's a Mac Studio being upgraded to 8 TB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDFCurB3-0Q

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#338

Post by RobMurray »

eru wrote: post #315
derefr wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be suffering from a categorical blindness to a certain type of thing humans do. Let's say I own a private beach. I want to allow my beach to be enjoyed freely and responsibly by a reasonable number of people, whether friends or strangers. I don't want to constantly be cleaning up garbage on my beach. And I don't want the beach to be overcrowded when I myself use it. So what do I do? Well, I'm sure n…

Great write-up! > This equilibrium state is exactly the point aimed for by the corporations that create these open secrets. Not necessarily. You know that biological evolution is blind, but thriving in a market environment doesn't require companies to know why what they are doing is successful. So eg Photoshop (and Windows) used to be really easy to 'pirate' by individuals. And you can argue that this was good for Ad…

Microsoft products are trivial to pirate thanks to Microsoft Activation Scripts [1] which is on GitHub. It is inconceivable that they aren't aware of it with 102k stars. That can only be deliberate.

[1]https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#339

Post by Vegenoid »

lukevp wrote: post #329
vunderba wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mind this design decision a hell of a lot less than the baffling deliberate decision to map EVERY KEYBOARD BUTTON to be equivalent to the power button (which the damn thing already has) on their laptop line-up. I love it when my macbook is turned off and I accidentally nudge a single letter on the keyboard and it powers back on - not to mention when you're drying to clean it with a micro fiber cloth.

If you fully shut down a mac laptop, you have to press and hold the power button to turn it back on. Not sure what you’re talking about here and probably why you’re getting downvoted.

I don't know about every macbook, but I just tried this twice on my 2019 macbook pro and pressing any key on the keyboard (or at least the 2 keys I tried, "f" and "8") will power it on when it is powered off (yes, fully shut down, not asleep). Based on some quick googling, this still appears to be the case for M-series macbooks.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#340

Post by wtallis »

ghshephard wrote: post #290
freehorse wrote: post #283

The m4 has 6 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores. This is 2 efficiency cores more than the previous generations, and the same number of p-cores, thus higher e to p core ratio, which can explain a large part of the increase in power efficiency. Not to say that otherwise there is nothing remarkable here, of course there is, but if the author found a 30% increase in efficiency compared to m2 while they claim they e…

That would explain improving performance, but I don't actually understand how that would improve efficiency. Particularly at the high end where they quote 6.74 Gflops/W .

If a higher proportion of the total performance is coming from efficiency cores, it is reasonable to expect overall efficiency to be improved.
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