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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#451

Post by matheusmoreira »

supportengineer wrote: post #419
goosedragons wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still good deals in mini PC land. Yes, the M4 is faster but there's loads of mini PCs with decent CPUs, 32GB RAM and a 1TB of SSD storage for under $600. I think for a lot of people for basic usage they'll get more value out of the larger and upgradable SSDs than the faster CPU. https://www.amazon.com/BOSGAME-5700U-Displays-Computers-Emul... https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER5-Desktop-Computer-Graphic...

But you have to run Windows, which is a deal breaker for most people.

Why would you need to run Windows? Linux should work mini computers just fine.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#452

Post by Tempest1981 »

goosedragons wrote: post #416
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

There's still good deals in mini PC land. Yes, the M4 is faster but there's loads of mini PCs with decent CPUs, 32GB RAM and a 1TB of SSD storage for under $600. I think for a lot of people for basic usage they'll get more value out of the larger and upgradable SSDs than the faster CPU. https://www.amazon.com/BOSGAME-5700U-Displays-Computers-Emul... https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER5-Desktop-Computer-Graphic...

BOSGAME and Beelink... who makes the motherboards?

Nice size. The Beelink has better reviews. Any name brands?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#453

Post by TomatoTomato »

sangnoir wrote: post #434
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

> I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). This is squarely in the NUC/SFF/1l-pc territory, and there is plenty of competition here from Beelink and Minisforum. I just found the Beelink SER7 going for $509, and it has an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU, 32GB DDR4. The 8845 in the beelink is very competitive[1] with M4 (beaten,…

Where can you get 2x128gb sodimms?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#454

Post by sangnoir »

tmikaeld wrote: post #440
sangnoir wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). This is squarely in the NUC/SFF/1l-pc territory, and there is plenty of competition here from Beelink and Minisforum. I just found the Beelink SER7 going for $509, and it has an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU, 32GB DDR4. The 8845 in the beelink is very competitive[1] with M4 (beaten,…

When you factor in memory bandwidth (80GB/s for DDR4) - that's not even close to the M4 (120GB/s base model).

Which regular desktop tasks are kneecapped by 80GBps memory bandwidth?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#455

Post by astrange »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #199
talldayo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple chips are among the most efficient out there for that sort of thing Not really? Apple is efficient because they ship moderately large GPUs manufactured on TSMC hardware. Their NPU hardware is more or less entirely ignored and their GPUs are using the same shader-based compute that Intel and AMD rely on. It's not efficient because Apple does anything different with their hardware like Nvidia does, it's efficie…

Does it use the GPU? I was under the impression that it uses the CPU. It's only faster because of the massive memory bandwidth compared to DDR4/5

The AI features use all three of NPU ("ANE"), GPU, CPU, mostly depending on model size.

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/neural-engine-tra...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#456

Post by Phrodo_00 »

_mlbt wrote: post #444
eastbound wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dockers can’t run off external drives.

Since macOS is a UNIX system, can’t you just use a symlink to the external drive or is there something specific about Docker that prevents this?

Docker in macOS (at least the useful one) just runs in a Linux VM, and I don't see why you couldn't run a VM off an image on an external drive. Maybe the UI doesn't let you select that location?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#457

Post by astrange »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #274
talldayo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple chips are among the most efficient out there for that sort of thing Not really? Apple is efficient because they ship moderately large GPUs manufactured on TSMC hardware. Their NPU hardware is more or less entirely ignored and their GPUs are using the same shader-based compute that Intel and AMD rely on. It's not efficient because Apple does anything different with their hardware like Nvidia does, it's efficie…

Frankly you’re very wrong. NPUs and GPUs aside, 16gb of GPU memory is very rare in consumer hardware

You can't use all 16GB because it's unified, so it's shared with the system, SSD controller etc. You can use something like 12-14GB though.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#458

Post by TacticalCoder »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #441
mmaunder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s useful. The TB3 external 10 gig interfaces I’ve been using for my Mac get crazy hot.

As someone who just made a 16tb SSD array over Thunderbolt 3 (Best I could find) at 40gbps and the interface is still the bottleneck (disks are fast now!), 10gbps is going to feel really really slow vs the internal stuff.

> ... 10gbps is going to feel really really slow vs the internal stuff

How do you love your internet speed compared to the internal stuff?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#460

Post by ikety »

timeon wrote: post #390
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

> With educational pricing I think this easily beats any sort of desktop > go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop Can anybody get it with educational pricing?

yes, there's no verification system. You simply just state that you are a student
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