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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#581

Post by Aleklart »

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).

It is not more than 60 Gb/s for extreme overclocked DDR4-4000 and sometimes much less than 50Gb/s for regular 3200 DDR5 is reaching 100 Gb/s overclocked for Intel, and 50-70 Gb/s in stock.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#582

Post by diffeomorphism »

fckgw wrote: post #17

Having a fully fledged computer this small without an external power brick is pretty impressive.

Is it? This seems pretty average mini pc size and much larger than small ones, e.g.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/6/b/csm_...

Also just connecting the mini pc to a monitor with PD and not using any extra power brick at all seems like the much more relevant comparison.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#583

Post by wtallis »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #558
rtkwe wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, though that relies on the product being fairly popular and for the chip to be stable for a while for it to be a useful source. Mac Studio NAND chips aren't going to be readily available from them unless they happen to be a shared part from a more popular device.

All macs use the same compatible nand chips.

Is there any compatibility between generations, eg. harvesting NAND from a M1 generation machine to upgrade a M3 (or now M4) generation machine?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#584

Post by drcongo »

celestialcheese wrote: post #542
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...

From my experience, TCO on most apple products ends up being roughly the same when you factor in resale value. You'll be able to sell your M4 mac mini in 5 years for $150 for an instant-cash offer from backmarket or any other reseller, while you'd be lucky to get $30 for the equivalent Beelink or BOSGAME after 6 months on ebay.

I just checked out backmarket as I've been shopping for a mini PC with oculink and hadn't thought of them. They have a primary nav across the top of the site which has 5 generic categories (laptops, consoles etc.), one Google product (pixel), 4 Samsung items, and 20 Apple items - more than all the others put together. I guess this very much proves your point.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#585

Post by crakhamster01 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #561
crakhamster01 wrote: post #479

I've always loved the form factor/pricing of the Mac Mini, but I've never been able to convince myself to buy it. If you're able to afford a Macbook/MBP, is there any reason why someone would purchase the Mini? Seems like the former gets you the same performance with the benefit of portability.

The MBP is over twice as much and you're still going to buy a keyboard, mouse, and screen for your desk. Portability is nice, but for many people I suspect the use case is too narrow -- for most things you need to do when you are not at your desk computer, the smartphone suffices.

Yea that's a fair point. I live in a small apt so I often find myself working anywhere other than my desk, but I imagine there's a lot of folks that prefer the niceties of a dedicated workspace (monitor, keyboard, etc).

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#586

Post by pjmlp »

eastbound wrote: post #414
_mlbt wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a desktop, so plugging in a USB external hard drive isn’t too painful or expensive.

Dockers can’t run off external drives.

Which is a Linux and Windows technology anyway, so better buy something that offers first class support for them.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#587

Post by stogot »

architect64 wrote: post #439
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…

One issue to watch out for: Sub-4K res monitors look surprisingly bad on newer versions of macOS with Apple Silicon Macs. And no, it's not simply a matter of non-Retina obviously not looking as nice as Retina monitors - something like a 1440p monitor will look much worse on macOS than it would on Windows or Linux. This is partly caused by a lack of subpixel rendering for text on macOS, but it doesn't affect just text…

My silicon Mac is fine on 27” 1080 10 years old display

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#588

Post by wtallis »

sangnoir wrote: post #461
TomatoTomato wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can you get 2x128gb sodimms?

Crucial.com is my go-to, but you can also get them from Amazon.

I'm not sure 2x64GB SODIMM kits are available yet. 2x128GB SODIMM kits would require memory chips that definitely don't exist yet.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#589

Post by Mustachio »

bee_rider wrote: post #329
talldayo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of Windows on it! Digital Foundry put out a great video on this exact process the other day, weighing the pros and cons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwWRCrGoXV0 Neither MacOS nor Windows are very good console OSes - you're really better off using Linux where anticheat isn't concerned. Even on the Ally.

They listed WoW, DotA and League of Legends—I’m guessing, but the last two seem likely to have anti-cheat issues, right?

Vanguard AC is indeed incompatible with linux, but maybe that's for the better...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#590

Post by threatofrain »

39896880 wrote: post #319
laweijfmvo wrote: post #317

Apple really is the kind of cherry picking comparisons. They seem to compare the new Mini with the M1 Mini, the Core i7 Mini, and the M2 Mini, all in different categories, whenever it benefits them.

Can you think of any examples where a company trying to sell you something made unfavorable comparisons between their product and a competing product?

HTMX, I guess.
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