New Mac mini options

I develop on an old 2012 Mac mini 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM, booting off an external 500GB SSD, and the performance is actually pretty good.

But now I’m thinking of upgrading to the new Mac mini. There’s lots of good discussion on the mini right now over at macintouch.com.

On the new mini, I probably don’t need to option up the processor, but the i5 would yield about 20% better oomph and add Turboboost for more when you need it. So that’s tempting.

Luckily you can upgrade the RAM on the mini, but it’s not super easy to do, so I’m thinking of bumping that up to 16GB.

Some folks are saying to save your money and buy an external SSD and boot off of that. But they don’t seem to be considering the speed. The macintouch discussions show an astonishing difference in SSD speed as the capacity goes up. The 500GB SSD option is like 4x faster than the base 128GB SSD, and way faster than external SSDs. So I’m looking at that option.

Single core : the i5 (5118) is 10% faster than the i3 (4675) … but is 6core vs 4core so it will far surpass in multi-core speed
but it is 1.74 times faster than you current mini (2935)

I’m planning on getting the i5/16g (not worth the hassle to do it myself)… around $1520 with tax and APplecare.

why don’t you put the ssd inside the 2012 mac mini. it’s something quite easy to do …
is the external usb interface an usb 2 or 3 ?

[quote=414128:@Jean-Yves Pochez]why don’t you put the ssd inside the 2012 mac mini. it’s something quite easy to do …
is the external usb interface an usb 2 or 3 ?[/quote]
at this point it would be like putting a V8 engine in a VW bug :slight_smile:

I’ve actually done that - a Chevy 287 into a 66 beetle. Did you know the you can fit a Chevy 454 into a Porsche/VW 914? Did that TOO!

The biggest headache with the new Mac offerings is that even with a Thunderbolt 3 interface, the PCIe pipe is still only x4. So even though you have 40Mbs through the Thunderbolt pipe, you’re limited by the PCIe bottleneck if you’re tying into Fibre Channel or SAS connectivity for attached storage devices.

I would put 32 GB into the Mini from the start.

In 1999 or 2000 there was a project at Opel to put a V8 into the Omega carline (what is now Buick Regal). The project was cancelled because the car moved like a bronco (“Bonanza effect” I think the problem was called).

Didn’t realize my V8 joke would garner such response :slight_smile:

I remember when I was in my teens (YES I can sometimes remember that far back). A guy next door, thought he was cool and put a 350V8 into a Vega… He wasn’t much of a mechanic I guess… He was showing it off, and revved it too high, and pretty much twisted the car into a pretzel…

I agree - Apple’s price is ludicrous, but unless you’re ready to play that upgrade game later, the frustration saving is worth it.

If you’re going to have that much torque, you have to go rear wheel drive. Early Ford Tempo models suffered from this even with their anemic 4Cyl engines.

Speaking of Opel, we put a 327 into an Opel GT and it was a monster. The guy we did it for is still driving it 250K miles later.

Now that I’ve gotten that HP/torque experimentation gene out of my system, my dream cars are a 1996 Merc 500SEL, a 1977 Merc 450SL, and a 2001 BMW 750iL. Lexus has taught me to appreciate comfort.

We had a number of Vegas modded to even handle the 454. The keys were in the transmission and rear diff. Those HAD to be updated.

Those were the good old days - when high school students were taught something that could make a difference in their lives.

You can buy at a reseller that puts the 32GB into the computer without the ridiculous price from Apple. At least that’s what I did for my new iMac. I paid half the Apple price for the RAM.

Just be careful with the CPU options. When Apple tried an i5 Quad-core in 2012, the machines would overheat a lot. I’d wait a bit and see what happens to the early adopters as with the 2018 MBP this summer.

[quote=414128:@Jean-Yves Pochez]why don’t you put the ssd inside the 2012 mac mini. it’s something quite easy to do …
is the external usb interface an usb 2 or 3 ?[/quote]
It’s USB 3 and the performance is pretty good. At this point, I’ll leave it external and use the drive for cloning. I’ve got a closet full of dead Firewire enclosures.

[quote]
According to Apple, the Mac mini was designed using new thermal architectures, so it won’t overheat despite being a tiny metal box stuffed with processing power. Using a bigger fan and vents, its airflow is double that of previous Mac minis and a redesigned power supply ensures it won’t burst up in flames while you use it.[/quote]

[quote=414114:@Art Gorski]I develop on an old 2012 Mac mini 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM, booting off an external 500GB SSD, and the performance is actually pretty good.

But now I’m thinking of upgrading to the new Mac mini. There’s lots of good discussion on the mini right now over at macintouch.com.[/quote]

I find myself wondering how much you’d really get out of such an upgrade. The new minis seem kind of pricey. If you went for a top of the line model, it might be close to twice as fast on benchmarks, but a lot of times you don’t actually get the benchmark speed increase. It might only end up being 25% faster and that would be a lot of coin to drop for that performance.

Of course it might be worth it to you depending on what you do and whether or not you end up having to sit around and wait for your computer to finish things.

The problem is once you configure one the way you should based on what you can and can’t upgrade, you’re going to be looking at 2K+. Then again that is one nice machine once it’s tricked out.

An article about the new mini with a good deal of information on thermals:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/14/testing-thermal-throttling-and-performance-in-the-2018-i7-mac-mini