# Transition from Mac Pro Trashcan to new Mac Mini ?



## rickdeckard (May 6, 2020)

Hi,

Has anyone transitioned from a 2013 Mac Pro Trashcan to a new Mac Mini?

I have a 2014 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 / 64 GB Ram / AMD FirePro D500 3 GB

Would be considering moving to specced up new Mac Mini (6-core/64 GB ram) in the future, but I would like to know if anyone has had a real world experience with a similar move.

I use Reaper, Logic, Pro Tools, Sibelius. VSL Libraries, Komplete, Soundtoys. Universal Audio Apollo Twin. General composing and scoring to picture. I'm on the latest Catalina already and everything is working fine.


Thank you for your help!

Best
-r


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## ridgero (May 10, 2020)

I had both machines and in performance there is not much difference, but in loudness. The Mac mini fan ramps up pretty loud.

If I were you, I would update to a Xeon 2667-v2. It has a great Single and Multi Core performance.

It’s not officially supported by Apple, but many 6,1 users have installed it.






MacPro6,1 - Geekbench Browser


Benchmark results for a MacPro6,1 with an Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 processor.



browser.geekbench.com










How to Upgrade Mac Pro CPU (Cylinder, Late 2013): EveryMac.com


How to instructions and video to replace or upgrade the processor in the Late 2013 Cylinder Mac Pro models. Covers faster compatible processors, also.




everymac.com


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## Bear Market (May 10, 2020)

ridgero said:


> If I were you, I would update to a Xeon 2667-v2. It has a great Single and Multi Core performance.
> 
> It’s not officially supported by Apple, but many 6,1 users have installed it.



I have done this (updated the trashcan processor to a Xeon v2, that is), and it resulted in a significant performance increase. However, I did go from 4 to 8 cores so obviously that is part of it as well.


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## Cuelist (May 10, 2020)

I'd also recommend upgrading the processor in your MacPro 6.1. I recently upgraded mine from a 6 core 3.5GHz to a 12 core 2.7 GHz Xeon and am very pleased. A word of caution; the upgrade is not quite as easy as it appears.


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## rickdeckard (May 10, 2020)

Thank you very much for your input. 
I never considered upgrading the cpu...I'm actually fine with the current performance, I was just starting to think about future-proofing my work machine and therefore having a new machine that's under warranty etc etc.

I'll look into that over the summer. Thanks!


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## Proteinshake (May 10, 2020)

I second that. Upgrade the Mac Pro or let somebody else do it for you.

Your trashcan will likely never thermal throttle, a Mac Mini most certainly will.


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## rickdeckard (May 10, 2020)

ridgero said:


> I had both machines and in performance there is not much difference, but in loudness. The Mac mini fan ramps up pretty loud.
> 
> If I were you, I would update to a Xeon 2667-v2. It has a great Single and Multi Core performance.
> 
> ...




Is the Mini louder than the trashcan? I can definitely hear my Mac Pro, and especially during the summer it can get quite hot. 
Does the Mini behaves in the same way?


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## rickdeckard (May 10, 2020)

Proteinshake said:


> I second that. Upgrade the Mac Pro or let somebody else do it for you.
> 
> Your trashcan will likely never thermal throttle, a Mac Mini most certainly will.



Thanks!


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## Patryk Scelina (May 10, 2020)

I curently use 12 core trashcan with 64 GB of RAM. These CPUs are cheap now. Even if you decided to let it go after upgrade you will sell it for much higher price than you put into upgrade. But I'm sure you will feel much more breath after upgrading. Especially in bigger sessions.


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## ridgero (May 10, 2020)

rickdeckard said:


> Is the Mini louder than the trashcan? I can definitely hear my Mac Pro, and especially during the summer it can get quite hot.
> Does the Mini behaves in the same way?



In idle you can’t hear the Mini at all, but under load much louder as soon as the fan kicks in. 

The Mac Pro has a subtle low noise, which has never bothered me.


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## rickdeckard (May 10, 2020)

ridgero said:


> In idle you can’t hear the Mini at all, but under load much louder as soon as the fan kicks in.
> 
> The Mac Pro has a subtle low noise, which has never bothered me.



Thanks...what would you describe as "load" in the Mini case? (just to have an idea and a comparison to the types of projects I work on)


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## ridgero (May 11, 2020)

Installing new applications.

Loading & Playback bigger projects (CPU not maxed out)

But with usual desktop stuff, it’s completely silent.

The Mac Pro 6,1 doesn’t thermal throttle and stays always in idle, even when you max out the 12 Core CPU.

Before your final decision I would definitely test it somewhere.





Why do you wanna upgrade to the Mini? If TB 3 / USB C is one of the reasons, there is no way around the Mac Mini / iMac.

By the way: The iMac 2020 will certainly be released this week, maybe today.


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## rickdeckard (May 11, 2020)

ridgero said:


> Installing new applications.
> 
> Loading & Playback bigger projects (CPU not maxed out)
> 
> ...






Thanks a lot!
It won't be a rushed decision and I will definitely investigate this after the summer and after the lockdown...despite all the criticism I still think the Trashcan is a very capable machine.

The iMac is not an option for me as I tend to travel by plane sometimes and bring my Mac with me...I also like the idea of being able to replace a monitor cheaply.

Thanks a lot for all your help!
Best
-r


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## Mishabou (May 11, 2020)

I have 2 Mac Pro trashcan (6 cores and 12 cores, 128 GB ram) and 2 MacMini 2018 (6 cores/64 GB)
ram)

I find the new Mac mini about the same as my 6 cores MP trashcan, but the 12 cores still outperform it by a good margin.


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## tav.one (May 11, 2020)

Tbh Mac Mini is not a very capable machine. It is serving as an intermediate upgrade for me but it has caused me way more headache in 2 years than my very underpowered base model iMac of 2011 caused in 7+ years.
It has wifi & bluetooth issues, GPU processor is extremely underpowered, gets super hot even in AC (I live in a hot country) and it has prominent noise of fans, the current Mac OS with bugs doesn't help either.
My system crashes at least once everyday, can't use a 4K monitor (Hi resolution) when using logic. I've been working at 1K buffer. Never had to go beyond 256 before.


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## davidson (May 11, 2020)

ridgero said:


> I had both machines and in performance there is not much difference, but in loudness. The Mac mini fan ramps up pretty loud.
> 
> If I were you, I would update to a Xeon 2667-v2. It has a great Single and Multi Core performance.
> 
> ...



I wish the single core increase was more than ~10%. If it offered the 30% increase the multi score gives (over the 6-core), I'd be all over it.


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## WandaS (May 11, 2020)

Get a mac mini cooler. I run at 100 degrees. Take off the bottom cover set it on the cooler the fan draws cool air through the bottom and keeps it nice and cool.



Redirect Notice


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## ckett (May 12, 2020)

I went through this decision myself last year. I first ordered a 2018 Mac Mini 3.2 GHz 6 core followed by a refurbished 2013 Mac Pro from OWC, 10-core 3.0GHz. Here were the tests I ran with the same RME UFX+ thunderbolt interface at a 128MB Buffer in Cubase 10, Mac OS Sierra.

Test #1 - DAW Benchmarks DSP test running multiple instances of SGA 1566 plugins.
Mac Mini - 80 plugins
Mac Pro - 160 Plugins

Test #2 - DAWBench Kontakt running several samples
Mac Mini - 1480 total voices
Mac Pro - 2880 total voices

Test #3 - U-He Diva running an analogue pad patch
Mac Mini - 75 voices
Mac Pro - 96 voices

So as you can see, the 2013 Mac Pro performs exceptionally well. It was only $400 more than a new Mac Mini. The new Mac Mini runs a lot hotter where as the Mac Pro has much better thermal measurements. 

Geekbench scores do not tell the whole story either when it comes to DAW performance. The single core performance of the Mac Mini does help with individual VST synths, but it wasn’t so great a difference in real life performance over the 2013 Mac Pro. Having more cores allows the DAW to perform more evenly with high track counts with plugins for mixing.

My advice is clearly find a great used refurbished 2013 Mac Pro. Much superior product!


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## ridgero (May 13, 2020)

ckett said:


> I went through this decision myself last year. I first ordered a 2018 Mac Mini 3.2 GHz 6 core followed by a refurbished 2013 Mac Pro from OWC, 10-core 3.0GHz. Here were the tests I ran with the same RME UFX+ thunderbolt interface at a 128MB Buffer in Cubase 10, Mac OS Sierra.
> 
> Test #1 - DAW Benchmarks DSP test running multiple instances of SGA 1566 plugins.
> Mac Mini - 80 plugins
> ...



How much RAM on both machines?


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## Dewdman42 (May 13, 2020)

Me personally i would not ever change from a MacPro to a mini...not from my 2010 MP either! I'd stick with the trashcan, but that's just me.


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## ckett (May 13, 2020)

Both machines had 32GBs of RAM.


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## colony nofi (May 13, 2020)

rickdeckard said:


> Thanks a lot!
> It won't be a rushed decision and I will definitely investigate this after the summer and after the lockdown...despite all the criticism I still think the Trashcan is a very capable machine.
> 
> The iMac is not an option for me as I tend to travel by plane sometimes and bring my Mac with me...I also like the idea of being able to replace a monitor cheaply.
> ...


I've been faced with similar problems - frequently travel! I'm still on trashcans - but also am considering travelling just with new macbook pro, and running (eek) PC as my main new studio machine. Yes, it means two machines - but I've figured out drive scenarios etc... and I'm ALWAYS somewhat compromising my studio machine when making it portable. I'm fortunate to have had a 10940x machine for a particular project, and it was incredibly powerful. I'm very much looking at a 3970x machine going forward. They're even possible to hackintosh without too much heartache, and they beat out a completely tricked out 2019 mac pro! Now, I've also thought of trying to build the machine to be portable, but thats tricky.... 

(Having said that, the original launch of the mac pro trash-cans were a huge win for me... they replaced a laptop + 4 x mac minis for travel, plus an ageing 2007 mac pro)

AND I'm not going to be travelling NEARLY as much for the next year or so due to COVID. There's also some virtual mixing possibilities that are in development which will make travel less necessary (and possibly only for the "meetings" and brief show and tells!)

The new mac mini's are definitely a step back from the mac pro's. By 25-40% on the tests I did for my use cases (big mix of vst's, vsti's and some immersive mixing software.) I had the max possible cpu, ram etc.

The fan noise while using your DAW will disappoint you. I even got rid of mine to use it as a streaming machine. Old 2015 laptop does a better job fan wise, and is capable for the CPU i need for that use case.


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## Emmanuel (May 14, 2020)

colony nofi said:


> I've been faced with similar problems - frequently travel! I'm still on trashcans - but also am considering travelling just with new macbook pro, and running (eek) PC as my main new studio machine. Yes, it means two machines - but I've figured out drive scenarios etc... and I'm ALWAYS somewhat compromising my studio machine when making it portable. I'm fortunate to have had a 10940x machine for a particular project, and it was incredibly powerful. I'm very much looking at a 3970x machine going forward. They're even possible to hackintosh without too much heartache, and they beat out a completely tricked out 2019 mac pro! Now, I've also thought of trying to build the machine to be portable, but thats tricky....
> 
> (Having said that, the original launch of the mac pro trash-cans were a huge win for me... they replaced a laptop + 4 x mac minis for travel, plus an ageing 2007 mac pro)
> 
> ...


I have a very good laptop with windows but I would like to buy a mac in order to have Logic pro X... my budget is 1500 €.... I don't know if the mac mini with core I7, 32 Go ram and 512 Go SSD is a good option for music production. I use mainly (Albion One, Inspire 2, Ozone..). Do you think it's a good choice ?


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## WandaS (May 15, 2020)

One exception is the support for AVX2 plugins like IK MODO Drums, NI Massive X and many others.
The Mini supports AVX the 2013 trash can does not. More plugins will be written in AVX as time goes on.
That's why I bought the Mini.


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## CT (May 15, 2020)

tav.one said:


> but it has caused me way more headache in 2 years than my very underpowered base model iMac of 2011 caused in 7+ years.



This thread, and this post in particular, is really killing my plans to go from a 2011 iMac to a Mini. Crap!


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## tav.one (May 16, 2020)

miket said:


> This thread, and this post in particular, is really killing my plans to go from a 2011 iMac to a Mini. Crap!


Sorry man, I was actually a happy camper in the beginning and was suggesting it as a viable option to musicians till 2019.
I'm hoping as Catalina gets out of this "Public Beta", some problems will be ironed out.


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## Alex Fraser (May 16, 2020)

The comments about fan noise are on the money. Since I started using a MBP, large processor loads tend to spool the fan up. That said, it's usually a "spike" in response to a sudden CPU load increase and dissipates quickly. And it's usually the Photos app or some sort of spotlighting background process that cause the most noise. Perhaps that's throttling? No idea, but I never detect a performance drop-off.

When it comes to DAWs, not everyones requirements or workloads are the same. I don't run huge templates or nutty track counts and I know I could score to picture on this machine without throttling or fan noise becoming an issue. I've done the same on far lesser machines: A G4, G5, iMac...even a white polycarbonate MacBook that paid the rent for three years.

So IMO, it's a case of matching the machine to the workload, not Mac Pro or bust. For some, the Mini would be the perfect machine.


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## ckett (May 16, 2020)

Alex,

Agree with you on that. When testing the 2013 Mac Pro against the Mac Mini I did not notice too much fan noise from the Mini that would be distracting and that was under high loads. For some reason video rendering and such will kick both machine's fans up a bit.


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## ridgero (May 16, 2020)

As I said before, try before buy...


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## Alex Fraser (May 20, 2020)

Use A MacBook Pro In A Recording Studio Noise Free | Production Expert


Is it possible to run a studio using a MacBook Pro and be noise free? Russ Hughes decided to put it to the test and with a combination of hardware, software and practical solutions he has got some surprising results.




www.pro-tools-expert.com





Interesting post. Concerns the MBP but there's probably some advice applicable to the mini.


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## rickdeckard (Jun 11, 2020)

Has anyone had the chance to try the new 13" MacBook Pro in a higher spec and have some feedback on how it performs? Thanks!


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## from_theashes (Jul 26, 2021)

Thanks to this thread… I‘m now considering to sell my 2017 iMac (i5, 3,4Ghz Quad-Core, Fusion Drive, 40GB RAM) and buy a Mac Pro 2013 (12 Core, 3,7Ghz, 64Gb Ram, 1TB SSD).
Am I crazy?^^ Or would this machine improve my workflow with a huge orchestral template, VIs and synths?


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## OleJoergensen (Jul 26, 2021)

3 month ago I upgraded my Mac pro 2013- 4 Cores 3,7 Ghz 64 GB ram(bought it 2017 new), to a (used) 10 core Cpu (installed it myself), forgot if its 3 Ghz or 3.5 Ghz, 96 GB Ram and I love it!
I think the 12 core is 2,7 Ghz….


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## ptram (Jul 26, 2021)

from_theashes said:


> buy a Mac Pro 2013 (12 Core


I’ve been using this machine for one year. I’m very happy of it, and never gone over 30% of CPU use. It's very quiet, and also a considerable piece of art.

Be aware of the graphic cards, however. They crash with incredible frequency. Some programs (in my case, just one) make them crash more often than others.

Paolo


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