# 2018 Mac Mini



## Will Wilson

So it's been announced!

Up to 6 core i7
Up to 64GB RAM
2TB SSD

4 x Thunderbolt3

Starts at $799 for quad core i3 and 8GB Ram.

Question will really be how much the upgrades cost and if the RAM is user upgradeable!

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/30/apple-announces-new-mac-mini/


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## whinecellar

Looks pretty good so far - and RAM looks to be standard SO-DIMMs. Pricing will be interesting! Also curious about the daisy-chaining aspect they’re talking about...


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## fixxer49

Will Wilson said:


> Up to 6 core i7
> Up to 64GB RAM
> 2TB SSD


very decent specs


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## boxheadboy50

As someone who is running a (now obsolete) 2011 iMac, this is really exciting!


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## whinecellar

Yep, if the Thunderbolt ports have separate buses, this likely just saved me from buying a 5-year-old Mac Pro. Heck, if the pricing is right, I may just buy 2 of ‘em and have everything I need in a single rack space! What a killer little mobile rig!


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## Will Wilson

Question for me is now how do i make use of my 3 x 1TB SSD currently in my PC? just USB3 -> Sata cables or would a dock be better?


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## storyteller

Perfect VEPro machine!


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## boxheadboy50

Will Wilson said:


> Question for me is now how do i make use of my 3 x 1TB SSD currently in my PC? just USB3 -> Sata cables or would a dock be better?


Either/Or I think? I've heard the Blackmagic Multidock is great for this kind of thing.


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## whinecellar

Will Wilson said:


> Question for me is now how do i make use of my 3 x 1TB SSD currently in my PC? just USB3 -> Sata cables or would a dock be better?



Been using an OWC Thunderbay 4 for several years - love it. BlackMagic Multidock is also killer.


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## Will Wilson

I wonder what benefit I would have though with a dock? Plus they are like £400!


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## samphony

The owc express 4m2 is also great. Or the Samsung x500.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2

I can’t wait to add these minis and iPads to my studio.

Being able to connect ssds directly to iPads is really cool too.


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## Will Wilson

So full pricing is now up:

Fully Specced version:

3.2Ghz 6 core i7
64GB RAM
2TB SSD

£3,769


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## Christof

Apples RAM pricing is totally insane in my opinion!


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## whinecellar

Christof said:


> Apples RAM pricing is totally insane in my opinion!



Yep. Trying to find out the slot configuration but of course they don't list it in tech specs. Wondering if it's 2 or 4 slots... at least it's user configurable!


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## Olfirf

Will Wilson said:


> So full pricing is now up:
> 
> Fully Specced version:
> 
> 3.2Ghz 6 core i7
> 64GB RAM
> 2TB SSD
> 
> £3,769


Yup! Or almost 5000€ ... Hmm, it looks again like last time, I checked with Apple: If you buy a lower spec system the price looks pretty decent. The upgrade to more powerful i7 looks quite ok, still! But as soon as you want more memory or SSD it starts getting irrationally expensive! It looks like the SSD are soldered. Let us see wether you can at least upgrade the Ram on your own (without breaking the warranty?).
It is a shame, as this could be a really good music workstation, way better than a 2013 Mac Pro. But if you have to buy both ram and SSD from Apple and need it maxed out, you will pay way to much ... again ... 
Somehow, I am afraid they will do it similarly with the new Mac Pro in 2019.


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## Will Wilson

Christof said:


> Apples RAM pricing is totally insane in my opinion!



But is user upgradeable so you can get 32GB for about £250 if you do it yourself. Can't find any 32GB SODIMM but guess they will become available in time, might be better getting the 8GB RAM model upgrading the RAM myself.


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## Olfirf

Will Wilson said:


> But is user upgradeable so you can get 32GB for about £250 if you do it yourself. Can't find any 32GB SODIMM but guess they will become available in time, might be better getting the 8GB RAM model upgrading the RAM myself.


Yes, the 32gb SODIMMs should be available until the end of 2018. I read that in another context of the new Intel i9 9900k being upgradable up to 128gb of ram until the end of the year. They will certainly be expensive when new.


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## Christof

Will Wilson said:


> But is user upgradeable so you can get 32GB for about £250 if you do it yourself. Can't find any 32GB SODIMM but guess they will become available in time, might be better getting the 8GB RAM model upgrading the RAM myself.


Are you sure the new Mac Mini is user upgradable?
Look at the iMac Pro, no way to open it at home, it's sealed.


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## Nmargiotta

The real question is do I sell my 2018 15” i9 6 core for this? The MbP is mega loud and your capped out at 32gb of ram, I love the idea of user replaceable for 64gb for a fraction of the cost and....the FAN! Gives you consisten clock speeds , no throttle-gate. My nearly maxed out 2018 15” was $3k MORE than what I just user configured on the 2018 Mac mini . To me just as portable as Id be plugged into a wall anyway when using the UA Arrow (sucks so much power). Portable displays are everywhere now and who know the new iPad Pro May open up the door to a really consistent DuET display over usb C


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## redlester

Christof said:


> Are you sure the new Mac Mini is user upgradable?
> Look at the iMac Pro, no way to open it at home, it's sealed.



I have doubts about it. Nothing stated on the web site, and the manual for the new one doesn't seem to be available yet.


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## Olfirf

In case you can upgrade the RAM without to much problems, half of the story looks decent! I like the 10gbe option and the processor options look really good for an audio workstation. But one thing still looks sad: With everything maxed out except for RAM and SSD, the price is 1620€, which is pretty much ok, I think. Now, increase that SSD from 256Gb (in 2018, really?) to 2tb and the price more than doubles! That is ridiculous!
You could say, why not replace the internal storage with external? Yeah, but that is a waste of resources. The fastest storage is the internal and I want to be able to make use of that. Apple, why don't you just charge reasonable rates for storage and memory upgrades and this would be a great offering! I also don't buy all of that green attitude they are trying to sell us, when you basically cannot replace parts like ram and ssds. Also, if customers buy a lower specd system, only to throw the ram out and buy more for a good price, that is a total waste of silicon and not green at all.


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## whinecellar

GRRRRRRRR... just chatting with an Apple rep about RAM and this is what he says:

"It has two SO-DIMM slots and has to be upgraded at an Apple Authorized Service provider, so it is not user-upgradeable." Waiting on confirmation on whether that means we can supply our own RAM....


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## Will Wilson

whinecellar said:


> GRRRRRRRR... just chatting with an Apple rep about RAM and this is what he says:
> 
> "It has two SO-DIMM slots and has to be upgraded at an Apple Authorized Service provider, so it is not user-upgradeable." Waiting on confirmation on whether that means we can supply our own RAM....



We'll wait and see, I would hazard a guess that it can still be upgraded ourselves as it's not soldered.


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## boxheadboy50

Christof said:


> Are you sure the new Mac Mini is user upgradable?
> Look at the iMac Pro, no way to open it at home, it's sealed.
> 
> 
> redlester said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have doubts about it. Nothing stated on the web site, and the manual for the new one doesn't seem to be available yet.
Click to expand...

Usually, if something is not user-upgradeable, Apple is clear about it when you click on the "How much x do I need?"
For example, the Mac Mini storage link says this: 




While the memory link says this:





So it *seems* like memory might be able to be upgraded after the fact. Which would be awesome. We'll have to wait for more info to be sure, of course.


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## boxheadboy50

whinecellar said:


> GRRRRRRRR... just chatting with an Apple rep about RAM and this is what he says:
> 
> "It has two SO-DIMM slots and has to be upgraded at an Apple Authorized Service provider, so it is not user-upgradeable." Waiting on confirmation on whether that means we can supply our own RAM....


Ohhhh bummer...


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## whinecellar

Will Wilson said:


> We'll wait and see, I would hazard a guess that it can still be upgraded ourselves as it's not soldered.



Yes, most likely - but only if you're willing to void the warranty. Tearing the old Mac Mini apart wasn't the easiest job, and apparently this new one is much harder to get into. And this just in:

"Since it is not user-upgradeable, you will need to buy the RAM from Apple (through an auth. service center) if you want to upgrade later."

There are times I hate this company.


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## Wunderhorn

It was again an Apple Event for Teletubbies. Mac Mini looks nice for smaller budgets at first glance, but the limitations do not feel like any great advancements have been made. 64GB maximum in the world of sample libraries, in 2018? Are they kidding??


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## Will Wilson

whinecellar said:


> Yes, most likely - but only if you're willing to void the warranty. Tearing the old Mac Mini apart wasn't the easiest job, and apparently this new one is much harder to get into. And this just in:
> 
> "Since it is not user-upgradeable, you will need to buy the RAM from Apple (through an auth. service center) if you want to upgrade later."
> 
> There are times I hate this company.



Upgrading old Mac Mini RAM is a click and go you don't even need a screwdriver?


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## whinecellar

Wunderhorn said:


> It was again an Apple Event for Teletubbies. Mac Mini looks nice for smaller budgets at first glance, but the limitations do not feel like any great advancements have been made. 64GB maximum in the world of sample libraries, in 2018? Are they kidding??



Well hey, at least they're putting in a solid effort on keeping current with emoticons. I mean hey, priorities, people.


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## whinecellar

Will Wilson said:


> Upgrading old Mac Mini RAM is a click and go you don't even need a screwdriver?



Yep. Replacing/adding a 2nd SSD involved disassembly, but yeah, why keep a simple RAM upgrade, um, simple?


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## Christof

I was hoping for a new Mac Pro, my pulse was rising when they showed the spaceship video, but the landing of the spaceship was kind of disappointing...


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## redlester

Wunderhorn said:


> It was again an Apple Event for Teletubbies. Mac Mini looks nice for smaller budgets at first glance, but the limitations do not feel like any great advancements have been made. 64GB maximum in the world of sample libraries, in 2018? Are they kidding??



Oh come on...it's Space Grey!!!
Personally am getting by fine with 16GB RAM but then am not doing projects with dozens of tracks, etc. hopefully by the time my current 2012 model kicks the bucket these new ones might be reasonably priced second hand.


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## IFM

I'm sure we will be able to upgrade it ourselves...just wait for OWC to get on the case. Even so I'm super excited about this as a potential upgrade to my MP5,1 12 core down the road.


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## Anders Wall

I’m sure they will cover the hole, but nevertheless it should be fairly easy to access the memory modules.
Best,
/Anders


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## whinecellar

Yep. A little more light shed on the subject:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-new-2018-mac-mini-is-a-pro-machine-in-a-tiny-package/


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## storyteller

Whether the ram is upgradeable or not... think about how nice and clean the configuration will be for VEPro users to have 2 or 3 Mac mini slaves for various orchestral sections. Even at Apple prices, $12k gets you 3 maxed out Mac minis with 64gb each. That's a pretty awesome configuration.


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## thesteelydane

storyteller said:


> Whether the ram is upgradeable or not... think about how nice and clean the configuration will be for VEPro users to have 2 or 3 Mac mini slaves for various orchestral sections. Even at Apple prices, $12k gets you 3 maxed out Mac minis with 64gb each. That's a pretty awesome configuration.



Not to mention portable, if you - like me - sort of live in 2 countries at once...


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## Wunderhorn

storyteller said:


> Whether the ram is upgradeable or not... think about how nice and clean the configuration will be for VEPro users to have 2 or 3 Mac mini slaves for various orchestral sections. Even at Apple prices, $12k gets you 3 maxed out Mac minis with 64gb each. That's a pretty awesome configuration.



Yes, a great machine for slaves indeed. Now we just need a new *main* machine!


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## Dewdman42

My thoughts are that they are charging a ridiculous amount for both the ram and ssd upgrades, both of which are kind of mandatory for using as anything other then a web browser. 

I could see getting a base model, maybe with the i7, if you need something portable or small as a secondary machine but this will not replace my 2010 12 core macpro.


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## Olfirf

thesteelydane said:


> Not to mention portable, if you - like me - sort of live in 2 countries at once...


Same as the Mac Pro in 2013 in my mind ... for some people, this might be really great and maybe worth the incredible ram and ssd prices. If you were to build a PC, you can also build a fairly small device, but probably it will get a little larger than that. But if that portability aspect is not interesting for you, you are still not getting any reasonably priced configuration from Apple. All I would want is some mid sized PC with at least 4 Ram slots, maybe even some PCIe slots. Would be really easy for Apple to design and add to their product range. But they deliberately don't want to offer that, as you might get a PC from them, spend about 2000€ and do all the upgrades yourself for considerably less. Today, the 2013 Mac Pro is the only PC in their product line that enables you to upgrade Ram and SSD. I suppose it will also be the last one ad as soon as that is clear, I will switch to Windows entirely.


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## Ashermusic

Christof said:


> Are you sure the new Mac Mini is user upgradable?
> Look at the iMac Pro, no way to open it at home, it's sealed.





Christof said:


> Are you sure the new Mac Mini is user upgradable?
> Look at the iMac Pro, no way to open it at home, it's sealed.



I just called Apple.You can buy third. party RAM and install it.


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## charlieclouser

Looks nice. The price is, as usual, absolutely bonkers, but the build quality and user experience will be second to none I'm sure, and the feature set looks on target for the "one notch under the top of the line" machine. Kind of wish there were i9 options, for no other reason than 9 is a higher number than 7, but perhaps a mid-cycle refresh will address that. As to user-upgradable RAM, keep refreshing the macsales.com website - I'm sure they'll have it sorted within days.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next Mac Pro is using Apple silicon and not Intel. That would twist some nipples.

Compared to those $1k used dual-Xeon servers in the Junkie XL video, the Mac Mini price is a laugh, but then again it's silent, tiny, has TB3, and runs MacOS.

I'm always in the habit of looking for the best-built gear, but sometimes this attitude is overkill. I recently did a big studio clean-out and literally gave away a bunch of stuff like Mac Pro 2.1 machines and 16-year-old Panasonic plasma displays. They all still worked absolutely fine and had many years of serviceable life left in them, but the underlying technology was no longer relevant. Those Mac Pro 2.1 machines could only go to MacOS Lion, had FireWire 400 as the fastest external storage connector, and even UsedMac.com did not want them - wouldn't even give $100 for one. Those Panasonic 42" plasma displays were nearly $4k new, had worked perfectly for 16 years, and still looked perfect - but they had no HDMI (composite/component only) and the resolution was 480p (!!!) - and they are so heavy that I had to use SoundAnchors stands for them. They will be replaced by $1,500 75-inch Samsung 4k televisions. The new 4k tvs cost less than the stands that the plasmas were on!

At the time, I thought that the only acceptable decision was to buy Panasonic Industrial displays, the kind used for digital signage in airports and such, because I wanted maximum build quality and longevity. 

I probably should have bought no-name Chinese crap, because they would have failed and I would have upgraded twice by now for the same money - and I wouldn't have felt so guilty when I left those Panasonics out on the curb with a sign saying, "42 Inch Plasma - WORKS!".

(They were snatched up by scavengers within minutes.)

So there's something to be said for buying rattly old used Dell servers for VEPro use - they'll probably last as long as they need to and you won't feel guilty just tossing them in the e-waste recycling bin when the time comes.


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## Blake Ewing

Dewdman42 said:


> My thoughts are that they are charging a ridiculous amount for both the ram and ssd upgrades, both of which are kind of mandatory for using as anything other then a web browser.



They didn't become a trillion dollar company by pricing things fairly.


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## Olfirf

Ashermusic said:


> I just called Apple.You can buy third. party RAM and install it.


If that is true, the question remains if you can do that without breaking your warranty.
The other question to me is (I would have considered buying this as an interim main machine), how many Thundebolt 3 busses are on there ... there are 4 ports, ok! But if I hook up two monitors via thunderbolt, how much bandwidth/performance is left for thunderbolt SSDs etc? That would be good to know.


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## Jeremy Spencer

Olfirf said:


> If that is true, the question remains if you can do that without breaking your warranty.
> The other question to me is (I would have considered buying this as an interim main machine), how many Thundebolt 3 busses are on there ... there are 4 ports, ok! But if I hook up two monitors via thunderbolt, how much bandwidth/performance is left for thunderbolt SSDs etc? That would be good to know.



A ton. And if you need more ports, you can either daisy chain (if your peripherals/monitors have the ability), or buy a Thunderbolt hub....such as the Cal-Digit Thunderbolt 3 hub.


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## Ashermusic

Olfirf said:


> If that is true, the question remains if you can do that without breaking your warranty.
> The other question to me is (I would have considered buying this as an interim main machine), how many Thundebolt 3 busses are on there ... there are 4 ports, ok! But if I hook up two monitors via thunderbolt, how much bandwidth/performance is left for thunderbolt SSDs etc? That would be good to know.



Would Apple have told me it was permitted if it broke the warranty?


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## Andrew Aversa

The pricing of this is completely ridiculous. Absolutely no one should even consider buying this if you are using it as a server (slave) machine. You can get an Intel NUC with quad core 4.5ghz boost - that's also tiny, silent, and low power draw - with 64GB of RAM and 2TB NVME top-tier solid state storage, for about $1600. Sure, 2 cores fewer, but it's also less than half the price. 

So would you rather have one fully specced Mac Mini? Or 2x slave machines with 2x the overall RAM, 2x the storage, and 25% more processing power... plus over $1000 left in your pocket?


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## Ashermusic

zircon_st said:


> The pricing of this is completely ridiculous. Absolutely no one should even consider buying this if you are using it as a server (slave) machine. You can get an Intel NUC with quad core 4.5ghz boost - that's also tiny, silent, and low power draw - with 64GB of RAM and 2TB NVME top-tier solid state storage, for about $1600. Sure, 2 cores fewer, but it's also less than half the price.
> 
> So would you rather have one fully specced Mac Mini? Or 2x slave machines with 2x the overall RAM, 2x the storage, and 25% more processing power... plus over $1000 left in your pocket?



I may indeed replace my 2013 iMac as my main machine with this, once OWC has third party RAM that can be in stalled at a reasonable price. 64 GB will get it done for me these days with what I am hired to do.


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## reutunes

Got excited. Saw the price. Now not excited.

Oh apple... why do you do this every time!?


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## Andrew Aversa

Ashermusic said:


> I may indeed replace my 2013 iMac as my main machine with this, once OWC has third party RAM that can be in stalled at a reasonable price. 64 GB will get it done for me these days with what I am hired to do.



As a main machine it still seems like shoveling money into a fire for what you're getting. If you're going to spend over $4k on an Apple machine, why not get an iMac Pro which includes an incredible 5k display, more expandability, a better processor w/ more cores, more ports, etc...?


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## Olfirf

Wolfie2112 said:


> A ton. And if you need more ports, you can either daisy chain (if your peripherals/monitors have the ability), or buy a Thunderbolt hub....such as the Cal-Digit Thunderbolt 3 hub.


I was talking about TB busses, not ports! That is relevant regarding the bandwidth when using multiple devices. The Mac Pro 2013 has 3 separate TB2 busses (and 6 physical ports).


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## Olfirf

Ashermusic said:


> Would Apple have told me it was permitted if it broke the warranty?


You have to excuse my skepticism until this is officially confirmed. After all, whinecellar reported the opposite after speaking with Apple support ...


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## storyteller

Just got an email from OWC... here are the upgradable RAM prices:







Note: I'm not affiliated with OWC/Mac Sales at all. Just wanted to add this here to this thread...


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## Shad0wLandsUK

Will Wilson said:


> But is user upgradeable so you can get 32GB for about £250 if you do it yourself. Can't find any 32GB SODIMM but guess they will become available in time, might be better getting the 8GB RAM model upgrading the RAM myself.


I do wonder about this also. Because I know they said 64GB for the 2013 Mac Pro, but in truth it takes 128GB. Though I am not sure if the i7 6-Core would support 128GB...

Thought as much, looks like the top-end chip is an i7 8700
https://ark.intel.com/products/126686/Intel-Core-i7-8700-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4-60-GHz-


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## Ashermusic

zircon_st said:


> As a main machine it still seems like shoveling money into a fire for what you're getting. If you're going to spend over $4k on an Apple machine,




Because I won't be? The fastest i7 6 core version with 8 GB of RAM. and a 256 SSD,m which is what I presently have, is $1499. Assuming I spend even $1400 on third party RAM, I am way under $4k. I already have monitors, a Thunderbolt dock, 2 external SSDs and three HDs, so for me it may make sense.


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## Nick Batzdorf

charlieclouser said:


> Looks nice. The price is, as usual, absolutely bonkers, but the build quality and user experience will be second to none I'm sure, and the feature set looks on target for the "one notch under the top of the line" machine. Kind of wish there were i9 options, for no other reason than 9 is a higher number than 7, but perhaps a mid-cycle refresh will address that. As to user-upgradable RAM, keep refreshing the macsales.com website - I'm sure they'll have it sorted within days.
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next Mac Pro is using Apple silicon and not Intel. That would twist some nipples.



Yup to all of that.

$1100 for the base 6-core is great, or $1300 for the faster chip. No problem dropping an additional $100 to get 10 Gigabyte Ethernet, because it's 9 numbers higher. $1400 for a studio machine is very reasonable.

But then $1400 to bring it up to 64GB of RAM, another $1400 to increase the SSD to 2TB?! Fuck you!


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## Audio Birdi

I wish the storage and RAM was user upgradable. As Apple's prices are nuts as always! As everyone else has said so far too. Was looking forward to potentially getting 2 for a portable daisy-chained rig that would work very well for sure. Will wait for 8th Gen Intel NUCs and stick to Windows again for now I'm thinking. Or may just get the lowest end model to simply use macOS again. So many choices yet all cost crazy prices!

Edit: Does anyone know if the i7 in these models are 6 cores / 12 threads or 6 cores / 6 threads?


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## Nick Batzdorf

By the way, the new MacBook Air looks like a nice machine for "general computing" use - assuming its keyboard is good.


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## Nick Batzdorf

Re: Storyteller's link, $1079 for 64GB is still crazy.


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## ironbut

I'm sure that the price for 3rd party ram will drop once there is competition. 

To me, the new Mini seems like a great alternative to patching my 5,1, buying and upgrading a 6,1, or waiting for the new Mac Pro (whose price is sure to make my eyes water).

I'm in no big rush to replace my machine so I'll be interested to see how early adopters use them.


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## Andrew Aversa

Ashermusic said:


> Because I won't be? The fastest i7 6 core version with 8 GB of RAM. and a 256 SSD,m which is what I presently have, is $1499. Assuming I spend even $1400 on third party RAM, I am way under $4k. I already have monitors, a Thunderbolt dock, 2 external SSDs and three HDs, so for me it may make sense.



Well, that does sound much more sensible  Having all of that invested already helps.


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## Geoff Grace

ironbut said:


> I'm in no big rush to replace my machine so I'll be interested to see how early adopters use them.


Yes. Thanks, in advance, to the early adopters!

Best,

Geoff


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## charlieclouser

Well, it only took OWC about six hours to announce pricing on the RAM upgrades. Stiff, but at least it's a little bit of a savings. 

Somewhere I read that the internal flash storage on the new Mini gets something like 3,000 mb / sec - if that's true that is insane, and a good reason to max it out if used as a sample slave, unless someone knows of an external TB3 SSD that can hit those speeds. The OWC ThunderBlade can get there, but it's basically the same price as Apple's internal storage, although it can go to 8tb if you've got the $$$. MultiDock and SATA SSDs sure can't hit those speeds.


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## Alex Fraser

So, now we have the Mac Mini and iMac Pro. Both powerful machines. I can’t imagine what this means for the incoming Mac Pro. The Second Coming?

Anyone care to guess what the base price will be? I’m breaking out in a sweat just thinking about it.


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## charlieclouser

I predict $4,999 base price, rising quickly to over $10k. 

Swappable RAM probably, maxing out at 1tb at least. Freaking phones have that much now.

I'm 50/50 on swappable boot drive - if soldered-in can do better than NVMe or m2 or whatever the hell is on Samsung's shelf, then soldered-in it shall be. Ideally it's just a row of m2 slots or whatever, but I have my doubts. Optane might be a possibility, but only if they're using Intel CPU chips - if it's Apple silicon on the CPU then expect a proprietary boot drive, and if it is Apple silicon then they are free from the world of Intel-compatible standards and can do some insane thing like proprietary storage connection for 1tb/sec or something nutty like that. That would get some attention from video / rendering / vfx people I bet. Us too.

Ports will probably be 10gb Ethernet (dual?), four USB-A v3, and six or ten TB3/USBc. Maybe nothing but a row of TB3/USBc and that's it. TB4? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.

I seriously doubt it will be a big box that you can stuff with 3.5" drives like the old days - if internal expansion is expandable expect it to be small in form factor, like m2 or NVMe. As far as Apple is concerned, mechanical storage is dead and SATA is done for. They'll leave those standards behind as quick as they can. We won't be seeing them again. PCIe cards? I doubt it. For that 15% of customers using HDX or big GPUs, expansion chassis are a small expense and inconvenience compared to the cards themselves. With an HDX rig there's already a hailstorm of cables, so that's a non-issue, and what's a few hundred more when you're dropping $10k on Avid HDX cards? 

Plus then you can connect client computers directly to the rig, etc. with no card swapping. In a mix room people can bring in a laptop with their session done on PT Native and plug one TB cable into a PCIe chassis and play back across three HDX cards for mix (not that anybody ever does this). In a post situation this might happen I guess... Even Avid is desperately trying to get away from PCIe. HDX might be the last PCIe card they ever make.

I know Apple is testing the waters with TB-connected external GPUs, but I don't know how well that's going. Either way I don't hold out much hope for PCIe to live in the Apple ecosystem. Doesn't bother me a bit.

Personally, I actually like the "consumer-ification" of this stuff. I like being able to pick up a 2tb Samsung T5 from the rack by the cash register at Fry's, right next to the candy bars, or grab a spare at the airport gift shop. Bring on the small and simple!


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## Nick Batzdorf

ironbut said:


> I'm sure that the price for 3rd party ram will drop once there is competition.
> 
> To me, the new Mini seems like a great alternative to patching my 5,1, buying and upgrading a 6,1, or waiting for the new Mac Pro (whose price is sure to make my eyes water).
> 
> I'm in no big rush to replace my machine so I'll be interested to see how early adopters use them.



Is it a given that this is an upgrade from your 5,1? The 6,1 is only a little more powerful than the 12 x 3.46 Ghz 5,1.

But I don't know what you need to do to patch your 5,1, of course. I just ordered an MSI Radeon RX 560 video card - the exact version and the cheapest one Apple says will work with Mojave - because I figure they're only going to get more expensive when the next cards come out, and at some point I'll have to update to a newer macOS.


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## mc_deli

EUR1800 exc. VAT for the 6-core i7 with 1TB and 8GB.
Another EUR1000 exc. VAT at a guess for 64GB.
Some cables and keyboard... 3k exc. VAT...

My gut reaction is... this is priced way over the top compared to the MBP (slower SSD, non expandable RAM I know, as I just got the 15" from the day job).
The real cheese is comparing the 6 core i7 64GB with a Trash Can 6 core 64GB... let's see that Logic benchmark test!


----------



## givemenoughrope

zircon_st said:


> The pricing of this is completely ridiculous. Absolutely no one should even consider buying this if you are using it as a server (slave) machine. You can get an Intel NUC with quad core 4.5ghz boost - that's also tiny, silent, and low power draw - with 64GB of RAM and 2TB NVME top-tier solid state storage, for about $1600. Sure, 2 cores fewer, but it's also less than half the price.
> 
> So would you rather have one fully specced Mac Mini? Or 2x slave machines with 2x the overall RAM, 2x the storage, and 25% more processing power... plus over $1000 left in your pocket?



Does someone here have one of these machines? I'm interested.


----------



## Damarus

I think a lot of people here are forgetting that not all processors are created equal.

Keep in mind that an i7 in a desktop is not equal to an i7 in a Laptop. Desktop grade CPUs will always be more powerful. The Mac Mini uses a Laptop form factor CPU. You can usually tell how dramatic the "turbo boost" speed difference is versus the base clock. This allows the computer to mostly perform at a low speed/power draw to avoid high thermals.

No doubt a handy and pretty machine, and 4 thunderbolt ports is awesome, but you're not saving money using this as a Slave machine.


----------



## Damarus

givemenoughrope said:


> Does someone here have one of these machines? I'm interested.



Same thing i mentioned above, Intel NUC is awesome but still a low power CPU. Why spend the money on small form factor.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

After four pages it seems like everyone is circling around the same issue: price.

Well, Charlie likes the speed of the internal flash storage. But other than that, it seems pretty unanimous.

I actually have another issue that's less tangible: longevity. Computers are long-term investments nowadays. Can you see yourself using this $4,000 machine six years from now?


----------



## LinusW

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Computers are long-term investments nowadays. Can you see yourself using this $4,000 machine six years from now?


Actually, the 2012 Mac mini slave in my shelf is that old and still in use. All while I would gladly swap the 2015 iMac 5K for a 2018 Mac mini and a 5K display.


----------



## LinusW

Damarus said:


> The Mac Mini uses a Laptop form factor CPU.


No, the new Mac mini is reengineered with a *desktop* CPU and a new thermal architecture. 
It's the i3-8100, i5-8500 or i7-8700 CPU.


----------



## charlieclouser

Nick Batzdorf said:


> After four pages it seems like everyone is circling around the same issue: price.
> 
> Well, Charlie likes the speed of the internal flash storage. But other than that, it seems pretty unanimous.
> 
> I actually have another issue that's less tangible: longevity. Computers are long-term investments nowadays. Can you see yourself using this $4,000 machine six years from now?



That's what I was getting at in an earlier post. In some sense it does make sense to do what Junkie did and just get used Xeon HP or Dell server machines, or build your own rattly, cheap-n-cheerful slave, and drag it to the curb in four years when either some part fails or it's surpassed by whatever comes next. The pain of ditching an $1,100 machine will be much more bearable than staring at an outdated $4,000 machine and guilt-ing yourself into continuing to use it because "it still works, technically".

That Mac Mini, as with every Mac I've ever owned, will be purring along smoothly in a decade, long after it's become laughably outdated and slow by comparison with whatever comes next. I have G4 machines that still work fine and boot right up into OS9, but they're good for nothing other than running TurboSynth as a joke or booting up half-assed album tracks from 25 years ago.

So it does make sense in a lot of cases to just buy the cheapest, most disposable technology you can find.


----------



## LinusW

Speaking of NUC, be sure to compare CPU benchmarks because a dual core NUC is of course cheaper than a quad core Mac.

Intel NUC 2017, *dual* core *i7*-7567U scores *6497* points.
Mac mini 2018, *quad* core *i3*-8100 scores *7368* points.

Intel NUC 2018, *quad* core i7-8650U scores *8886* points.
Mac mini 2018, *hexa* core i7-8700 scores *15970* points.


----------



## ironbut

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Is it a given that this is an upgrade from your 5,1? The 6,1 is only a little more powerful than the 12 x 3.46 Ghz 5,1.


Mine is a 6 core 3.3Ghz. It doesn't do very well in the benchmarks I've seen but for the most part, I don't waste very much energy thinking about it's capability.
I would like to have Thunderbolt and bluetooth that plays nice with usb3.
Kinda noisy and works as a great space heater in the summer.

So, if the new Mini proves to be a real world upgrade, I'd like a desktop that doesn't need 2 handles to pick up.


----------



## benmrx

To me it seems like the i7 6 core w/32GB of ram (through OWC) and a 256GB SSD is the sweet spot. For my needs, this is kinda perfect. I've got my own display, external drives, etc. Will be a long overdue upgrade to my 2009 cheese grater.


----------



## germancomponist

I am working on a PC, do not know what they did, but they sold me this PC as a Composer/Audio-Producer PC. What I know is that I have 32 Gig Ram and many good hardware tools ..... . Yeah, I bought this PC 4 years ago, and it works so very well for me. I use a lot of Kontakt instances and many plugs, and never had any problem. This PC I got for 2.200 €.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

LinusW said:


> Actually, the 2012 Mac mini slave in my shelf is that old and still in use. All while I would gladly swap the 2015 iMac 5K for a 2018 Mac mini and a 5K display.



Okay. I don't think I would, but okay.

EDIT: wait - I missed "and a 5K display." That does make sense.

What I'm saying is $4K for a Mac Mini seems excessive to me.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

ironbut said:


> I would like to have Thunderbolt and bluetooth that plays nice with usb3.



If you need Thunderbolt, sure. I hadn't heard about BT/USB 3 issues, but for about $100 you can put a BT card in a 5,1 that supports Handoff and all that stuff.



ironbut said:


> Mine is a 6 core 3.3Ghz



Yeah, the processor tray swaps don't really pay.

It's probably a good choice in your situation.


----------



## samphony

charlieclouser said:


> Well, it only took OWC about six hours to announce pricing on the RAM upgrades. Stiff, but at least it's a little bit of a savings.
> 
> Somewhere I read that the internal flash storage on the new Mini gets something like 3,000 mb / sec - if that's true that is insane, and a good reason to max it out if used as a sample slave, unless someone knows of an external TB3 SSD that can hit those speeds. The OWC ThunderBlade can get there, but it's basically the same price as Apple's internal storage, although it can go to 8tb if you've got the $$$. MultiDock and SATA SSDs sure can't hit those speeds.


The Samsung x500?


----------



## Andrew Aversa

charlieclouser said:


> Well, it only took OWC about six hours to announce pricing on the RAM upgrades. Stiff, but at least it's a little bit of a savings.
> 
> Somewhere I read that the internal flash storage on the new Mini gets something like 3,000 mb / sec - if that's true that is insane, and a good reason to max it out if used as a sample slave, unless someone knows of an external TB3 SSD that can hit those speeds. The OWC ThunderBlade can get there, but it's basically the same price as Apple's internal storage, although it can go to 8tb if you've got the $$$. MultiDock and SATA SSDs sure can't hit those speeds.



If you're talking _any_ hard drives, then Samsung 970 EVO or PRO NVME M2 both read at 3,500 mb / sec. I just picked up two 2TB 970 EVOs for about $500 each. 1TB versions are ~$250.

Intel's Optane drives are 2500 mb / sec read but also way higher random read than basically anything else. I got one of those also, curious to test it out!


----------



## charlieclouser

samphony said:


> The Samsung x500?



There we go. I knew it was coming. Guess I'll just throw these T5 drives against the wall.


----------



## Damarus

LinusW said:


> No, the new Mac mini is reengineered with a *desktop* CPU and a new thermal architecture.
> It's the i3-8100, i5-8500 or i7-8700 CPU.



That would be great. Do have a source for this info?

Im seeing i5-8500*B* / i7-8700*B*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12632/intel-core-b-processors-8th-gen-bga-with-65w-tdp


----------



## Soundhound

Or send them my way. Postage totally on me. 



charlieclouser said:


> There we go. I knew it was coming. Guess I'll just throw these T5 drives against the wall.


----------



## Soundhound

So the Mac Mini went from $1,000 to $4,000. A hale and hearty fuck you to Apple from moi. I'm starting to feel like Charlie Brown. Can we just call Apple 'Lucy' from now on? The first mac iteration was called the Lisa, not a huge stretch...

Anybody have any idea if the internal SSD can be replaced? Or is it trip-wired to detonate 6.7 ounces of plastiques?


----------



## NoamL

Will Wilson said:


> Up to 6 core i7
> Up to 64GB RAM
> 2TB SSD
> 4 x Thunderbolt3
> Starts at $799 for quad core i3 and 8GB Ram.



Hooray!



Will Wilson said:


> 3.2Ghz 6 core i7
> 64GB RAM
> 2TB SSD
> £3,769



Fuck!

I might need a 64gb Logic computer within the next few months. But at this rate I'm thinking Hackintosh is the way to go. I've never built a computer before but SURELY you can build a 64gb machine with enough processing power to handle the audio effectively for $1500 or less, right? Will probably ask around here for help when I do it as y'all are extremely knowledgeable.


----------



## Soundhound

Looks like it might be an ebay 2013 mac pro for me after all. $1500 for an ebay 2013 4 core, $600 for a 10 core processor upgrade, $319 for 64gigs of ram. That's under $2500, vs $3,100 for a comparably priced 6 core mini. Are those two processors in any way comparable? If so that could argue for the mini...

(Edited in the dead of night)


----------



## Damarus

lol everyone getting discouraged by the price... like its surprising.

Did you know you you can use an external SSD for your samples?


----------



## InLight-Tone

Apple has become a computer for the elite, a status symbol at best. Logic is the only thing it has that's attractive and different from the Windows platform THAT isn't worth the price for admission...


----------



## samphony

I don’t get it. If one wants to buy a Mac Mini just get the 6 core with a 512 or 1 TB internal ssd and upgrade the ram yourselfs. For samples and projects use external ssds/hds!

Also think about this the mini is made of 100% recycled aluminum!!!! As well as internal parts are made with recycled materials! That’s a big achievement.


----------



## samphony

InLight-Tone said:


> Apple has become a computer for the elite, a status symbol at best. Logic is the only thing it has that's attractive and different from the Windows platform THAT isn't worth the price for admission...


That’s a strange statement!

Apple has macOS as well! And workflow wise I prefer that to windows. I don’t feel being part of an elite group and still have the ability to purchase or even wiser to lease the equipment and swap it for newer models. 

Of course if one is focusing on cubase and vep or cross platform software anyways there is not need to stay with apple. Many people I know use PCs as their main machines and apple notebooks and iOS devices for mobility because it’s reliable and secure.


----------



## Oguz Sehiralti

I think the biggest reason this machine seems overpriced is that fact that it’s small, not that it's Apple. 

For a 64 GB configuration one needs two SO-DIMM modules of 32 GB each. As far as I know, Samsung announced the first ever of such modules around May this year and I couldn’t find an RSVP. But a desktop equivalent of a single 32 GB memory stick is around 650 euros nowadays. (Would be happy to see cheaper options if someone knows any.)

There is no doubt that one can build a more powerful PC with more internal disk space and 64 gigs of memory much cheaper, but only at the ATX size. Mac mini is very close to mITX and at that size it’s even very difficult to find a motherboard that accepts 64 gigs of ram officially, not to mention 4 TB3 ports. (At least I couldn’t find any. Would be happy to see some examples if anyone knows some.)

So in my opinion unless one needs the mobility or the small form factor, an ATX solution is going to be much more affordable. But at a mITX form factor it seems quite difficult to build a similar machine for much cheaper.


----------



## wonshu

I wonder how this machine deals with heat under heavy music production load...

I know my little MacMini can get pretty hot and temperature has been the biggest achilles heel in all of Apples products.

Best,
Hans


----------



## ptram

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Can you see yourself using this $4,000 machine six years from now?


My 4-core Mac mini 2012 is still my main machine, and I plan to still use it for one or two years to come. It has still lots of power. Then, when no longer my main machine, it will still have its uses.

Paolo


----------



## Guy Rowland

Damarus said:


> That would be great. Do have a source for this info?
> 
> Im seeing i5-8500*B* / i7-8700*B*
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini
> 
> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12632/intel-core-b-processors-8th-gen-bga-with-65w-tdp



Thanks for that link, very interesting for our purposes. Essentially if I understand correctly the B variant performs exactly the same for single core tasks, but is restricted when under heavy multicore load. This graph shows what happens when restricted to 65W, as the 8700B is:







...essentially its 75% of the performance under heavy multicore load, as a big DAW session might be.

The maxed out Mac Mini looks like a marvel for the form factor, and will make a very capable mobile machine. But looking at the specs closely, its not going to be rivalling equivalent desktop performance, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Maybe the single best news from the whole announcement is that the RAM at least is upgradeable, because that bodes well for the upcoming Mac Pros. In other words, Apple hasn't entirely abandoned the notion of user upgradeablity.


----------



## IFM

Apple's RAM pricing has ALWAYS been this way so I'm guessing some of you are here to just complain for the sake of complaining. To me, that compact and powerful of a machine that is silent is worth all the $. If it is anything like before, the bottom will pop off and and you simply swap the ram. Whenever possible I've always used 3rd party ram.


----------



## babylonwaves

samphony said:


> I don’t get it. If one wants to buy a Mac Mini just get the 6 core with a 512 or 1 TB internal ssd and upgrade the ram yourselfs. For samples and projects use external ssds/hds!


i don't get it too. buying RAM and SSD storage from apple was always expensive. nothing new, nothing to be worried about. 3rd party RAM and a small SSD for the system worked fine in the past.


----------



## Alex Fraser

samphony said:


> I don’t get it. If one wants to buy a Mac Mini just get the 6 core with a 512 or 1 TB internal ssd and upgrade the ram yourselfs. For samples and projects use external ssds/hds!


Yep, this. Seems the most logical and cost effective way forward. If you're knee deep in Apple Land, a lot of stuff can be offloaded to iCloud to free up HD space. Or Amazon S3. Or just get some cheap platters and a hub for all the long term storage stuff. Not everything has to be accessed at blistering speeds.

Also, the third party ram upgrade prices are still a little eye watering.

Finally, an observation. I enjoy the fact that yesterday's tech is no longer considered "good enough" when once it was cutting edge and desirable. Even though we're all basically still doing the same things. #hardwareentitlement

Best - A


----------



## Olfirf

IFM said:


> Apple's RAM pricing has ALWAYS been this way so I'm guessing some of you are here to just complain for the sake of complaining. To me, that compact and powerful of a machine that is silent is worth all the $. If it is anything like before, the bottom will pop off and and you simply swap the ram. Whenever possible I've always used 3rd party ram.



Ram and storage prices have always been to high, that is right! But they have never been that much higher compared to usual market prices (sometimes tripled), as they are today. Also, there never has been a situation, where most devices were pretty much impossible to replace that stuff easily. 10 years ago it was easy to replace both hard drives and RAM on any Apple device. Today you really have to look hard to find an Apple product that is not closed. Look at the iMac Pro. It would be a decent machine with a slight Apple tax I would be willing to pay - except for the price for RAM and SSDs ...

"Here to just complain?" ... no, I had hoped to be really excited and happy for a new Apple computer to be released. But every time Apple releases new hardware these days it is another machine I do not want or need or that comes with a bag of problems. Your knowledge about Windows PCs is limited, if you think about them as loud. You can build a really quiet PC nowadays without any problems. Even better, thanks to bigger dimensions it won't do thermal throttling as soon as most of Apples small and portable devices do. It is nice to have a portable system, don't get me wrong! But there should also be an option to get a "pro" system for stationary use, that is optimized regarding performance, expandability and cost efficiency. Such a system is simply not built by Apple any more. When I say cost efficiency, I don't mean cheap! I am talking about lots of room for internal storage and PCIe. The thing with Thunderbolt is that it might look cool, if you only use a few devices. But it quickly increases your costs for being forced to buy external extensions, buy Thunderbolt versions of your former PCIe cards and pay more for external storage solutions ... and don't forget about all those (expensive) cables needed. And in the end: how sexy does a Mac Pro 2013 look with all USB and Thunderbolt ports connected to external devices? How quiet is that system, if you use external PCIe expansions with small fans (all of those are louder than any PC with quiet components)? You might ask, why haven't I (and others complaining) not already gone for Windows? Well, it is simple: We are used to the operating system. And for the most part, I like the OS. 
But be assured: You won't have to read my complaints much longer.  If the 2019 Mac Pro will have similar problems as all the releases had since 2013 IMO, I will not care to comment any more Apple threads. Then, it will be Windows for me.


----------



## Alex Fraser

Olfirf said:


> You won't have to read my complaints much longer.  If the 2019 Mac Pro will have similar problems as all the releases had since 2013 IMO, I will not care to comment any more Apple threads. Then, it will be Windows for me.


Without trying to offend, it sounds like you've already decided to make the move? <ObiWan>You must do what you feel is right.</ObiWan>

I feel some folk have an old school vision of what a Mac Desktop should be. It's been pretty clear for a while that Apple have no interest in this type of machine. I really believe that the 2019 Mac Pro will be some sort of extreme "halo machine" that will be priced and specced well beyond the needs of most of the music making community. The angry threads will be fun reading.


----------



## ChristianM

zircon_st said:


> The pricing of this is completely ridiculous. Absolutely no one should even consider buying this if you are using it as a server (slave) machine. You can get an Intel NUC with quad core 4.5ghz boost - that's also tiny, silent, and low power draw - with 64GB of RAM and 2TB NVME top-tier solid state storage, for about $1600. Sure, 2 cores fewer, but it's also less than half the price.



With OSX ?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

InLight-Tone said:


> Apple has become a computer for the elite, a status symbol at best. Logic is the only thing it has that's attractive and different from the Windows platform THAT isn't worth the price for admission...



My Mac hasn't crashed once since buying it new in 2013, that alone is worth the price of admission for me. For that reason alone, it has paid for itself in spades considering all the deadlines I have met.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Olfirf said:


> I was talking about TB busses, not ports! That is relevant regarding the bandwidth when using multiple devices. The Mac Pro 2013 has 3 separate TB2 busses (and 6 physical ports).



Like I said, a ton. You won't notice any bandwidth or performance degradation.


----------



## mauriziodececco

Damarus said:


> Keep in mind that an i7 in a desktop is not equal to an i7 in a Laptop. Desktop grade CPUs will always be more powerful. The Mac Mini uses a Laptop form factor CPU.



Well, it should be double checked, but what i understood during the keynote is that the CPUs are *not* laptop cpu.

Maurizio


----------



## InLight-Tone

Wolfie2112 said:


> My Mac hasn't crashed once since buying it new in 2013, that alone is worth the price of admission for me. For that reason alone, it has paid for itself in spades considering all the deadlines I have met.


Windows 10 doesn't crash either but we don't want to go down THAT road do we?!? My point is that Mac users are paying 4 times as much for the same hardware for the privilege to use MacOS and Logic? Are those worth it? I've used them and to me they are nothing special. I don't have money to burn like that especially on computers...


----------



## Alex Fraser

InLight-Tone said:


> Windows 10 doesn't crash either but we don't want to go down THAT road do we?!? My point is that Mac users are paying 4 times as much for the same hardware for the privilege to use MacOS and Logic? Are those worth it? I've used them and to me they are nothing special. I don't have money to burn like that especially on computers...


Why would you want to wade into a thread about Mac computers with the specific intention of telling people they shouldn't buy them? That's the more interesting discussion.. 
A


----------



## mauriziodececco

Soundhound said:


> So the Mac Mini went from $1,000 to $4,000.



Why you compare apples and oranges ? Last Mac Mini was very, very different from the new Mac Mini; you should
compare similar configurations; my 2011 Mac Mini Server(4gb ram, 4core i7, 2x512Gb HD) was around 1KEuro. Equivalent configurations are more expensive, but a lot less than 4x as expensive (we can discuss storage, but you cannot compare SATA HD with SSD; add 1Tb USB3 external storage and you have similar performance); functionally, if i had to substitute my Mac Mini (that is not a music machine), the smallest configuration at 899Euros would do.

I think the new Mac Mini should be considered for what it is : it is true that you can configure it at 64Gb/2Tb, but considering the costs it is clear that is not its sweet spot; wait for the new Mac Pro if you want a very high end configuration, it will be expensive but more interesting and more expandable. Better investiment.

But if you take the middle, considering third party memory and a reasonable boot disk with fast external storage, the costs is a lot more reasonable. I think it is the ideal machine to substitute my Mac Pro 2009, for example, keeping monitor and keyboards. Thunderbolt 3 enclosure are (slowing) coming, external fast storage will be dirty cheap in a few month (comparing to internal one) and performance will be reasonable.
Not everybody do hundreds of tracks with hundreds of Gbs of samples.

Finally, in a more Pro context: if you are making money with your hardware, and i means real money, the kind of money a family live of, the raw cost of hardware is not necessarily very significant (investing 2KEuro or 4KEuro in hardware that will provide you revenues for the next 5 years). Other factors may be more significant, like retraining time, efficiency, your ability on managing your hardware and OS, the kind of support you may have. All these factors are in part subjective, depending on your personal history, set of skills and preferences, and others things as location and so on. At the end, expensive hardware may come out to cost less or produce more revenues of cheap hardware; it may not, also.

Maurizio


----------



## Alex Fraser

mauriziodececco said:


> Finally, in a more Pro context: if you are making money with your hardware, and i means real money, the kind of money a family live of, the raw cost of hardware is not necessarily very significant (investing 2KEuro or 4KEuro in hardware that will provide you revenues for the next 5 years). Other factors may be more significant, like retraining time, efficiency, your ability on managing your hardware and OS, the kind of support you may have. All these factors are in part subjective, depending on your personal history, set of skills and preferences, and others things as location and so on. At the end, expensive hardware may come out to cost less or produce more revenues of cheap hardware; it may not, also.


Absolutely agree with this. 2011 iMac still providing the living here.
I'm more or less clueless about what's inside a modern computer. I just want it to work out of the box and not worry about it. I'm also not fussed about upgrading the components. When there's a good enough reason to buy a new machine, I do it.

For me, the computer is a tool, not a hobby. No right or wrong here, just a different outlook.

That may sound alien to someone who's all about the hardware specs and building machines. It's a completely different mindset and might go some way to explaining why someone would buy a Mac.

That, OSX and Logic.
Best - A


----------



## samphony

Damarus said:


> The Mac Mini uses a Laptop form factor CPU.


The 2018 Mac mini uses Desktop i3/i7 8th gen intel CPUs


----------



## Guy Rowland

samphony said:


> The 2018 Mac mini uses Desktop i3/i7 8th gen intel CPUs



Haven’t we been through this? AFAIK they are B models, not the same as the full desktop versions. Same single core but throttled for multi core - about 75% of stock speed regular version when under full load.


----------



## Damarus

samphony said:


> The 2018 Mac mini uses Desktop i3/i7 8th gen intel CPUs





mauriziodececco said:


> Well, it should be double checked, but what i understood during the keynote is that the CPUs are *not* laptop cpu.
> 
> Maurizio



Unless someone can show otherwise,

I think this is a misconception, as they have always used "laptop" CPU for minis to keep its heat efficiency. This year, from what I was able to dig up, they went with a CPU similar to a desktop processor in performance and power, but still in the "laptop/mobile" category. While its performance will be impressive, it's still limited by power/heat in terms of processing performance. 

I still think its a great product, these are just some things to take into account.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12632/intel-core-b-processors-8th-gen-bga-with-65w-tdp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini (Scroll to the bottom for 4th gen)


----------



## GtrString

Im excited about the new mac mini. Looks like 3rd party ram upgrade is the way to go. SSD's looks very accessible on the pics, so Im hoping for a chance to use 3rd party SSD's as well.

In that case, an i7, hex core with 2tb SSD and 64gb ram will be a nobrainer for me.


----------



## InLight-Tone

I'm trying to convince myself not to buy one?!?


----------



## Guy Rowland

GtrString said:


> SSD's looks very accessible on the pics.



Really? I've yet to see anything convincing - anything you can share?


----------



## Damarus

GtrString said:


> Im excited about the new mac mini. Looks like 3rd party ram upgrade is the way to go. SSD's looks very accessible on the pics, so Im hoping for a chance to use 3rd party SSD's as well.
> 
> In that case, an i7, hex core with 2tb SSD and 64gb ram will be a nobrainer for me.



That would be great, but this is what we can see. Someone mentioned that it may be soldered to the board.


----------



## jonnybutter

Blake Ewing said:


> They didn't become a trillion dollar company by pricing things fairly.



True, but I think they made their big money on phones more than computers. Their computers are, as Mr Clouser suggests above, sometimes *too* well built. Rather than wear out, they just get outdated (like me, apparently). I accumulated a stack of macs too over the years. Pros need to upgrade often, but most people don't. I assume the too-good builds are why Apple moved to soldered-in RAM and the rest of it; the bean counters wanted different numbers! People are just repairing their MBPs and continuing to use them. I have a couple of those that will be fine for internet use for quite a while longer.

Oh yes, Apple are arrogant, and nowadays they are too much like the old Microsoft - just a money machine. But you do get some value for money when you buy a mac. I would never spend for a super high end Apple phone or an Apple watch, but I like my per se computers - esp the music ones - to be good builds. It's worth it for me. Wintel machines w/comparable build qualities have never been cheap either, although they look better these days.

The new mini looks OK to me, value-wise (with customer upgradable RAM). Am intrigued with the idea of their being modular. We shall see I guess.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

IFM said:


> Apple's RAM pricing has ALWAYS been this way so I'm guessing some of you are here to just complain for the sake of complaining. To me, that compact and powerful of a machine that is silent is worth all the $. If it is anything like before, the bottom will pop off and and you simply swap the ram. Whenever possible I've always used 3rd party ram.



I think you’re complaining for the sake of complaining about people (like me) who are complaining as part of evaluating this machine. 

People do complain about Apple for the sake of complaining, but that’s not what I see here. 

Apple has never charged as much as an entire machine for a freaking drive! And it sounds like you can’t just stick in another one - it’s soldered.

The RAM is hellishly expensive too.

That makes the price of this computer, once equipped to use in a music studio, crazy.


----------



## whinecellar

The SSD is indeed soldered to the board - you need to pick what you want up front in that department. RAM, on the other hand, are standard DIMMs, and from the pics, it looks like it should be easily accessible despite Apple's warning that it's "not user serviceable." I suspect that just means "if you don't want to void your warranty." Waiting on confirmation of that, but OWC has already started advertising it - 64 GB through them would save you about $500 off of Apple's price. Here's hoping the new Mini isn't essentially welded shut...


----------



## samphony

Guy Rowland said:


> Haven’t we been through this? AFAIK they are B models, not the same as the full desktop versions. Same single core but throttled for multi core - about 75% of stock speed regular version when under full load.


This is something that test will show. But if then you can st least put it in the freezer. :o)


----------



## ChristianM

samphony said:


> This is something that test will show. But if then you can st least put it in the freezer. :o)


it's too wet


----------



## ChristianM

The real good news is that now we can really believe in a new Mac Pro to few months


----------



## JPQ

I think now how noissy this can be and makes me also are agry i want this i need get adapter connect all my old conenction usb hardware becouse i have allready used all my current mac mini usb ports one have usb where i connect another usb hub.


----------



## IFM

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I think you’re complaining for the sake of complaining about people (like me) who are complaining as part of evaluating this machine.


You caught me!


----------



## Geoff Grace

Olfirf said:


> If the 2019 Mac Pro will have similar problems as all the releases had since 2013 IMO, I will not care to comment any more Apple threads. Then, it will be Windows for me.


That's fine as long as it's not curtains for you.

Best,

Geoff


----------



## charlieclouser

InLight-Tone said:


> My point is that Mac users are paying 4 times as much for the same hardware for the privilege to use MacOS and Logic? Are those worth it?



Yes.


----------



## Olfirf

Geoff Grace said:


> That's fine as long as it's not curtains for you.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Geoff



Better behind windows with curtains, then behind golden bars you have to pay for ... 
Seriously: I am totally fine with anyone who thinks the recent Apple offerings are great and worth it. To dis those is as childish as dissing people who think it's outrageous and expensive.


----------



## mc_deli

Who has shares then?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Shares in a collective Mac Mini?


----------



## LinusW

Damarus said:


> Im seeing i5-8500*B* / i7-8700*B*


That's strange. Because Tom said in the keynote at 27min55s "And these aren't mobile parts, NO! These are higher power 8th generation CPUs with faster graphics too"


----------



## Creston

Any one have any idea how the top spec CPU in this might compare to a 5.1 12 core 3.46?


----------



## Damarus

LinusW said:


> That's strange. Because Tom said in the keynote at 27min55s "And these aren't mobile parts, NO! These are higher power 8th generation CPUs with faster graphics too"



Ah, but didn't say anything about them being full-size desktop CPUs. Technically they are faster and draw more power than the average "ultra-low power" mobile CPU. Most everything they say in a keynote is on a technicality.

Edit: We will know which processor it is when someone figures that out and posts the findings online. It could be the i7-8700 or 8700B. So far all i've found was a wiki update showing the *B model 8700*


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Creston said:


> Any one have any idea how the top spec CPU in this might compare to a 5.1 12 core 3.46?



No, but it's not going to be worth spending $4200 to upgrade.


----------



## charlieclouser

mc_deli said:


> Who has shares then?



I'm long on AAPL since John Sculley was CEO!


----------



## Creston

Nick Batzdorf said:


> No, but it's not going to be worth spending $4200 to upgrade.



Why would it cost me $4,200 to upgrade?


----------



## Damarus

Creston said:


> Why would it cost me $4,200 to upgrade?


I think some people think you can only buy the fully maxed out model?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Damarus said:


> I think some people think you can only buy the fully maxed out model?



I don't think that. You can buy any model you want. Save $1400 and live with a hard drive that's too small, for example.

What I'm saying with great subtlety - as someone who has the same machine as Creston's - is that this machine isn't likely to be a wise investment as an upgrade.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

mc_deli said:


> Who has shares then?



We've had our gambling money in AAPL for quite a few years, and it's done ridiculously well (we put in enough to buy a computer, now it's enough to replace our roof, or a similar emergency). But I wish I'd asked Charlie what to invest in when he did.


----------



## charlieclouser

Nick Batzdorf said:


> We've had our gambling money in AAPL for quite a few years, and it's done ridiculously well (we put in enough to buy a computer, now it's enough to replace our roof, or a similar emergency). But I wish I'd asked Charlie what to invest in when he did.



It is pretty insane what AAPL has done in the 25 years that I've been a "hodl"-er. But I had faith. As an end-user I saw value. Even through the Sculley and Amelio years, I held on. I only wish I'd invested every dollar I could find!

Years before I could afford to buy stock, fresh out of college, I worked at Sam Ash on 48th street right when they became the first music store chain to be an authorized Apple dealer, so they sent me and a few other geeky types to Apple HQ in NJ to get the corporate indoctrination (and have a mind-control chip implanted in the back of our necks!). 

Even back then, in the late 1980's, they explicitly told us that their long-term goal was to give away all OS and application software to customers for free - but that it would only run on their hardware - and that selling well-engineered, high quality hardware in a closed ecosystem was their goal and the key to a profitable company. This wasn't some secret corporate strategy, it was what they told 20-something music-store employees who just walked in the door of their campus. At the time, with the explosion of PC clones this seemed contrary to what the rest of that industry was doing - but they stuck to the plan - and look where they are today.

Amazing.


----------



## AlexRuger

Those of you who work on machines with soldered hard drives: what the hell do you do when your drive dies? Just buy a new computer?


----------



## InLight-Tone

charlieclouser said:


> Yes.


Believe you me Charlie, NIN!, your posts about your current workflow, the Mac world and your subsequent work in Saw, Wayward etc., are my main influences towards the mac platform...


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

AlexRuger said:


> Those of you who work on machines with soldered hard drives: what the hell do you do when your drive dies? Just buy a new computer?



That's actually a very good question!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

charlieclouser said:


> It is pretty insane what AAPL has done in the 25 years that I've been a "hodl"-er.



Looking at the historical chart, my guess is that your stock has multiplied well over 200x! That's winning the lottery.

I think we bought ours ten or twelve years ago, and it's gone up to about 10x - which I'm not complaining about at all.


----------



## AlexRuger

Shit like that is why I just cannot deal with Apple anymore. I love the OS so much, but what if my drive dies a day before a delivery? I guess I can have a bootable Thunderbolt drive ready to go and not experience much of a performance hit, but do they seriously expect me to just...run my computer like that full time from then on? Like, now my system drive is an external drive -- forever? Maybe a tech can do it, but do they expect people to _pay _to have their hard drive replaced? I guess then...Apple Care is basically required, then?

I'm holding my breath for 2019's Mac Pro, but if it has soldered on _anything _(and also probably has its base model priced at $6,000), then I'm 100% out the door for good.


----------



## samphony

Creston said:


> Any one have any idea how the top spec CPU in this might compare to a 5.1 12 core 3.46?


Be patient and wait a couple of weeks. No one has one yet.


----------



## galactic orange

AlexRuger said:


> I guess then...Apple Care is basically required, then?


Does installing your own RAM void the warranty? That's what I'd like to know. In that case, is there any point in buying Apple Care? I'd like to have AC in case the hard drive goes out, but not if they're going to say "Oh! You installed your OWN RAM? Tough luck. We aren't replacing your hard drive."


----------



## Guy Rowland

AlexRuger said:


> Those of you who work on machines with soldered hard drives: what the hell do you do when your drive dies? Just buy a new computer?



I think perhaps the question is - has anyone who has a soldered HDD ever had it die? Likely you wouldn't know, it would just stop working. All modern phones and tablets - certainly Apple ones - would come into this category. With no vulnerable connectors or moving parts, I guess failure rate is pretty low.


----------



## redlester

As an SSD has no moving parts isn't it just as, or almost as, likely that a motherboard component (which are mostly soldered) will fail?


----------



## Olfirf

redlester said:


> As an SSD has no moving parts isn't it just as, or almost as, likely that a motherboard component (which are mostly soldered) will fail?


No. A motherboard component may fail at some time, but there are computers more than 20 years old that still work. There are computers from today going to be working in 20 years from now, but no SSD will last as long as far as I know.


----------



## redlester

Olfirf said:


> No. A motherboard component may fail at some time, but there are computers more than 20 years old that still work. There are computers from today going to be working in 20 years from now, but no SSD will last as long as far as I know.



Ok I should have said in my post "within the normal life expectancy of a music/DAW based computer" - which seems to get shorter all the time


----------



## stonzthro

Olfirf said:


> No. A motherboard component may fail at some time, but there are computers more than 20 years old that still work. There are computers from today going to be working in 20 years from now, but no SSD will last as long as far as I know.


Would you WANT to work on a 20 year old computer?!? Let's see, 20 years ago I was using a G3 - I'm not sure it would be good for anything but very slow web browsing...


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

InLight-Tone said:


> Windows 10 doesn't crash either but we don't want to go down THAT road do we?!? My point is that Mac users are paying 4 times as much for the same hardware for the privilege to use MacOS and Logic? Are those worth it? I've used them and to me they are nothing special. I don't have money to burn like that especially on computers...



Hell yes, they are worth it. Win 10 DOES crash, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. My experience of course, but to me it`s worth it to have a machine that I can count on day after day, without worrying about whether or not it`s going to deliver for me. For that reason, I`m willing to shell out for another Mac when that day comes.


----------



## Damarus

AlexRuger said:


> Shit like that is why I just cannot deal with Apple anymore. I love the OS so much, but what if my drive dies a day before a delivery? I guess I can have a bootable Thunderbolt drive ready to go and not experience much of a performance hit, but do they seriously expect me to just...run my computer like that full time from then on? Like, now my system drive is an external drive -- forever? Maybe a tech can do it, but do they expect people to _pay _to have their hard drive replaced? I guess then...Apple Care is basically required, then?
> 
> I'm holding my breath for 2019's Mac Pro, but if it has soldered on _anything _(and also probably has its base model priced at $6,000), then I'm 100% out the door for good.



Soldered hard drives are not a new concept. No matter what computer you have, there is always a chance for a major component to fail.


----------



## InLight-Tone

Wolfie2112 said:


> Hell yes, they are worth it. Win 10 DOES crash, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. My experience of course, but to me it`s worth it to have a machine that I can count on day after day, without worrying about whether or not it`s going to deliver for me. For that reason, I`m willing to shell out for another Mac when that day comes.


That's absurd, they're using the same components. I could build 4 Windows machines to have backups for the same price...


----------



## Damarus

InLight-Tone said:


> That's absurd, they're using the same components. I could build 4 Windows machines to have backups for the same price...



And also have complete customization and full repairability. 

But not everyone builds computers or wants to mess around with the setup. They want to work right out of the box with little to no thought. That's why Apple does so well. Ease of use and ecosystem. Their computers have almost never been cheaper/faster than a custom PC. But they just work well.


----------



## X-Bassist

I’ve worked on some form of mac continuously since 1989. Had a motherboard go down in 1997 that was a real bummer. But besides that never had a component or internal hard drive go down (soildered or otherwise). And most of this time was at a studio with 5 running continuously (so maybe 30 or 40 macs in that time). My current 2 both have fixed hard drives, but I’ve had more problems with external or 3rd party hardware than apple (many third party HD’s have gone down, will never buy cheap again). And apple care for me is like asking a college student to mix my next film, not going to happen.  (But I have tech skills).

The bigger issue for Macs is usually will the applications I want (like the latest Kontakt that I need to run the newest library I just bought) still run on my old OS? Or are they just too damn CPU intensive to run smoothly? No? Then how much are the new computers? Luckily many pros in LA always want the latest gear and sell their “old”, fully loaded mac pros or minis at half price, so picking up a mint one off of ebay or craiglist is not difficult.


----------



## jhughes

X-Bassist said:


> The bigger issue for Macs is usually will the applications I want (like the latest Kontakt that I need to run the newest library I just bought) still run on my old OS? ?



There you go, basically the computer will last until one day you can no longer update.
Typing from a 2011 Imac. This computer hasn't went down once, solid as a rock. My wife got a new macbook this year because her 2006 Macbook finally wouldn't run new forms of browsers and things...but it still runs (slowly) and I use it from time to time. I don't mind making an investment in something that lasts.
However, if you can't upgrade it throughout the course of it's life, then it's a serious issue. I'm going to do my best to squeeze another two years out of this one (I noticed the last O.S is not compatible with mine) but I do have my eyes open for options in the future. I don't really want to be stuck in a car with a ten year lifespan that I can't change the wheels/tires on.


----------



## Mike Greene

If a soldered-in hard drive failed, couldn't you still boot and work from the external Time Machine backup? I've never tried this with newer Macs, but back in the old days, I remember having internal drive crashes and booting from external drives. Or even the CD-ROM drive. (Or in the really old days, the cassette drive. Or in the really, _really_ old days, the vinyl LP drive.)


----------



## Ashermusic

Mike Greene said:


> If a soldered-in hard drive failed, couldn't you still boot and work from the external Time Machine backup? I've never tried this with newer Macs, but back in the old days, I remember having internal drive crashes and booting from external drives. Or even the CD-ROM drive. (Or in the really old days, the cassette drive. Or in the really, _really_ old days, the vinyl LP drive.)



You can boot from any drive that has the OS installed. Just use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to make a bit identical clone onto an external drive and if the soldered drive fails, you are still fine.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

galactic orange said:


> Does installing your own RAM void the warranty? That's what I'd like to know. In that case, is there any point in buying Apple Care? I'd like to have AC in case the hard drive goes out, but not if they're going to say "Oh! You installed your OWN RAM? Tough luck. We aren't replacing your hard drive."



Not high on my list of things to worry about. My experience with every Apple Store I've been to is that they bend over backwards to help you. 

As an aside, I've been working on these things all day long since 1985, yet they still know a lot of things I wouldn't have known in a million years. We deal with different issues.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Ashermusic said:


> You can boot from any drive that has the OS installed. Just use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to make a bit identical clone onto an external drive and if the soldered drive fails, you are still fine.



Note that the Time Machine drive *does not* have the OS installed - which is one reason to make an image backup.

You can also just install the OS on a flash drive or something to use in an emergency. But the image lets you go back to work immediately.

Time Machine is great for keeping up-to-date incremental backups; I have two of them alternating between different drives. But those drives aren't bootable.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Mike Greene said:


> If a soldered-in hard drive failed, couldn't you still boot and work from the external



Kinda like getting a Port-O-San to replace a broken toilet.


----------



## Geoff Grace

I periodically boot my MacBook Pro from an external drive—connected via Thunderbolt. No problem.

I've been a Mac user for 28 years, and I've only had one Mac die on me. My G5 was just a month or two past its extended warranty period when it melted down. I not only had to upgrade earlier than planned, I had to jump into Intel hardware early in the Apple transition period (one decade ago this month). Fortunately, it was little more than a speed bump in my overall Apple experience.

Best,

Geoff


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

redlester said:


> Ok I should have said in my post "within the normal life expectancy of a music/DAW based computer" - which seems to get shorter all the time



It may seem like that, for the same reason that only bad news is reported. But I look at computers as at least 8-year investments these days. At least.


----------



## Mike Greene

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Note that the Time Machine drive *does not* have the OS installed - which is one reason to make an image backup.


I didn't know that. Then yeah, I should also have CC clone drive.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Kinda like getting a Port-O-San to replace a broken toilet.


Yep! Truth is that if my toilet breaks and the plumber tells me he'll try to get here tomorrow, I'd be glad that I have a Port-O-San already here. 

I'm not saying I'd _want_ to work from an external drive, mind you, I'm just saying that I won't be worrying about the internal SSD drive crashing, since even if it did, I can still be running.


----------



## redlester

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It may seem like that, for the same reason that only bad news is reported. But I look at computers as at least 8-year investments these days. At least.



I agree. Not sure what the actual reliable figures are for a typical SSD. I googled it and one site said 3/4 years, another said up to around 300 years!!


----------



## Soundhound

So would it be no different (or at least wouldn’t create any issues in speed/functionality etc.) to run a mac mini from an external instead of the internal as a permanent setup do you think?


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Damarus said:


> Their computers have almost never been cheaper/faster than a custom PC. But they just work well.



This, exactly. Not sure why, but my Mac has never had any type of failure or crash. PC on the other hand, always something (driver issues, funky settings, virus crap, windows updates, my list goes on). My PC is great as a slave, but that's where it shall remain for eternity


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Soundhound said:


> So would it be no different (or at least wouldn’t create any issues in speed/functionality etc.) to run a mac mini from an external instead of the internal as a permanent setup do you think?



I don't think so, but the inelegance would bother me - hence my Port-O-San analogy.


----------



## ironbut

For me, this thread has gotten way ahead of itself.
After all, until someone gets a new mini and stacks a bunch vsti tracks and does some real world comparisons against the 6,1 6 cores, we won't know if it's fans are going to have a tough time keeping up or any other unexpected glitches that will make it a total non-starter.
And personally, since I'm in not rush, I'll still wait to see what the 2019 Mac Pro will be like.
Heck, it could be a similar form factor (like a multiple stack/daisy chained).

Carry on,..


----------



## Olfirf

stonzthro said:


> Would you WANT to work on a 20 year old computer?!? Let's see, 20 years ago I was using a G3 - I'm not sure it would be good for anything but very slow web browsing...


The 20 years were just to show that under good conditions a motherboard will probably last that long or even longer. With SSDs it is rather unlikely. Just like GPUs usually will be one of the first parts of your PC that need replacement. That being said, while I don't expect to use a computer for 20 years, 5-10 years is certainly doable for music application. My current Mac Pro still does its job and given the fact that computing power did not increase as much in the the last 5 years as it did before, I think it may not be totally crazy to consider repair options for a 3000-5000€ investment. Also, in case of an SSD failure during a project I might be forced to bring it in for service at Apple (likely not quick enough). In case you need to buy a new computer quickly, your options will be pretty narrow. All of that can easily be avoided by using an m2 SSD that is user replaceable.


----------



## Wunderhorn

I find it funny how we have to see and wait for a comparison to other hardware that is 5 and more years older in order to see what's faster in the real world.
I mean, why bother releasing a new computer if it is not abundantly clear that it would be definitely faster than anything else before (and THIS much older)? In the nineties every 2 years computers became about twice as fast, now after 5 years we have to have debates over 5 or 10% speed increments...!

To me it just seems that Apple, Intel and all the others have gotten REALLY lazy in their science departments. Oh yeah, there are $1200 smart phones and 3D emojis, I totally forgot, so much more exciting!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

stonzthro said:


> Would you WANT to work on a 20 year old computer?!? Let's see, 20 years ago I was using a G3 - I'm not sure it would be good for anything but very slow web browsing...



I have a PowerMac 9600 that's 21 years old and I still use it occasionally to run an OS 9 patch librarian (Opcode Galaxy).


----------



## charlieclouser

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I have a PowerMac 9600 that's 21 years old and I still use it occasionally to run an OS 9 patch librarian (Opcode Galaxy).



Yup. I still have some G4 Mac Mini's that boot into OS9 that I use for TurboSynth once in a while - but you've got me beat with Galaxy. Modem + Printer ports!


----------



## storyteller

Wunderhorn said:


> I find it funny how we have to see and wait for a comparison to other hardware that is 5 and more years older in order to see what's faster in the real world.
> I mean, why bother releasing a new computer if it is not abundantly clear that it would be definitely faster than anything else before (and THIS much older)? In the nineties every 2 years computers became about twice as fast, now after 5 years we have to have debates over 5 or 10% speed increments...!
> 
> To me it just seems that Apple, Intel and all the others have gotten REALLY lazy in their science departments. Oh yeah, there are $1200 smart phones and 3D emojis, I totally forgot, so much more exciting!



The bottleneck for growth has always been clock frequency (e.g. speed) vs heat vs power consumption. The speed/heat threshold was met a long time ago. For monumental improvements, you have to reduce the size of the chip to see a sizeable increase in performance with the same (or smaller) power requirements. Unfortunately, that science is getting to the point of no return (7 nanometer?). Hard drives are literally flipping the polarity of electrons (subatomic particles!) to achieve their speeds these days (hence the cost). So the only real way for monumental performance growth is to increase the number of cores... and then program software to take advantage of that. For some reason, that particular aspect of chip science seems to be intentionally handcuffed... whether it is financially driven, practicality driven, or government-defined-security driven. Granted, the higher the core count, the lower the clock speed - so I would wager to say that we are at the heat/power/speed threshold of the latest silicon designs.

Still, a quad-core i7 from 2014 is not going to perform much differently than a 2018 quad core i7/i9 running at the same frequency in normal applications. Geekbench tests? Sure. But not in the real world. Where you see significant gains is in areas like codec decompression such as h265 decoding built into the chip rather than being decoded via software. Also, new instruction sets added to new chips can increase the performance, but for audio - there isn't much room left for performance improvement... at least not with the given architecture riddle.

I have a feeling that Apple has at least partially solved this heat/power/speed threshold riddle with its upcoming Mac Pro architecture... but that is just a hunch. Modular architecture would be a big step in that direction.


----------



## AlexRuger

So I guess consensus is that I was right -- that if a soldered drive dies (and to whomever thinks they won't...I have a bridge to sell you, especially considering Apple's always-and-forever-shitty thermals), you're out of luck unless you're cool with booting from an external drive forever, or waiting for them to ship out the machine for repairs (which of course will necessitate that you reinstall all your software and plugins from scratch). Oh, and if you replace the still-user-upgradable RAM, there's a good chance they won't cover the drive replacement.

Cool. Thanks, Apple. Good thing you managed to shave off that extra millimeter -- I was worried I wouldn't be able to fit another synth into my room.

I miss "the second coming of Jobs" Apple. The first iMac announcement video comes to mind -- Steve tears into why all the other PC's are shitty (and at the time he was absolutely right), and then spells out every single little thing they did to beat them: "Their screens are 13" but ours are 14" and have a higher resolution, ours has more [legacy _and _new] ports, ours has a better OS, ours is easy to open up" (and hold -- they thought of nifty things like the handle back then).

I will forever love Apple's OS, but I guess people with "mission-critical" computers just can't choose them anymore. I learned to work on computers so that I would be in control of my tools and not miss a deadline due to a failing component. Now, I literally don't have that option if I'm on a post-2012 Mac. It's a shame because though I use it, I only really tolerate Windows. I will always prefer a Unix-like design over Windows' mind-bogglingly complex Registry paradigm, and love having a native Bash environment when I open up the terminal, rather than a bolted-on Linux distro running alongside Windows. 

Anyways. Like I said, I'm holding out a tiny bit of hope for the 2019 Mac Pro, but...nah. Probably not.


----------



## Wunderhorn

storyteller said:


> The bottleneck for growth has always been clock frequency (e.g. speed) vs heat vs power consumption. ...



OK, so then it is time to think outside the box and a completely new way of processing needs to be found.



storyteller said:


> I have a feeling that Apple has at least partially solved this heat/power/speed threshold riddle with its upcoming Mac Pro architecture... but that is just a hunch.



Until I see it I will assume that they didn't. Who actually did is Deltatronic in Germany. They build workstations without fans and moving parts, only with heatsinks though I doubt that the design-masturbators at Apple would build a machine that is a bit larger and heavier than usual to be able to house the heatsinks - I myself would not mind it at all given the benefits at hand, I would welcome such an architecture.

Anyway - I would love to see another Mac Pro next year, I just don't feel ready to leave MacOS just yet. But I will when I have to.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

storyteller said:


> Hard drives are literally flipping the polarity of electrons (subatomic particles!) to achieve their speeds these days (hence the cost)



That sounds interesting! Can you explain?

And if they flip their polarity, aren't they positrons?


----------



## storyteller

Nick Batzdorf said:


> That sounds interesting! Can you explain?
> 
> And if they flip their polarity, aren't they positrons?


I should have said flipping polarity _with_ electrons rather than _of_ electrons. Basically binary data (ones and zeros) are stored by trapping individual electrons in “traps” that are read as charged or uncharged. So your 1s and 0s are basically electrons captured and released within the flash memory. 3d memory is a bit more interesting but follows the same basic idea.


----------



## redlester

AlexRuger said:


> So I guess consensus is that I was right



You are right in the scenario you describe. Although I suspect in the main these will appeal to keen amateurs rather than professionals with deadlines to meet. I know if I were earning my living from this, rather than just having fun, I would have a Mac Pro of some description.

Saying all that, am more than happy for now to stick with my 2012 Mini which does allow both RAM and drive replacement, in fact it accommodates two internal drives. Imagine that! But it's nice to know that when it does need replacing there is something out there that allows me to stick with Mac without it having to cost upwards of £2k.


----------



## tav.one

Ordered mine (6 Core, i7, 16 GB, 512 GB = $1820 inc. Tax) to be shipped to India by my cousin.
I couldn't wait for teardowns as that would mean waiting many months before anyone comes again. So opted for 16GB RAM rather than 8GB (Will upgrade to 64 later).

Upgrading from (Vintage) 2011 iMac, can't be happier.


----------



## Alex Fraser

tav.one said:


> Ordered mine (6 Core, i7, 16 GB, 512 GB = $1820 inc. Tax) to be shipped to India by my cousin.
> I couldn't wait for teardowns as that would mean waiting many months before anyone comes again. So opted for 16GB RAM rather than 8GB (Will upgrade to 64 later).
> 
> Upgrading from (Vintage) 2011 iMac, can't be happier.


Cool beans. Still on an 2011 iMac here too, so it would be interesting to know how much of a difference the jump makes. What monitor(s) are you using with the mini?


----------



## tav.one

Alex Fraser said:


> Cool beans. Still on an 2011 iMac here too, so it would be interesting to know how much of a difference the jump makes. What monitor(s) are you using with the mini?



Just looking at this makes me go Whoa!, it IS gonna be a jump. Even experiencing USB 3.0 will be new for me, let alone the SSDs and all the extra processing power.





I will receive my mini on 1st Dec, so I still have time to decide on the monitors. I am planning on LG 34 Ultrawide and a 43/49 inch TV


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

tav.one said:


> Ordered mine (6 Core, i7, 16 GB, 512 GB = $1820 inc. Tax) to be shipped to India by my cousin.
> I couldn't wait for teardowns as that would mean waiting many months before anyone comes again. So opted for 16GB RAM rather than 8GB (Will upgrade to 64 later).
> 
> Upgrading from (Vintage) 2011 iMac, can't be happier.



That's actually a pretty good price for those specs, I'll probably buy one if the reviews are good.


----------



## GtrString

I got a 2014 mac mini, i7 when they came out. Fast, stable and super quiet. Great for music production. Best computer investment Ive ever done.

On the solering issue with the SSD.. cant you just unsolder? I mean is it for grounding or something? It is possible to unsolder, and then resolder, as long as you know what the soldering is for.


----------



## steveo42

Nice units but I like having two kidneys.


----------



## Alex Fraser

steveo42 said:


> Nice units but I like having two kidneys.


..he said whilst sporting an 11 line signature full of expensive loot...


----------



## macmac

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I have a PowerMac 9600 that's 21 years old and I still use it occasionally to run an OS 9 patch librarian (Opcode Galaxy).





charlieclouser said:


> Yup. I still have some G4 Mac Mini's that boot into OS9 that I use for TurboSynth once in a while - but you've got me beat with Galaxy. Modem + Printer ports!



I still have a G4 and G5 in the closet that still work.

I had an old 8500 that I paid $4500 for and later did subsequent upgrades a couple times so that I could feel I was getting my money's worth by keeping it 10 years. Crazy amounts of money were spent over the years on computer equip...laser writer that I upgraded, etc. In recent times, when my Mac Pro tower died, only to be replaced by another used Mac Pro tower that also died, I made what I thought was going to be a short-term purchase of a customized mini, but turns out the mini works great, so I never replaced it with my expected 'permanent' machine. This mini surpassed my expectation for the tracks I do (I don't have huge orchestral templates).

All these years have made me rethink computer buying. The things I like about a mini purchase is 1) low cost; 2) can upgrade more often because of the low cost; 3) stack them and use different operating systems / in different rooms / slaves; 4) tiny footprint and portability (lugging the towers for repairs was no fun, not to mention Apple ceased to supply parts for it; 5) no heat (the tower was a space heater).

I'm liking the idea of no longer spending the $$$$ as in the past... either running the machine and forgetting about OS upgrades (music still can be done!) or just get cheaper machines more often if needing to stay current.


----------



## ironbut

On the solering issue with the SSD.. cant you just unsolder? I mean is it for grounding or something? It is possible to unsolder, and then resolder, as long as you know what the soldering is for.[/QUOTE]

I've yet to see Apple say anything about the SSD being soldered. Maybe I missed it but all I saw was their saying that it wasn't "user upgradeable". What that means is yet to be seen.


----------



## burp182

I believe the difficulty comes when trying to unsolder and redo wave soldered connections in modern industrial construction. The board is packed with heat sensitive surface mount components and conventional solder/desolder generates too much heat to guarantee survival of all the other components.
At least that’s how it was explained to me a while back. If anyone is better versed in this and can correct or update this, please do. But this was part of the explanation as to why things are often not repaired anymore but simply replaced.


----------



## macmac

ironbut said:


> I've yet to see Apple say anything about the SSD being soldered. Maybe I missed it but all I saw was their saying that it wasn't "user upgradeable". What that means is yet to be seen.



Hopefully the machine doesn't have to be disassembled in order to install it.


----------



## gdoubleyou

GtrString said:


> I got a 2014 mac mini, i7 when they came out. Fast, stable and super quiet. Great for music production. Best computer investment Ive ever done.
> 
> On the solering issue with the SSD.. cant you just unsolder? I mean is it for grounding or something? It is possible to unsolder, and then resolder, as long as you know what the soldering is for.



Only with a specialized soldering station, with today's micro components most soldering uses hot air or low heat soldering irons.

The stations I've used had microscopes integrated.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Mike Greene said:


> I didn't know that. Then yeah, I should also have CC clone drive.



By the way, Time Machine does have the system backed up on it. It's just that you can't boot from it.

So if you start up from another drive, you can restore the original from a TM backup. The only downside is that it takes a long time.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

GtrString said:


> On the solering issue with the SSD.. cant you just unsolder?



As others have said, soldering surface-mounted components isn't a standard DIY operation. But it's possible that these drives are socketed.

By the way, wave soldering is in between discrete components and surface-mounted ones. The components are still through-mounted on circuit boards, but the bottom of the board gets doused with solder that goes by in a wave.

I toured Mackie's factory in WA around 1995, when they were still making their mixers there (and they were all still analog). They had a wave soldering machine when it was a new technology, and it was broken about 2/3 of the time - yet it was still faster than the teams of Asian women they had stuffing and soldering boards by hand.

(I have no idea why the people stuffing/soldering boards were all Asian women, but they were - at Mackie and at other factories.)


----------



## ironbut

macmac said:


> Hopefully the machine doesn't have to be disassembled in order to install it.


I'm thinking it may be more along the lines of this thread (doesn't anybody else remember this?). After all, the new mini does feature the T2 chip.
https://vi-control.net/community/th...le-for-this-or-is-there-an-explanation.75521/


----------



## steveo42

Alex Fraser said:


> ..he said whilst sporting an 11 line signature full of expensive loot...



All the computer stuff put together doesn't even come close to $4600.
In fact, not even close to 1/2 the price of a fully loaded Mac Mini.
I roll my own.
Microcenter CPU/Motherboard/Memory bundles are your best friend and I recycle the case/power supply/monitors and in some cases memory during upgrades. In this case the WD drives, along with case, power supply and monitors, were recycled from my x58 system. With most Apple computers you can't recycle drives unless you are very adept at soldering.


----------



## ironbut

Wave soldering has been around for a long time. I took an electronics tech course in '76 (IIRC) and we had to learn to load and operate a small one (about 3 foot sq.).
Here's a video of a guy replacing the soldered in ram on a Macbook Air.


----------



## steveo42

ironbut said:


> Wave soldering has been around for a long time. I took an electronics tech course in '76 (IIRC) and we had to learn to load and operate a small one (about 3 foot sq.).
> Here's a video of a guy replacing the soldered in ram on a Macbook Air.




Sure, it can be done but it can be done a heck of a lot easier when it's plugged into a socket and easily removable. In the past the biggest argument against sockets was chip creep. These days? Not so much. I applaud Apple socketing memory. Good decision IMHO.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

ironbut said:


> Wave soldering has been around for a long time. I took an electronics tech course in '76 (IIRC) and we had to learn to load and operate a small one (about 3 foot sq.).
> Here's a video of a guy replacing the soldered in ram on a Macbook Air.




Holy shit. You absolutely don't want to try that at home!

I'm sure glad I bought my MacBook Air with 8GB installed.


----------



## ironbut

Yup!
I've been repairing/modding gear for a long time and would rate my soldering as very good, but that looks pretty scary to me.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

ironbut said:


> Yup!
> I've been repairing/modding gear for a long time and would rate my soldering as very good, but that looks pretty scary to me.



Same here, I guess. I'm not afraid to do things like replacing the screen on a MacBook, but that repair is just crazy.


----------



## kitekrazy

Wolfie2112 said:


> This, exactly. Not sure why, but my Mac has never had any type of failure or crash. PC on the other hand, always something (driver issues, funky settings, virus crap, windows updates, my list goes on). My PC is great as a slave, but that's where it shall remain for eternity



I still have AMD socket A parts I could slap together. Hardware always outlasts it's usefulness. I'm not sure that's ever really valid in these can't stay away from Apple vs. PC debates. A big difference is MS works at keeping your legacy devices running where Apple wants you to upgrade because they are a company the sells hardware. I'd love to poke my head into the Mac world besides and iPad but I could only settle for the tricked out Mac Mini which I couldn't afford.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

kitecrazy, I wouldn't say that's a fair criticism of Apple, at least not historically.

For example, they officially support 2009 Mac Pros with the latest OS version if you buy a third-party video card (and flash them to the 2010 firmware), and their latest iOS speeds up 4-year-old iPhones and iPads.

Sometimes they abandon products, and each OS update often breaks some software, but it's hard to make that a general knock on the company.

Plus their computers tend to work for decades.


----------



## munician

> For example, they officially support 2009 Mac Pros with the latest OS version if you buy a third-party video card (and flash them to the 2010 firmware), and their latest iOS speeds up 4-year-old iPhones and iPads.



Do you have any information/links about this? 
Thanx...


----------



## ironbut

If you're wondering about 3rd party video cards, this site is a good place to start. Their prices are a little steep IMHO but their info seems good (I bought my GTX 1070 from them).
http://www.macvidcards.com/


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

munician said:


> Do you have any information/links about this?
> Thanx...



https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898

I just picked up an MSI RX 560, the first one in the list and by far the least expensive. It's $135 at Newegg, about to go up $10 when the rebate expires. (I bought mine on ebay for less, but the seller is out of them.)

My life story with the card is in this thread:

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/mac-pro-late-2013.76239/



ironbut said:


> If you're wondering about 3rd party video cards, this site is a good place to start. Their prices are a little steep IMHO but their info seems good (I bought my GTX 1070 from them).
> http://www.macvidcards.com/



Yeah, Macvidcards is very expensive. It's worth it if you're a video type.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

This is used, but the seller accepts returns. It's the right card.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-Radeon...040?_trksid=p2349526.m4383.l4275.c10#viTabs_0


----------



## ironbut

If was doing it again, I'd probably go with the RX 560 too.
At the time, I had some thoughts of using the Nvidia Cuda driver but now, not so much.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

The one drawback to using the RX 560 (or any card that can't be flashed for Macs, which is what Macvidcards does) is that you don't get the startup screen until the end of the progress bar.

That's explained in the Apple support link above. It means you have to use the control panel to set the startup drive, and I believe you can't start from the recovery partition.

But neither of those bothers me particularly, for one because I still have the old card.


----------



## Michael Antrum

I've got a 4,1 flashed to a 5,1 running Sierra. I never went to High Sierra because apparently the Apple built in wifi won't work. And now it seems I also I need a new graphics card for Mojave.

I tried using the High Sierra installer to update the Firmware to the newest version, but it doesn't seem to be upgrading so I think I'll probably stick with Sierra for now as its more than good enough for VEPro, and the machine does have 64 Gb RAM....

However, I bet when I get a bit of free time over Christmas I'll be tempted again to look at upgrading. A pair of 6 core 3.46Ghz Xeons look petty cheap on eBay at the moment, but I don't won't to chuck any money at it unless I'm going to get some years from it now, and it is nearly 10 years old....


----------



## ironbut

When you tried to update the firmware did you get stuck and "Install High Sierra" was grayed out.
If so, you needed to force power down (holding the power button) and then start it up again (manual restart) holding down alt/option.
After selecting whatever your installer is, you start the regular installation again.

BTW I don't really find High Sierra to be that much different from Sierra. Both are pretty good IMHO.


----------



## Michael Antrum

No, I ran the installer, and then shut down as instructed. I then held in the power button in until it flashed and gave the long tone beep as instructed, but it just rebooted normally and when I checked it the firmware was still the same version (MP51.007F.B03)...

I have heard this might be due to the fact my 4,1, now 5,1 is stuffed full of drives and SSD's on PCI cards though...


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

mikeybabes said:


> I have heard this might be due to the fact my 4,1, now 5,1 is stuffed full of drives and SSD's on PCI cards though...



Judging by the fact that my 4,1 now 5,1 is stuffed full of drives and SSDs - including one on a PCI card - that seems unlikely. But you could just remove all that stuff to update the firmware.

Actually, you might just try it again to see whether the failure was an aberration?


----------



## galactic orange

And now for something completely different... a question about Mac Mini!
(Indeed I jest, and actually I find the Mac Pro discussion interesting.)



tav.one said:


> Ordered mine (6 Core, i7, 16 GB, 512 GB = $1820 inc. Tax) to be shipped to India by my cousin.
> I couldn't wait for teardowns as that would mean waiting many months before anyone comes again. So opted for 16GB RAM rather than 8GB (Will upgrade to 64 later).



That's the one I'll likely order, but with only 8GB for now. I was planning to max out the RAM to 64GB right away but even the OWC prices are a tough pill to swallow. The jump from 32GB (16GBx2) to 64GB (32GBx2) for SO-DIMMs is shocking. I don't recall equivalent jumps in RAM amounts having such a large price gap (Wasn't 2013 Mac Pro memory basically the same dollar per gigabyte as you went up the cost ladder? I'm not sure).

These are my options:

1) Go with 32GB (16GBx2) for now at $329.99 and hope 32GB 2666 MHz DDR4 SO-DIMM prices drop in the future

2) Get one 32GB stick and add that to the stock 4GB for 36GB total for $529.99

3) Take the plunge and fork over nearly the cost of the Mac Mini itself for 64GB now because prices aren't going to get any better, and also to avoid upgrading twice.

I'll wager I'm not the only one facing this choice. The thing is that if 32GB was enough, I would have gotten a 21-inch iMac or one of the 2018 MBPs and been done with it. But now I'm wincing at the price we're expected to pay to max out the memory. I'm not a pro. I just want something that will be able to load larger templates than my 2012 Mac Mini with 16GB in order to have more room to work with.


----------



## ironbut

You might think about waiting a bit. I mean, the things haven't even started shipping right?
It might not be that long before 64G ram sets prices drop. OWC is the only game in town at the moment. It looks like there must be other laptops or something that uses this same ram but they must max out at 32G. There are 4 different brands I've seen and Corsair is the cheapest at $259. OWC looks like one of the more expensive brands.
I'm sure that once Corsair, Crucial and Kingston start production of 64G the prices will go down.
But, I've usually bought OWC when the prices were pretty close.
Their customer service is pretty awesome.

In other words, if you have to buy it right now, I'd go with the 32G OWC and hope for a decent trade in with them (you should be able to get a few bucks trading in the Mac ram).
But, seeing that Black Friday is weeks away,..


----------



## Michael Antrum

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Judging by the fact that my 4,1 now 5,1 is stuffed full of drives and SSDs - including one on a PCI card - that seems unlikely. But you could just remove all that stuff to update the firmware.
> 
> Actually, you might just try it again to see whether the failure was an aberration?



I think it might have something to do with the fact my boot SSD drive is actually on one of the PCI cards might be the issue (I have three SSD's on PCI card in total.)

I think this will be one for the weekend.....


----------



## rap_ferr

By the end of this video, the guy shows the internals of the new mac mini. The ram doesn’t seem to be accessible like in the old models.




Thoughts?


----------



## jcrosby

rap_ferr said:


> By the end of this video, the guy shows the internals of the new mac mini. The ram doesn’t seem to be accessible like in the old models.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thoughts?



I'm not surprised at all. Kinda figured that people assuming swapping the ram would be an easy DIY situation were going to be SOL.

Even adding or replacing a 2nd drive in the 2012 mini was pretty complicated. It may turn out swapping ram can be done DIY, if so I imagine it's going to be significantly more complicated than swapping drives was in the 2012...


----------



## simsung

Does anyone know a solution how to connect 4-5 Monitors to the mac mini (1x 4k, 1x2k, 2-3xFullHD). All the Docks ive found only have 1 hdmi - i know have them all connected via displayport on newmacpro


----------



## Damarus

simsung said:


> Does anyone know a solution how to connect 4-5 Monitors to the mac mini (1x 4k, 1x2k, 2-3xFullHD). All the Docks ive found only have 1 hdmi - i know have them all connected via displayport on newmacpro



Thunderbolt/USB-C over DP is your friend.

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/ Scroll down to Video Support


----------



## stonzthro

jcrosby said:


> I'm not surprised at all. Kinda figured that people assuming swapping the ram would be an easy DIY situation were going to be SOL.
> 
> Even adding or replacing a 2nd drive in the 2012 mini was pretty complicated. It may turn out swapping ram can be done DIY, if so I imagine it's going to be significantly more complicated than swapping drives was in the 2012...


If a tech can do it w/o soldering, another human can do it with a youtube video and some patience. I replaced HDs for SSDs in my 2012 Mac Minis and it wasn't hard, it just took a little patience and organization. OWC is selling RAM - they'll have a how-to guide as well. If it wasn't user-replaceable, OWC would offer a tech doing it in-house only.


----------



## Will Wilson

simsung said:


> Does anyone know a solution how to connect 4-5 Monitors to the mac mini (1x 4k, 1x2k, 2-3xFullHD). All the Docks ive found only have 1 hdmi - i know have them all connected via displayport on newmacpro



The new Mac Mini only supports 3 displays. 2 via Thunderbolt 3 and 1 via HDMI.


----------



## jcrosby

stonzthro said:


> If a tech can do it w/o soldering, another human can do it with a youtube video and some patience. I replaced HDs for SSDs in my 2012 Mac Minis and it wasn't hard, it just took a little patience and organization. OWC is selling RAM - they'll have a how-to guide as well. If it wasn't user-replaceable, OWC would offer a tech doing it in-house only.



I agree, the mini wasn't hard to do, but it did involve disassembling the entire machine and took a good 35-40mins. I'm not saying it might not be possible, but it may be more involved than some users are comfortable with...

Either way we'll have to see what a teardown looks like.. Plus we still don't know if Apple's statement that it should be done at an AASS means that a DIY would technically void the warranty.


----------



## Soundhound

I'm guessing it'll be easier than replacing the ssd in the 2012 mini. I added a second ssd to mine. I hyperventilated a bit, it was a pain in the... but got it done in not too long, and it's worked just fine. And I've got the mechanical skills of a goldfish.

My guess is the ram slots will be just under the first grate that comes off with a few screws. There, I jinxed it.


----------



## galactic orange

There is at least one RAM installation video up:


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Feh.


----------



## galactic orange

I've added and replaced a second SSD in my 2012 Mac Mini with the OWC data doubler kit. That was a lot harder (but still not very hard, just nerve racking) than this RAM replacement looks. Still haven't ordered mine but will probably get the 8GB and order a third-party memory upgrade to install myself.

Edit: In addition to the slight difficulty of RAM installation, the cost of 64GB to go in the Mac Mini's two memory slots is considerably higher than putting 16GBx4 into a 27-inch iMac. It's kind of making me put off plans to finally have a 64GB beast in a small desktop form.


----------



## Soundhound

Okay, I was wrong. Up yours, Apple.



galactic orange said:


> There is at least one RAM installation video up:


----------



## Soundhound

Yup. 64g ram for a 2013 12 core, $329. For a 2018 Mac mini, $1079. 

Are they trying to make us hate them? I don't see how they could do a better job, really.



galactic orange said:


> I've added and replaced a second SSD in my 2012 Mac Mini with the OWC data doubler kit. That was a lot harder (but still not very hard, just nerve racking) than this RAM replacement looks. Still haven't ordered mine but will probably get the 8GB and order a third-party memory upgrade to install myself.
> 
> Edit: In addition to the slight difficulty of RAM installation, the cost of 64GB to go in the Mac Mini's two memory slots is considerably higher than putting 16GBx4 into a 27-inch iMac. It's kind of making me put off plans to finally have a 64GB beast in a small desktop form.


----------



## jcrosby

Soundhound said:


> Yup. 64g ram for a 2013 12 core, $329. For a 2018 Mac mini, $1079.
> 
> Are they trying to make us hate them? I don't see how they could do a better job, really.


It's not because Apple is out to get you, it's because single 32 GB SODIMM sticks are still new tech. (Like the 4TB SSD in the 2018 MacBook.) Find aftermarket versions and you'll see Apple's assumed _insane_ pricing is actually not as insane as people assume they are. Is there a markup? Sure. Apple's a company and has to make a profit. But it's not nearly as inflated as people assume it is. At least not initially.

Where Apple fails is: Not adjusting prices after the cost of bleeding edge tech comes down... Once 4TB NVMe SSDs or 32 GB SODIMMs are quasi-consumer-common then the price of that Apple model should come down respectively... Their failure to adjust pricing as the market shifts is what perpetuates the perception that Apple is _always_ insanely marked up... 

That said, anyone who's followed Apple over the decades should know that initially they're typically ahead of the curve when they introduce something new... The real issue is that they refuse to adjust the pricing over time. (Which admittedly I don't understand...)


----------



## Will Wilson

Typical Apple, they could have made it so much easier to upgrade the RAM but no they have to put in a bullshit method to try and get more money from their customers. The older Mac Mini was a 30 second job, this smells to me like a quick way to void your warranty!


----------



## galactic orange

Well, I went for 32GB Crucial RAM that I’ll be installing myself. For roughly $280 the savings was such that I couldn’t pass it up (or go with Apple memory). I’ll wait and see if prices drop next year, but for now this will have to be enough.

Choosing the 512GB SSD option seems to be the best value, but after saving so much on RAM the 1TB SSD seems relatively less expensive. I’d like to know how much drive space is enough for likely 5 years of use.


----------



## Soundhound

That's an interesting take on it, and yes I get that the dimms for this are newer tech. But ever since I've been buying macs (1985) the model that has always hit the sweet spot for the specs I wanted/was willing to pay was $3k. That continued until the iPhone came out, Steve Jobs died, and Apple changed from an innovative company making powerful products for people to create with, to a lifestyle company. Now the specs I want are about $10k, that's a little ahead of inflation. 

I've worked on Macs my whole adult life and the last thing I want to do is switch to windows, and I won't. But it's increasingly annoying having to deal with a company that sells smoke as much as anything else. As Robin Williams said 'Gucci could put a stripe on a turd and sell it for a nice profit.'




jcrosby said:


> It's not because Apple is out to get you, it's because single 32 GB SODIMM sticks are still new tech. (Like the 4TB SSD in the 2018 MacBook.) Find aftermarket versions and you'll see Apple's assumed _insane_ pricing is actually not as insane as people assume they are. Is there a markup? Sure. Apple's a company and has to make a profit. But it's not nearly as inflated as people assume it is. At least not initially.
> 
> Where Apple fails is: Not adjusting prices after the cost of bleeding edge tech comes down... Once 4TB NVMe SSDs or 32 GB SODIMMs are quasi-consumer-common then the price of that Apple model should come down respectively... Their failure to adjust pricing as the market shifts is what perpetuates the perception that Apple is _always_ insanely marked up...
> 
> That said, anyone who's followed Apple over the decades should know that initially they're typically ahead of the curve when they introduce something new... The real issue is that they refuse to adjust the pricing over time. (Which admittedly I don't understand...)


----------



## GtrString

Im not convinced by the new minis, and will wait for the 2019 iMacs and iMac Pros, to see if they offer better storage options for a similar price.

Starting out with 128gigs on a desktop computer today is insulting. 1TB should be standard, and options should go up to at least 4TB, imo.


----------



## mauriziodececco

GtrString said:


> Starting out with 128gigs on a desktop computer today is insulting. 1TB should be standard, and options should go up to at least 4TB, imo.



While i respect your personal opinion, i do not think it is insulting; a Mac Mini have many different use cases, and in some of them a small system disk is perfectly ok and you wouldn't want to spend more money. For exemple, my Mac Mini, used as a file server and time machine server, have a system disk filled for less than 80G, and have 10Tb of external storage, 8Tb dedicated to the family time machine and 2Tb for file sharing.

If i had to substitute this Mac Mini, i would be pissed off to *have* to buy a 1Tb system disk that i do not need.

Said this, if you want to discuss costs, and user upgrade, it would be another matter :->

Maurizio


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

rap_ferr said:


> By the end of this video



Since "This is America," I'll never be able to see the word "unboxing" without a combination of laughter and cringing.


----------



## ironbut

Thanks for the video link.
I agree that changing the ram could be easier but probably a 4 on a scale of 1-10 in difficulty (without any style points offered).
I can't help wondering if it would run a lot cooler without that bottom snapped on.
I wouldn't doubt it if someone like Sonnet will offer a rack mount for a "neked" mini?
I helped mount a 6,1 in one of their rack mounts and it was much harder than it should have been (nice once it was done though).
Anywho, too bad the flash storage is soldered. I'm sure that will add to the cost when it needs to be exchanged.
Hopefully, it will be something that I'd only have to do every 8 (?) years or so?

Still waiting to see what 2019 will bring but so far so good with the 2018 Mini IMHO.


----------



## storyteller

FWIW - this past week Intel announced its new 48 core monster. I assume this is in time for the 2019 mac pro... and will probably carry a significant price tag as well.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...ns-48-cores-and-12-channel-memory-per-socket/


----------



## jcrosby

Soundhound said:


> That's an interesting take on it, and yes I get that the dimms for this are newer tech. But ever since I've been buying macs (1985) the model that has always hit the sweet spot for the specs I wanted/was willing to pay was $3k. That continued until the iPhone came out, Steve Jobs died, and Apple changed from an innovative company making powerful products for people to create with, to a lifestyle company. Now the specs I want are about $10k, that's a little ahead of inflation.
> 
> I've worked on Macs my whole adult life and the last thing I want to do is switch to windows, and I won't. But it's increasingly annoying having to deal with a company that sells smoke as much as anything else. As Robin Williams said 'Gucci could put a stripe on a turd and sell it for a nice profit.'



Yeah I can't argue that. Apple is more of a lifestyle brand than a computer company these days... That said, I think they started moving in this direction with the iPod and original iMac. iMac created a huge market of nick nacks that were playing off of the iMac's appearance, and the iPod paved the way for the iPhone... Either way, definitely true...

The other point I'd mention though is that similarly specced pre-configured PCs, (HP, Dell, etc), get pretty darned expensive too. (And can go WAY beyond the cost of Apple.) Although you can piece together a DIY PC dirt cheap, you can build a Hackintosh for the same cost, and there's a big part of the PC market that buys pre-configured machines, e.g. infrastructure.

Just piecing together an 18 core Xeon, similarly benchmarked to the iMac Pro, with 64GB ram and 2TB m.2 drive, on HP's site and I was just shy of 10k... Add a 16GB Radeon with equal benchmarks as Vega 64 and I was at 11.4k... At Dell I hit 9.5k. (List on both machines was 13k-14k). That makes the iMac Pro actually equally or less expensive for hardware that should perform almost identically...

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot about Apple I can't stand. I hate that almost everything's soldered in. And I hate that they're downright evil to small repair shops. (That bothers more than anything.) But PC companies with the same pre-configured business model as Apple are actually in the same price range...

For whatever reason, everyone compares Apple against DIY machines which IMO isn't fair at all since you can DIY a Hackintosh for the exact same cost as the same PC... (And pay extra for Windows.) Only difference is Apple doesn't support it, but that's no different than a DIY PC. If you have hardware/software conflicts you still have to do your own troubleshooting...


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Hackintoshes aren't supported by Apple though, whereas Microsoft of course supports Windows regardless of who built the machine. Also, you'll find many custom builders providing better products for less $$$ than big names like HP/Dell, not to mention shops that will assemble a computer with multi-year warranties for <$200.


----------



## jcrosby

zircon_st said:


> Hackintoshes aren't supported by Apple though, whereas Microsoft of course supports Windows regardless of who built the machine. Also, you'll find many custom builders providing better products for less $$$ than big names like HP/Dell, not to mention shops that will assemble a computer with multi-year warranties for <$200.


Right, see my edited post above. DIY PCs aren't 'officially' supported by Microsoft either. The OS is, but the hardware isn't. MS supporting specific hardware from the software side isn't really the same as AppleCare covering hardware replacement for 3 years.

And although I see AppleCare get a lot of negative press, I've never had an issue. For the $189 I paid on a 2011 MacBook Pro, they replaced the logic board at no cost. Apple recalled the same model and replaced it again at no cost. Although they have some pretty shitty ethics issues I can't knock their hardware support.

Anyway, I agree DIY machines are a lot cheaper and hackintoshing leaves you no guarantees. Just saying if you compare them to similar PC business models, Apple isn't really any different.


----------



## galactic orange

I’m still deciding between 512GB or 1TB SSD. With the difference in price you can get plenty of external storage, but the lack of user upgradability makes the choice more difficult. Having an extra 500GB of my most often used samples and VIs on the fast loading internal would be sweet. But even if one were to not put samples on the drive that would leave lots of room for workspace (downloads, temporary project files). Ah whatever 512 is probably plenty.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

jcrosby said:


> And although I see AppleCare get a lot of negative press, I've never had an issue



I have, and I've posted it many times, namely that it violates the golden rule of insurance: only insure what you can't afford to pay out of pocket.

You paid $189 to bet that you'd get a repair that would cost more than that between the second and third years you owned the computer. It happened to pay off for you, but it usually doesn't - and if you refuse every extended warranty, you'll come out way ahead even if you get hit with a repair like the one you got.

Meanwhile, you can buy a replacement logic board for the same price as that AppleCare bullshit.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...13&_nkw=macbook+pro+2011+motherboard&_sacat=0

AppleCare and all extended warranties are a ripoff.


----------



## jcrosby

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I have, and I've posted it many times, namely that it violates the golden rule of insurance: only insure what you can't afford to pay out of pocket.
> 
> You paid $189 to bet that you'd get a repair that would cost more than that between the second and third years you owned the computer. It happened to pay off for you, but it usually doesn't - and if you refuse every extended warranty, you'll come out way ahead even if you get hit with a repair like the one you got.
> 
> Meanwhile, you can buy a replacement logic board for the same price as that AppleCare bullshit.
> 
> https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...13&_nkw=macbook+pro+2011+motherboard&_sacat=0
> 
> AppleCare and all extended warranties are a ripoff.



I get it... I don't typically do extended warranties either. But when it comes to a piece of equipment integral to my career that's one bet I'll take. Although I get why anyone would be skeptical, I don't see it any differently than insuring the gear in my studio.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

jcrosby said:


> Although I get why anyone would be skeptical, I don't see it any differently than insuring the gear in my studio.



To be clear, I do have the gear in my studio insured - for loss, not for repairs.

That falls within the Golden Rule: I can't afford to replace it out of pocket if my house burns down, which tragically is well within the range of possibilities in Southern California. :(

The basic concept of insurance - shared risk - is great. Extended warranties are something different.



> But when it comes to a piece of equipment integral to my career that's one bet I'll take.



That's the sales pitch: it's essential to your career. Scary!

But you're not insuring your career, you're paying to avoid the unlikely worst case of having to spend a few hundred dollars to repair your computer.

And I just linked a whole bunch of motherboards that cost less than the insurance! It still has to be installed, but still...

Anyway, if it makes you more comfortable, then nothing I say supersedes that. I certainly understand.


----------



## Geoff Grace

Let's not forget that Apple Care is software support too. In my experience, their software support is as good as it gets. 

Best,

Geoff


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Geoff Grace said:


> Let's not forget that Apple Care is software support too. In my experience, their software support is as good as it gets.



In my experience their support is very good in general, but I've never needed to pay for it. And it's rare that advanced computer users - which I'd call pretty much everyone on this forum - need their support.


----------



## Nmargiotta

I had some fun at apple yesterday comparing the new Mac Mini 6core config to my 2018 15" maxed-out MBP. The results ... with the "new logic benchmark test" as found on gearslutz the Mac mini underperformed across the board not by much but it did, which is expected as its more than half the price. In this specific test I was able to enable and play 54 tracks at 44.1k 128 medium buffer with the Mac mini before cpu errors. With my MBP I was able to play 72 tracks with the same settings. Now keep in mind this is a specific logic benchmark stress test, it isn't outlining max track count etc. its just a baseline you can compare Macs across the board that push the CPU cores. I think each track consists of sculptor with logics heaviest plugins, as inserts: multipresser, sample delay, reverb, etc. 

If anyone is interested in running it you can download it here : 
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/app...rk-replace-dated-evans-test.html#post13485908

Now next to the baseline iMac Pro (8core) the MBP was destroyed. We hit something like 180+ track playback before it seized up with the same settings. Goes to show you the power of that processor and machine, if only you weren't stuck with that display and form factor, I would have purchased that! 

Anywho thought id share-


----------



## Symfoniq

Nick Batzdorf said:


> But you're not insuring your career, you're paying to avoid the unlikely worst case of having to spend a few hundred dollars to repair your computer.



Eight or ten years ago, I think I would have agreed with you. Unfortunately, there are two confounding factors now:

(1) Apple's quality control isn't what it used to be. I'm in an environment where I see and work with many Macs, and more of them than ever are failing early and being sent in for service. Keyboard failure and (probable) heat death are the most common problems we are seeing.

(2) In an era where something as seemingly non-serious as needing a keyboard replacement can necessitate replacing the entire top-case of the laptop, or failure of a soldered RAM module can mean replacing the entire logic board, there just aren't that many Mac repairs that only cost a few hundred dollars any more.


----------



## Soundhound

Very interesting! Those geek bench scores have the 2018 Mac Mini rated a bit higher than the 2018 15". I guess you never really know how the thing is going to perform until you're working with it (and it's 3 in the morning and the job is due that day).






Nmargiotta said:


> I had some fun at apple yesterday comparing the new Mac Mini 6core config to my 2018 15" maxed-out MBP. The results ... with the "new logic benchmark test" as found on gearslutz the Mac mini underperformed across the board not by much but it did, which is expected as its more than half the price. In this specific test I was able to enable and play 54 tracks at 44.1k 128 medium buffer with the Mac mini before cpu errors. With my MBP I was able to play 72 tracks with the same settings. Now keep in mind this is a specific logic benchmark stress test, it isn't outlining max track count etc. its just a baseline you can compare Macs across the board that push the CPU cores. I think each track consists of sculptor with logics heaviest plugins, as inserts: multipresser, sample delay, reverb, etc.
> 
> If anyone is interested in running it you can download it here :
> https://www.gearslutz.com/board/app...rk-replace-dated-evans-test.html#post13485908
> 
> Now next to the baseline iMac Pro (8core) the MBP was destroyed. We hit something like 180+ track playback before it seized up with the same settings. Goes to show you the power of that processor and machine, if only you weren't stuck with that display and form factor, I would have purchased that!
> 
> Anywho thought id share-


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Symfoniq said:


> Apple's quality control isn't what it used to be



The deck is always stacked in favor of the house.

Insurance companies know what the odds are, and they will win even if you hit the jackpot one time - which happens but is very unlikely.


----------



## Soundhound

Right, there is no diy mac unless you want to Hackintosh, and life has enough trap doors without that, for me anyway. Now I'm left hoping the Mac Pro will have an intro model for $3k that will let me get in the door and upgrade as I need to. But it'll be $5k and underpowered. 

My 2012 iMac still does the job fine a lot of the time now, but more and more often I'm pushing it too hard. I keep several bottles of Ensure handy to keep it healthy, but it's time for it to enter assisted living...



jcrosby said:


> Yeah I can't argue that. Apple is more of a lifestyle brand than a computer company these days... That said, I think they started moving in this direction with the iPod and original iMac. iMac created a huge market of nick nacks that were playing off of the iMac's appearance, and the iPod paved the way for the iPhone... Either way, definitely true...
> 
> The other point I'd mention though is that similarly specced pre-configured PCs, (HP, Dell, etc), get pretty darned expensive too. (And can go WAY beyond the cost of Apple.) Although you can piece together a DIY PC dirt cheap, you can build a Hackintosh for the same cost, and there's a big part of the PC market that buys pre-configured machines, e.g. infrastructure.
> 
> Just piecing together an 18 core Xeon, similarly benchmarked to the iMac Pro, with 64GB ram and 2TB m.2 drive, on HP's site and I was just shy of 10k... Add a 16GB Radeon with equal benchmarks as Vega 64 and I was at 11.4k... At Dell I hit 9.5k. (List on both machines was 13k-14k). That makes the iMac Pro actually equally or less expensive for hardware that should perform almost identically...
> 
> Don't get me wrong, there's a lot about Apple I can't stand. I hate that almost everything's soldered in. And I hate that they're downright evil to small repair shops. (That bothers more than anything.) But PC companies with the same pre-configured business model as Apple are actually in the same price range...
> 
> For whatever reason, everyone compares Apple against DIY machines which IMO isn't fair at all since you can DIY a Hackintosh for the exact same cost as the same PC... (And pay extra for Windows.) Only difference is Apple doesn't support it, but that's no different than a DIY PC. If you have hardware/software conflicts you still have to do your own troubleshooting...


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Reality check: Apple sold 7.4% of the computers in the world last year.


https://www.statista.com/statistics/267018/global-market-share-held-by-pc-vendors/


----------



## galactic orange

Nmargiotta said:


> I had some fun at apple yesterday comparing the new Mac Mini 6core config to my 2018 15" maxed-out MBP. The results ...


Was it the 6-core i5 or i7? And also, how much RAM was in the Mini model you tested (not that it matters, but I'm going to upgrade mine to 32GB).


----------



## Andrew Aversa

jcrosby said:


> Right, see my edited post above. DIY PCs aren't 'officially' supported by Microsoft either. The OS is, but the hardware isn't. MS supporting specific hardware from the software side isn't really the same as AppleCare covering hardware replacement for 3 years.
> 
> And although I see AppleCare get a lot of negative press, I've never had an issue. For the $189 I paid on a 2011 MacBook Pro, they replaced the logic board at no cost. Apple recalled the same model and replaced it again at no cost. Although they have some pretty shitty ethics issues I can't knock their hardware support.
> 
> Anyway, I agree DIY machines are a lot cheaper and hackintoshing leaves you no guarantees. Just saying if you compare them to similar PC business models, Apple isn't really any different.



Er... yes, DIY PCs are officially supported by Microsoft, because Microsoft doesn't care about what hardware you install Windows on. You can install Windows on anything that supports it and get updates as long as you have an internet connection. Microsoft offers full support and updates for any installation as long as you own Windows legitimately.

Apple on the other hand does not. Even getting OSX installed at all on non-Apple hardware, with drivers, is a *herculean task* relative to installing Windows. If and when you get that all installed, you will not get support from Apple. You have to manage your own updates which may or may not work.

So it really isn't a good comparison. Building and maintaining a Hackintosh is much harder than doing the same with a Windows PC because Apple doesn't support OSX on anything other than its own hardware, while Microsoft supports Windows on everything.

If the concern is hardware failure, every part in a PC carries a warranty, typically of at least 3 years and often much longer. Faulty parts can be replaced and exchanged for free; no equivalent AppleCare-esque plan is needed. And if you are concerned about the labor (even though removing parts from a PC is relatively easy), then places like Fry's or Micro Center are as adept at servicing PCs as an Apple Store is at servicing Macs for the same price or better.

Apple also has a long history of outright *hostility* toward its own consumers by making their devices increasingly harder to service or upgrade by anyone other than Apple itself. Consider that there are multiple international lawsuits against Apple for these practices (search "right to repair", "Apple"). Even just 10 years ago it was far easier to do your own upgrades on something like a Macbook, whereas now its next to impossible.


----------



## robh

Nmargiotta said:


> I had some fun at apple yesterday comparing the new Mac Mini 6core config to my 2018 15" maxed-out MBP. The results ... with the "new logic benchmark test" as found on gearslutz the Mac mini underperformed across the board not by much but it did, which is expected as its more than half the price. In this specific test I was able to enable and play 54 tracks at 44.1k 128 medium buffer with the Mac mini before cpu errors. With my MBP I was able to play 72 tracks with the same settings. Now keep in mind this is a specific logic benchmark stress test, it isn't outlining max track count etc. its just a baseline you can compare Macs across the board that push the CPU cores. I think each track consists of sculptor with logics heaviest plugins, as inserts: multipresser, sample delay, reverb, etc.
> 
> If anyone is interested in running it you can download it here :
> https://www.gearslutz.com/board/app...rk-replace-dated-evans-test.html#post13485908
> 
> Now next to the baseline iMac Pro (8core) the MBP was destroyed. We hit something like 180+ track playback before it seized up with the same settings. Goes to show you the power of that processor and machine, if only you weren't stuck with that display and form factor, I would have purchased that!
> 
> Anywho thought id share-


My 2010 Mac Pro 3.33GHz 6-core just did 51 tracks at those same settings. I'm actually shocked that my eight-year-old computer could still compete with the new Mini.

Rob


----------



## Nmargiotta

galactic orange said:


> Was it the 6-core i5 or i7? And also, how much RAM was in the Mini model you tested (not that it matters, but I'm going to upgrade mine to 32GB).



It was the i5 not the i7 - 8Gb of ram, there weren't any vi's to test it on but having the 32gb or 64gb option is sweet. The i7 would have absolutely impacted the cpu performance, as I am curious how that machine performs in the stress test.


----------



## galactic orange

Not necessarily applicable to DAW usage, but shows the Mini under load:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...tling-and-performance-in-the-2018-i7-mac-mini


----------



## ChristianM

zircon_st said:


> Er... yes, DIY PCs are officially supported by Microsoft, because Microsoft doesn't care about what hardware you install Windows on. You can install Windows on anything that supports it and get updates as long as you have an internet connection. Microsoft offers full support and updates for any installation as long as you own Windows legitimately.
> 
> Apple on the other hand does not. Even getting OSX installed at all on non-Apple hardware, with drivers, is a *herculean task* relative to installing Windows. If and when you get that all installed, you will not get support from Apple. You have to manage your own updates which may or may not work.
> 
> So it really isn't a good comparison. Building and maintaining a Hackintosh is much harder than doing the same with a Windows PC because Apple doesn't support OSX on anything other than its own hardware, while Microsoft supports Windows on everything.
> 
> If the concern is hardware failure, every part in a PC carries a warranty, typically of at least 3 years and often much longer. Faulty parts can be replaced and exchanged for free; no equivalent AppleCare-esque plan is needed. And if you are concerned about the labor (even though removing parts from a PC is relatively easy), then places like Fry's or Micro Center are as adept at servicing PCs as an Apple Store is at servicing Macs for the same price or better.
> 
> Apple also has a long history of outright *hostility* toward its own consumers by making their devices increasingly harder to service or upgrade by anyone other than Apple itself. Consider that there are multiple international lawsuits against Apple for these practices (search "right to repair", "Apple"). Even just 10 years ago it was far easier to do your own upgrades on something like a Macbook, whereas now its next to impossible.



What love for Apple!


----------



## babylonwaves

galactic orange said:


> I’m still deciding between 512GB or 1TB SSD. With the difference in price you can get plenty of external storage, but the lack of user upgradability makes the choice more difficult. Having an extra 500GB of my most often used samples and VIs on the fast loading internal would be sweet. But even if one were to not put samples on the drive that would leave lots of room for workspace (downloads, temporary project files). Ah whatever 512 is probably plenty.


i have a Mac Pro with only 256GB internal SSD space. in the beginning i wasn't sure if such a small system drive would turn out to be a good idea. Now, 3 years later all I can say is that I will never waste money again on a big system drive from Apple. your point about room for workspace is valid but then, I found that I naturally put things where the space is. usually i still have around 100GB free on the internal drive. the rest of my data is on a single 10GB SSD RAID.


----------



## keyman_sam

Nmargiotta said:


> I had some fun at apple yesterday comparing the new Mac Mini 6core config to my 2018 15" maxed-out MBP. The results ... with the "new logic benchmark test" as found on gearslutz the Mac mini underperformed across the board not by much but it did, which is expected as its more than half the price. In this specific test I was able to enable and play 54 tracks at 44.1k 128 medium buffer with the Mac mini before cpu errors. With my MBP I was able to play 72 tracks with the same settings. Now keep in mind this is a specific logic benchmark stress test, it isn't outlining max track count etc. its just a baseline you can compare Macs across the board that push the CPU cores. I think each track consists of sculptor with logics heaviest plugins, as inserts: multipresser, sample delay, reverb, etc.
> 
> If anyone is interested in running it you can download it here :
> https://www.gearslutz.com/board/app...rk-replace-dated-evans-test.html#post13485908
> 
> Now next to the baseline iMac Pro (8core) the MBP was destroyed. We hit something like 180+ track playback before it seized up with the same settings. Goes to show you the power of that processor and machine, if only you weren't stuck with that display and form factor, I would have purchased that!
> 
> Anywho thought id share-



This is for the i3 or the i7? It sounds more like the i3.


----------



## OleJoergensen

babylonwaves said:


> i have a Mac Pro with only 256GB internal SSD space. in the beginning i wasn't sure if such a small system drive would turn out to be a good idea. Now, 3 years later all I can say is that I will never waste money again on a big system drive from Apple. your point about room for workspace is valid but then, I found that I naturally put things where the space is. usually i still have around 100GB free on the internal drive. the rest of my data is on a single 10GB SSD RAID.


I have 128 GB system drive on my Mac pro which is more than enough. And after it is possible to move Logic’s library to external drive it is like.....huge .


----------



## Nmargiotta

keyman_sam said:


> This is for the i3 or the i7? It sounds more like the i3.


 The i5 actually. The i7 wasn’t available in store.


----------



## tav.one

Nmargiotta said:


> The i5 actually. The i7 wasn’t available in store.



It needs to be customised through Apple website.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

zircon_st said:


> Microsoft offers full support and updates for any installation as long as you own Windows legitimately.
> 
> Apple on the other hand does not.



Well, I mean, yeah. But isn't that the whole point?

Steve Jobs' first move when he returned to Apple over 20 years ago was to get rid of the Mac clones and make Apple's products unique, rather than generic commodity computers. And it's safe to say that his marketing strategy was somewhat successful, starting with the iMac, then iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air...

As to being able to upgrade machines yourself: I had time to kill at Best Buy earlier this week (having an iPhone battery replaced before the price goes up at the end of the year), so I looked around the store.

They had a whole bunch of "all-in-one" computers, which of course are iMac copies. Those aren't going to let you put in generic components to customize them, and neither are MacBook Air laptop copies. I don't remember seeing any Mac Mini copies, but anything that has everything packed tightly is going to be similarly hard to service.

I kvetch about Apple's Mac line-up all the time, and I agree with the previous posts complaining about the black Mac Pro. But I don't complain that I can't swap components in my 11" MacBook Air.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

babylonwaves said:


> I will never waste money again on a big system drive from Apple



From Apple, no way, but I've used up about 500 of the 525GB on my system drive - and it's mostly stuff I need on there.


----------



## simsung

i did the jump from nmp 6 core high sierra cubase9.5 to mac mini 6 core cubase x on mojave.
i expected many problems with the new OSX and the new Cubase, but ....pheww - what an upgrade.
i upgraded the ram myself, so the total costs for the whole macmini package are pretty low - for a mac. i didnt do a performance test since i had projects i had to work on. but those worked flawless.
another "upgrade" i did was to not uninstall unused plugins and samplelibraries. especially V9 waves plugins caused crashes in cubase - now it runs perfect and significant faster!
cheers


----------



## Soundhound

Anybody have experience yet in comparing 2018 mac mini performance vs 2013 nMP 8 10 or 12 core?


----------



## simsung

Soundhound said:


> Anybody have experience yet in comparing 2018 mac mini performance vs 2013 nMP 8 10 or 12 core?


what kind of performance do you mean? in a specific daw or something else?
ie. my geekbench results are:
nmp 6core 64gbram: 3869 single, 18776 multi
nmp 8core 64gbram: 3790 single, 24156 multi
macmini 6core 32gbram: 5551single, 23980 multi


----------



## Soundhound

Yes what i meant was in a daw. I’m mostly in Logic, but experience in any of the major ones would be great to hear about. Thanks for boosting your geek bench results, those look very close to what has been posted on the geek bench site?



simsung said:


> what kind of performance do you mean? in a specific daw or something else?
> ie. my geekbench results are:
> nmp 6core 64gbram: 3869 single, 18776 multi
> nmp 8core 64gbram: 3790 single, 24156 multi
> macmini 6core 32gbram: 5551single, 23980 multi


----------



## Nmargiotta

Soundhound said:


> Yes what i meant was in a daw. I’m mostly in Logic, but experience in any of the major ones would be great to hear about. Thanks for boosting your geek bench results, those look very close to what has been posted on the geek bench site?


thanks for posting! Have you tried the logic benchmark? Id be curious of your results! Its fantastic to see a machine at that price point and form factor perform so well. Just think. this time next year the 2019 Mac Pro will be out, cant wait to finally see what they have in store...besides an assumed hefty price tag


----------



## JPQ

How many memory modules is these new mac minis?


----------



## Chris Hurst

JPQ said:


> How many memory modules is these new mac minis?



Two slots I believe


----------



## Soundhound

i don’t have a 2018 mac mini, hoping for more info here. i’m also very interested to see what the next mac pro is, but i’m assuming i’ll have to sell my first born child to get one. i’ve made worse deals



Nmargiotta said:


> thanks for posting! Have you tried the logic benchmark? Id be curious of your results! Its fantastic to see a machine at that price point and form factor perform so well. Just think. this time next year the 2019 Mac Pro will be out, cant wait to finally see what they have in store...besides an assumed hefty price tag


----------



## JaikumarS

Mac mini 2018 Update - Audio Production


"For those curious about how the new Mac mini performs, so far it is taking everything I can throw at it. I have the fully upgraded 6-core i7 with 64GB ram. I set up some moderately demanding Cubase sessions and was able to run the buffer at 64. I wish I had tested the iMac Pro so I could be more precise, but it feels very close in performance.
You may have heard there was some CPU throttling, and there is definitely some when exporting video. But when running a real time process like audio, the primary core seems to be able to run at an almost constant turbo boost of 4.2 gHz. But beware - because of that, the fan is often spinning at high volume. It's quieter than the 2017 5k iMac, but louder than the iMac Pro. You'd definitely want it isolated from you if tracking in the same room.
On board SSD speeds are at about 2.5 GB/S (about the same as the iMac Pro).
It's crazy what can be done, now, with such small packages. No more VSL, no more slave machines, just one 2 inch by 8 inch slab of aluminum.


DAW - Cubase Pro
Kontakt Instances 50 (So basically one can have about 50x16 = 800 tracks - Kontakt MultiOut)
Thunderbolt screens - 3" 

I found this on facebook so I thought I'll share it here...


----------



## Neifion

JaikumarS said:


> Mac mini 2018 Update - Audio Production
> 
> 
> "For those curious about how the new Mac mini performs, so far it is taking everything I can throw at it. I have the fully upgraded 6-core i7 with 64GB ram. I set up some moderately demanding Cubase sessions and was able to run the buffer at 64. I wish I had tested the iMac Pro so I could be more precise, but it feels very close in performance.
> You may have heard there was some CPU throttling, and there is definitely some when exporting video. But when running a real time process like audio, the primary core seems to be able to run at an almost constant turbo boost of 4.2 gHz. But beware - because of that, the fan is often spinning at high volume. It's quieter than the 2017 5k iMac, but louder than the iMac Pro. You'd definitely want it isolated from you if tracking in the same room.
> On board SSD speeds are at about 2.5 GB/S (about the same as the iMac Pro).
> It's crazy what can be done, now, with such small packages. No more VSL, no more slave machines, just one 2 inch by 8 inch slab of aluminum.
> 
> 
> DAW - Cubase Pro
> Kontakt Instances 50 (So basically one can have about 50x16 = 800 tracks - Kontakt MultiOut)
> Thunderbolt screens - 3"
> 
> I found this on facebook so I thought I'll share it here...



Do you happen to be using an eGPU? Curious to know if it improves performance outside of video/graphics.


----------



## Andrew Aversa

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I kvetch about Apple's Mac line-up all the time, and I agree with the previous posts complaining about the black Mac Pro. But I don't complain that I can't swap components in my 11" MacBook Air.



This is truly a baffling point of view. Why on earth would you possibly want your device to be LESS serviceable and MORE expensive to upgrade? There is absolutely 0 benefit to this. It's worse for the environment, it's worse for the consumer, literally the only entity that it helps is the planet's richest corporation - who, I might add, has done a wonderful job evading taxes all over the globe. Not to mention the aforementioned anti-consumer litigation to try and prevent people from repairing their own devices (see: "right to repair" controversy). 

*Apple themselves had far more upgradeable machines just a few years ago*. There is no technological or engineering reason why their new devices were changed, other than to further squeeze consumers into purchasing expensive AppleCare plans and 1st party service. This has nothing to do with build quality, either; independent repair shops like Louis Rossmann's (who actually benefit from Apple devices being harder to repair, as it drives business) have clearly demonstrated that 'anti-service' changes have been wholly unnecessary, while build quality has not improved (see: the many thermal issues affecting recent Mac products.)

Yes, some PC manufacturers make difficult-to-service hardware. The difference is, again, that you can get a Windows machine without buying from one of those manufacturers. Also, even laptops of a similar form factor to Macbooks are in fact much more serviceable. There are no comparably un-repairable machines to Apple products.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Now compare that $4200 machine to a similar Mac Pro (the one they're selling now) with 64MB of third-party RAM.

Depending on the processor, it's about the same price.


----------



## galactic orange

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Now compare that $4200 machine to a similar Mac Pro (the one they're selling now) with 64MB of third-party RAM.
> 
> Depending on the processor, it's about the same price.


Yes, and double the RAM for half the price.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

zircon_st said:


> This is truly a baffling point of view. Why on earth would you possibly want your device to be LESS serviceable and MORE expensive to upgrade? There is absolutely 0 benefit to this.



It's not that I *want* it to be less serviceable and more expensive (actually all but impossible) to upgrade.

The point is that I'm willing to put up with everything being packed closely and permanently in a very small computer that I only use for normal computer things when I travel. Same with my iPhone and iPad; if that's the tradeoff, okay.

But I'm NOT willing to put up with that in a studio machine. In other words, I was kvetching about the Mac Mini.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

galactic orange said:


> Yes, and double the RAM for half the price.



$329 for 64GB on Amazon. I had to look.

And by the way, I don't think the current Mac Pro is a good investment today as a professional studio computer, I just think it's a better one than the Mac Mini for most people here - which isn't saying a whole lot.

(About the Macs, that is, not about the people here.  )


----------



## galactic orange

Nick Batzdorf said:


> $329 for 64GB on Amazon. I had to look.


Wow, that's just slightly more than the $280 I paid for 32GB (16x2) for my Mini. I often think I should have just gotten the 64GB for $1079. Two SO-DIMM slots is so limiting that I think the comparison with the 2019 Mac Pro will show the latter in a favorable light price-wise when including the cost of RAM.


----------



## Will Wilson

I'm looking at the moment and finding it hard to decide if I would be better off getting a new Mac Mini (I'd start with 32gb which is ypgrupg myself as 64gb is too expensive) or go for a refurbished Mac Pro with 64gb off the bat. (8 core model)

Cost wise there isn't much in it?


----------



## tav.one

Will Wilson said:


> I'm looking at the moment and finding it hard to decide if I would be better off getting a new Mac Mini (I'd start with 32gb which is ypgrupg myself as 64gb is too expensive) or go for a refurbished Mac Pro with 64gb off the bat. (8 core model)
> 
> Cost wise there isn't much in it?



I chose Mac Mini over refurbed 8 core mainly because of (soon to be) ancient ports on the nMP and also single core performance.


----------



## JaikumarS

Neifion said:


> Do you happen to be using an eGPU? Curious to know if it improves performance outside of video/graphics.



Hello there, This is one of post I found on Facebook in a composer forum.


----------



## Neifion

JaikumarS said:


> Hello there, This is one of post I found on Facebook in a composer forum.



Oops, missed that. Thanks!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

tav.one said:


> I chose Mac Mini over refurbed 8 core mainly because of (soon to be) ancient ports on the nMP and also single core performance.



No comment about single-core performance, but *ancient* ports?

What can't connect to the black Mac Pro?

Again, I have issues with that machine, but the ports aren't among them.


----------



## keyman_sam

Nick Batzdorf said:


> $329 for 64GB on Amazon. I had to look.
> 
> And by the way, I don't think the current Mac Pro is a good investment today as a professional studio computer, I just think it's a better one than the Mac Mini for most people here - which isn't saying a whole lot.
> 
> (About the Macs, that is, not about the people here.  )


Link to that ram please? Is it as fast as apple’s ram?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=16gb+ddr3+ecc&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=77653057104925&hvqmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_60p5rtgj4w_b

If it meets the spec, it's the same speed. Cut/paste from the Apple Store: 
1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory

Also, does RAM speed make any difference, considering the average human lifespan?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

^ I don't mean to sound grumpy.


----------



## tav.one

Nick Batzdorf said:


> No comment about single-core performance, but *ancient* ports?
> What can't connect to the black Mac Pro?
> Again, I have issues with that machine, but the ports aren't among them.



I have had an experience where I had a great mac for the time and within 3 years USB 2.0 became the bottleneck. Even after more than 7 years my iMac 2011 is going great but usb2 was such a pain.

If I am buying a mac now I want to use it for at least 5/6 more years so makes sense to buy the one with updated ports and internals.


----------



## tav.one

I now have my Mac Mini with me. Will post Logic benchmark test results in some time.
If anyone wants any other test, do let me know.


----------



## Chris Hurst

tav.one said:


> I now have my Mac Mini with me. Will post Logic benchmark test results in some time.
> If anyone wants any other test, do let me know.



Mine has arrived as well. Will do the benchmark test over the next few days.


----------



## tav.one

Chris Hurst said:


> Mine has arrived as well. Will do the benchmark test over the next few days.


6 Core i7?


----------



## Chris Hurst

tav.one said:


> 6 Core i7?



Yes, that’s the one


----------



## tav.one

Tried the New Logic Benchmark Test

Got *83* tracks smooth playback at 128 Buffer\44.1KHz on Mac Mini

For reference:
iMac Pro Base: *166*
Mac Pro 12 Core Tower (2010): *94*
MacBook Pro i7 (2018): *76*
MacBook Pro i9 (2018): *71-75*
MacPro Quad Core Trashcan (2013): *49
*
Note: This is *not* the Classic Logic benchmark test by Evan, also found on http://logicbenchmarks.com/ (LogicBenchmarks.com)


----------



## keyman_sam

tav.one said:


> Tried the New Logic Benchmark Test
> 
> Got *83* tracks smooth playback at 128 Buffer\44.1KHz on Mac Mini
> 
> For reference:
> iMac Pro Base: *166*
> Mac Pro 12 Core Tower (2010): *94*
> MacBook Pro i7 (2018): *76*
> MacBook Pro i9 (2018): *71-75*
> MacPro Quad Core Trashcan (2013): *49
> *
> Note: This is *not* the Classic Logic benchmark test by Evan, also found on http://logicbenchmarks.com/ (LogicBenchmarks.com)



THIS. is what I've been waiting for. Thank you sir! That '10 Mac Pro 12 core though, oof. :-O

What's the test duration? Was it over a minute? Asking for thermal throttling concerns. Did you monitor the temp by any chance?


----------



## galactic orange

A comparison to a 6-core or 8-core Trashcan would be useful since the i7 Mini is 6-core. Either way, the higher up you go on cores the lower the clock speed, correct? The Mac Mini wins on that front, but loses on RAM prices.


----------



## keyman_sam

galactic orange said:


> A comparison to a 6-core or 8-core Trashcan would be useful since the i7 Mini is 6-core. Either way, the higher up you go on cores the lower the clock speed, correct? The Mac Mini wins on that front, but loses on RAM prices.



Also please post your Mac Mini configuration when you post the benchmark.

I'd like to see when does thermal throttling kick in (how many minutes in, what temperature?), when you run the benchmark.


----------



## galactic orange

keyman_sam said:


> Also please post your Mac Mini configuration when you post the benchmark.
> 
> I'd like to see when does thermal throttling kick in (how many minutes in, what temperature?), when you run the benchmark.


I just installed 32GB RAM in my Mac Mini late last night and almost have all my software setup. I bought iStat last week for various measurements. Is that an adequate tool? It shows temperature readings and processor usage. I’ll take a snapshot of the readings if that’s good enough. If there’s a better way then I’m open to suggestions. I’ve never done any sort of benchmarking before so any tips are appreciated.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

The best benchmark is to try running a session that your previous machine gagged on.


----------



## galactic orange

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The best benchmark is to try running a session that your previous machine gagged on.


Well, I can run the same test on my 2012 Mini, but it would only be out of curiosity since most people nowadays want something newer and more powerful.


----------



## tav.one

keyman_sam said:


> Also please post your Mac Mini configuration when you post the benchmark.
> 
> I'd like to see when does thermal throttling kick in (how many minutes in, what temperature?), when you run the benchmark.



Sorry, I actually posted it several times in the thread before so didn't include it in the post, its the *6 core i7* Mac Mini (16GB RAM if you wanna know)

The fans became very loud very fast. It could even run 85 tracks but for about a minute, 83 was the number where it wasn't overloading even after 5 minutes.


----------



## keyman_sam

tav.one said:


> Sorry, I actually posted it several times in the thread before so didn't include it in the post, its the *6 core i7* Mac Mini (16GB RAM if you wanna know)
> 
> The fans became very loud very fast. It could even run 85 tracks but for about a minute, 83 was the number where it wasn't overloading even after 5 minutes.


Well it is a bit surprising that the cMP beats it. But st the least it can hang with the MBP so that’s a relief. Been worried reading reports of it stuttering with stereo channel playback.

Can you list what display you use (hdmi/tb/resolution). What other peripherals are connected?


----------



## tav.one

keyman_sam said:


> Well it is a bit surprising that the cMP beats it. But st the least it can hang with the MBP so that’s a relief. Been worried reading reports of it stuttering with stereo channel playback.
> 
> Can you list what display you use (hdmi/tb/resolution). What other peripherals are connected?



I’m currently using just a 49 inch 4K TV through HDMI, will buy 38 ultrawide soon. Other than that I have a hub, an SSD, HDD and regular gear connected.


----------



## simsung

this is how i solved my monitor situation
behind the lower monitor is a blackmagic egpu and in the recording room is one more monitor


----------



## keyman_sam

Are you seeing any difference between external SSD vs internal SSD? How many audio tracks can you stream off the external disk?


----------



## simsung

keyman_sam said:


> Are you seeing any difference between external SSD vs internal SSD? How many audio tracks can you stream off the external disk?



just checked and i stopped at 400 audio tracks with this result ... so i guess it can take a lot more tracks.
about your question regarding the loading time:i can not see any difference between internal and external SSD at loading samples. optimizing the plugins so that samples are loaded almost instantly is also possible with external SSD´s. This only makes sense since no SSD is faster than the Thunderbolt connection - so the connection is not the bottle neck - its the SSD itself and of course the software.


----------



## keyman_sam

simsung said:


> just checked and i stopped at 400 audio tracks with this result ... so i guess it can take a lot more tracks.
> about your question regarding the loading time:i can not see any difference between internal and external SSD at loading samples. optimizing the plugins so that samples are loaded almost instantly is also possible with external SSD´s. This only makes sense since no SSD is faster than the Thunderbolt connection - so the connection is not the bottle neck - its the SSD itself and of course the software.


Thanks! Are these 400 audio files or 1 file in 400 tracks?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

Isn't 400 tracks God's way of telling you to get rid of 90% of your parts?


----------



## ironbut

400 tracks in post production audio is a good start.
Seriously though, a huge number of audio tracks in post is par for the course and it's my guess that there are more folks working in post these days than media composition (at least that's where most pro audio jobs are offered).
If we're discussing if the new mini can handle pro audio, post production is a big part of what pro audio is today.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

These kids today.

I remember when we used to have rooms full of dubbers.


----------



## Silence-is-Golden

What I am realy interested in is if someone on the forum uses a mini that has maxed out, or closer to full specced mac mini, and whether or not using it in a 64ram template setting will make the cooling turn up or not.

I am not in a housing place where I could create a seperate place for ‘server’ or mac.

So simple q is: when using a fuller specced mac mini to its full potential does the cooling turn on regularly or does it only get warm/hot like an iMac does? ( in a regular surrounding condition like lets say the dutch wheather 

PS: several of the online reviews are more tailered towards video editing and its performance. None are directed to the niche of musical (sample libs)applications with lots of Ram use


----------



## simsung

Silence-is-Golden said:


> What I am realy interested in is if someone on the forum uses a mini that has maxed out, or closer to full specced mac mini, and whether or not using it in a 64ram template setting will make the cooling turn up or not.
> 
> I am not in a housing place where I could create a seperate place for ‘server’ or mac.
> 
> So simple q is: when using a fuller specced mac mini to its full potential does the cooling turn on regularly or does it only get warm/hot like an iMac does? ( in a regular surrounding condition like lets say the dutch wheather
> 
> PS: several of the online reviews are more tailered towards video editing and its performance. None are directed to the niche of musical (sample libs)applications with lots of Ram use



Its the i7 3,2 ghz but 32gb ram - since i build it in myself and 64gb is not available yet afaik.
i recognized the fan starting to make noise everytime i bounce a track. during recording or composing i cant remember hearing the fan. hope that helps.
Actually i dont care if its getting warm or not ... didnt check that. In case its overhearting and something gets damaged that will be a product error so in that case apple would need to fix it
under the line - compared to the nmp 6core - the mini is better in performance, but a bit louder as i wrote above. 
For that cost of around 2000€ that computer is perfect - i dont need the biggest video card for video editing - so i wonder how much the new mac pro 2019 is gonna cost because it will have lots of things for video guys in it , for which we will have to pay but not use .... so i assume money/performance wise the mini will be the better choice


----------



## Chris Hurst

tav.one said:


> Tried the New Logic Benchmark Test
> 
> Got *83* tracks smooth playback at 128 Buffer\44.1KHz on Mac Mini
> 
> For reference:
> iMac Pro Base: *166*
> Mac Pro 12 Core Tower (2010): *94*
> MacBook Pro i7 (2018): *76*
> MacBook Pro i9 (2018): *71-75*
> MacPro Quad Core Trashcan (2013): *49
> *
> Note: This is *not* the Classic Logic benchmark test by Evan, also found on http://logicbenchmarks.com/ (LogicBenchmarks.com)



I managed to get it up to playing 92 tracks and Logic stopping playback on 93 (with an error message), using the same settings. The fans ramped up, but I wouldn't have said it was much noisier than other machines, in my experience. If I was tracking at that sort of strain though, you would need to be in a different room, as it was loud enough to be caught by microphones.

Mine's a 32GB version, 512GB SSD and extra storage hooked up by TB3.

Great machine so far!


----------



## samphony

Chris Hurst said:


> I managed to get it up to playing 92 tracks and crashing on 93, using the same settings. The fans ramped up, but I wouldn't have said it was much noisier than other machines, in my experience. If I was tracking at that sort of strain though, you would need to be in a different room, as it was loud enough to be caught by microphones.
> 
> Mine's a 32GB version, 512GB SSD and extra storage hooked up by TB3.
> 
> Great machine so far!



Was VEP involved?


----------



## Chris Hurst

No, it wasn't.


----------



## keyman_sam

When you said crashing at 93, did logic crash? How come?


----------



## jtnyc

I'd be interested in how it performs with heavy VI, ram usage as well. Track count is important of coarse, but how it handles multiple instances of Kontakt, Omni, Play etc is key.


----------



## Chris Hurst

keyman_sam said:


> When you said crashing at 93, did logic crash? How come?



Sorry, crash is the wrong choice of word - logic gave an error and stopped playback.

I’ve edited the original post to clarify that.


----------



## keyman_sam

I’m trying to decide between Mac mini and base Mac Pro..looks like mini should do the job but the pro can be quieter..decisions


----------



## Soundhound

Started a different thread with this post but figured it belongs here. Working on deleting that other thread: 

I generally have projects with anywhere from 20 to 100 tracks (upper range usually closer to 50? 75? dunno...) mostly Kontakt instruments, Trillian, Superior Drummer 3, some synths in there as well (Omni, Diva, Zebra). I'm usually in Logic. At least half the time I'm working directly to picture, and often editing video in Final Cut ProX—just for showing tracks/revs etc. to clients, not for finish... So I'm interested in:

1) How much CPU headroom you're getting.

2) If working to picture in your daw, does it seem like the cpu is getting unduly hit by the video processing?


----------



## Chris Hurst

I’m hoping to start on the next movie project in the next few days, so will hopefully be able to feedback on the hit a movie file has on the CPU.

I’ll keep you posted.

(For info - I do plan on adding an external graphics card via Thunderbolt at a later stage, but this project has come up so I’m going to have to go in with the onboard graphics for it and see how it goes!)


----------



## Soundhound

Thanks Chris!



Chris Hurst said:


> I’m hoping to start on the next movie project in the next few days, so will hopefully be able to feedback on the hit a movie file has.
> 
> I’ll keep you posted.


----------



## ironbut

That


Chris Hurst said:


> I managed to get it up to playing 92 tracks and Logic stopping playback on 93 (with an error message), using the same settings. The fans ramped up, but I wouldn't have said it was much noisier than other machines, in my experience. If I was tracking at that sort of strain though, you would need to be in a different room, as it was loud enough to be caught by microphones.
> 
> Mine's a 32GB version, 512GB SSD and extra storage hooked up by TB3.
> 
> Great machine so far!



Very impressive!
I just tried tried it (@44.1 buffer 64) and my 5,1 6 core choked at 49.
Sounds like the 2019 MP will have to be a hell of a beast to get my cash (but I will wait).


----------



## Chris Hurst

ironbut said:


> That
> 
> 
> Very impressive!
> I just tried tried it (@44.1 buffer 64) and my 5,1 6 core choked at 49.
> Sounds like the 2019 MP will have to be a hell of a beast to get my cash (but I will wait).



Try it at 128 buffer to compare, as that was what I was running it at.

It is a powerful little thing though!


----------



## ironbut

Tried it at 128 with the same results.
It is a monster of a track!
It's actually kind of nice to have such a bad ass track IMHO.
Saves time and while maybe it isn't quite as detailed, I don't really care to get too granular about this stuff.
I remember running tests during one of my Pro Tools classes in college. I think we put an instance of synth that isn't too much of a pig on each track and no other dsp.
I was adding tracks for evah!

Edit;
Remembered that I had limited Logic to 10 virtual cores.
With all 12, it choked at 54.


----------



## Chris Hurst

ironbut said:


> Tried it at 128 with the same results.
> It is a monster of a track!
> It's actually kind of nice to have such a bad ass track IMHO.
> Saves time and while maybe it isn't quite as detailed, I don't really care to get too granular about this stuff.
> I remember running tests during one of my Pro Tools classes in college. I think we put an instance of synth that isn't too much of a pig on each track and no other dsp.
> I was adding tracks for evah!
> 
> Edit;
> Remembered that I had limited Logic to 10 virtual cores.
> With all 12, it choked at 54.



Interesting results then! We’re you highlighting the audio track at the bottom each time on playback?


----------



## keyman_sam

..Duh never mind.

Chris Hurst and Iron - you're both running the NewLogicBenchmarkTest project right?

My 2016 2.7GHz i7 MBP gets 15 tracks at 96K/128 buffer before overload. 

The project comes up at 96K in AudioMidiSetup. If I try to set it to 44.1K it doesn't let me. Only when I close Logic it allows me, but looks like the project overrides it. So how are folks trying it out at 44.1K?


----------



## ironbut

You're mixing up a post with the quote in it.
Two different posts/machines/posters.


----------



## keyman_sam

ironbut said:


> You're mixing up a post with the quote in it.
> Two different posts/machines/posters.


Oops..right you are. 

Just to be clear, the benchmark being run is "NewLogicBenchmarkTest", yes?


----------



## ironbut

Yup.
The links are in post 296 of this thread.


----------



## jcrosby

jtnyc said:


> I'd be interested in how it performs with heavy VI, ram usage as well. Track count is important of coarse, but how it handles multiple instances of Kontakt, Omni, Play etc is key.


Since most people don't have identical libraries that's no easy way to do this... Plus CPU use varies from Kontakt library to library, and Omnisphere's efficiency varies widely depending on what's going on in the patch too... (plus, some people run older versions of Kontakt...) Unfortunately there's no easy way to do a standardized 3rd-party library-based benchmark.


----------



## Elephant

jcrosby said:


> Unfortunately there's no easy way to do a standardized 3rd-party library-based benchmark.



Indeed. But less formal 3rd party library based examples could still be of some use (as well as the benchmark), especially where the mini hits the limits.


----------



## jcrosby

Definitely agree... Maybe there could be a few tests, one for each specific VST/AU...


----------



## Elephant

@jcrosby If that was limited to just things like for example Kontakt player maybe using a standard patch from the NI factory library (i.e. things that are easily accessible/really common use) with or without VEPro for example, that might be a way forward .... focussing on very common (and in the case of Kontakt player free) libraries might also allow people to compare the performance of different DAW computer and operating system combinations ... this aspect is seriously OT, but it might be interesting...... beyond my ken to put that together, but happy to brainstorm ......


----------



## chris massa

The New Mac Mini from a different viewpoint, if you had not seen this. Of course Pro Tools related.
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=402002


----------



## ironbut

chris massa said:


> The New Mac Mini from a different viewpoint, if you had not seen this. Of course Pro Tools related.
> http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=402002



I've been following that thread as well but be aware, the OP is running an HDX system which may or may not present a different load on the system depending on the session.
In many cases, HDX is not as sensitive to the number of tracks as any other DAW.

It is however, very encouraging that the poster ended up selling his 6,1 cylinder.


----------



## chris massa

ironbut said:


> I've been following that thread as well but be aware, the OP is running an HDX system which may or may not present a different load on the system depending on the session. In many cases, HDX is not as sensitive to the number of tracks as any other DAW. It is however, very encouraging that the poster ended up selling his 6,1 cylinder.



The HDX card should relieve the Avid plugin load as does the UAD card also reduces latency when recording. I myself would have kept the Trash Can and made it a slave . Though the OP is more concerned with recording and mixing, it is quite encouraging. Hopefully that thread will reveal the OP track count.


----------



## gsilbers

any thoughts on external storage for the mac mini? multi ssd, usb-c, small and not expensive like the blackmagic ones. 

These are the ones i found so far. 


(price starts adding up with usb-c and m2.)


someone should come up with one that can be placed on top or on th side and matches the look.


----------



## Will Wilson

gsilbers said:


> any thoughts on external storage for the mac mini? multi ssd, usb-c, small and not expensive like the blackmagic ones.
> 
> These are the ones i found so far.
> 
> 
> (price starts adding up with usb-c and m2.)
> 
> 
> someone should come up with one that can be placed on top or on th side and matches the look.




I just got the akitio thunder3 quad mini. Takes 4 ssd over thunderbolt 3 and with software raid 0 should be perfect .


----------



## N.Caffrey

I could be in the market in the new year for a new machine. New Mac Pro is out my reach. What are your thoughts on the Mac Mini (with decent or top specs) vs iMac (probably not the Pro version, assuming there's gonna be a refresh of the normal one). One thing I'm really fed up with with my macbook pro is the noise of the fans, that's why despite liking the idea of a more portable rig I was looking for something less noisy.


----------



## mauriziodececco

Will Wilson said:


> I just got the akitio thunder3 quad mini. Takes 4 ssd over thunderbolt 3 and with software raid 0 should be perfect .



My personal bet is that cheap Thunderbolt 3 .m2 enclosures will appear between today and the day l'll buy a new Mac. Third parties T3 .m2 external disk start to appear, this means the right chips are on the market; price of the chips go down very fast, and soon (6 to 12 month) amazon will have enclosures within the traditional price range. 
Than an external T3 .m2 SSD will have a reasonable price :->
Maurizio


----------



## Will Wilson

N.Caffrey said:


> I could be in the market in the new year for a new machine. New Mac Pro is out my reach. What are your thoughts on the Mac Mini (with decent or top specs) vs iMac (probably not the Pro version, assuming there's gonna be a refresh of the normal one). One thing I'm really fed up with with my macbook pro is the noise of the fans, that's why despite liking the idea of a more portable rig I was looking for something less noisy.



I was looking at the Mac Mini but as I do like to play games on PC as well and didn't want to have 2 machines I opted for the iMac. Although the Mac Mini technically supports eGPU Bootcamp doesn't really and sounded like it was going to be a pain in the ass. I picked up a 5k 2017 i7 iMac (4.2Ghz) with 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD and Radeon 580 GFX for £3k used in the UK. When I factored in all the additional costs to get close with the Mac Mini it didn't make sense for me....that and the beautiful screen!

I was considered waiting for a new iMac in 2019 but 2 things put me off, the price of a new machine and also will the RAM be user upgradeable?


----------



## Will Wilson

mauriziodececco said:


> My personal bet is that cheap Thunderbolt 3 .m2 enclosures will appear between today and the day l'll buy a new Mac. Third parties T3 .m2 external disk start to appear, this means the right chips are on the market; price of the chips go down very fast, and soon (6 to 12 month) amazon will have enclosures within the traditional price range.
> Than an external T3 .m2 SSD will have a reasonable price :->
> Maurizio



For me I already had 4 x 1TB SATA SSD. But if as you say they do appear and come down in price then I'll simply add a couple of M2 nVME SSD to the rig as and when I need to.


----------



## gsilbers

Will Wilson said:


> I just got the akitio thunder3 quad mini. Takes 4 ssd over thunderbolt 3 and with software raid 0 should be perfect .



interesting. i saw that one but that one as many other ones seem to try to have 3.5 drive option which make it bigger. and maybe thats why it needs a fan? is the fan audible?


----------



## Will Wilson

gsilbers said:


> interesting. i saw that one but that one as many other ones seem to try to have 3.5 drive option which make it bigger. and maybe thats why it needs a fan? is the fan audible?



Not really plus it has an external fan off switch if you do need to turn the fan off for an audio recording or something .


----------



## simfoe

Do you think this would work well as a Master with VEPro? Would the base model be sufficient? I have a decently specced PC but could do with sharing the load and looking to go back to Mac OSX.


----------



## Soundhound

I'm starting to wonder about the amount of cpu horsepower I'm needing. There seem to be more and more kontakt instruments that eat cpu cycles more and more. I'm still on a 2012 iMac that's rated about 12,000 or so (whatever that's measuring) on Geekbench Mac.I run most everything though VEP to help with keeping the load low within Logic...

The 2018 MM is at about 25,000, roughly the same as a 2013 Mac Pro.... Double is lovely and hopefully that's all I'd need for a while, but I wonder if this next generation is going to require even more horsepower. That's the iMac Pro/Mac Pro range and I hope I don't have to cough up the dough for one of those things...


----------



## Kyle Preston

Just want to thank everyone for sharing their wisdom on this topic the past few months. I'll be picking up a fully-loaded Mac Mini when I get back from vacation. Haven't decided if I'm gonna do the RAM myself yet or not; seems sillier then it should be. But if anyone wants more specific tests, happy to share info .


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## simsung

Kyle Preston said:


> Just want to thank everyone for sharing their wisdom on this topic the past few months. I'll be picking up a fully-loaded Mac Mini when I get back from vacation. Haven't decided if I'm gonna do the RAM myself yet or not; seems sillier then it should be. But if anyone wants more specific tests, happy to share info .



its really very easy to update the ram yourself and you save lots of money. 

before someone else asked about the fan noise - thats no problem at the MM. i only recognize it when bouncing. during work in daw i cant hear it.
i also have the issue of external storage, since i want to change from multidock (which is awesome) to a mobile solution. it seems we re on the edge of a change from 2,5" to m2 and right now the timing is not good because there are not the right m2 devices out ,yet - only one: owc 4m2. but this is not suitable for audio work because of an airplane like fan. it seems there is no alternative on the market yet. only one 2 slot m2 - very cheap, but only sata (which means slower). i guess there are versy cool solutions coming the next months


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## wayne_rowley

What about this

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/net...sd-storage-w-65w-power-adapter-w-tb-05m-cable


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## simsung

wayne_rowley said:


> What about this
> 
> https://www.scan.co.uk/products/net...sd-storage-w-65w-power-adapter-w-tb-05m-cable


that one looks nice, but it seems to be out of stock everywhere. i cant find even one store in germany. and how about fan, it was one, do you know how loud it is?
its the same phenomena as with the thunderbay 4 mini - why is it discontinued? its much smaller than the thunderbay 4. but they only updated the thunderbay 4 to tb3.


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## OLB

wayne_rowley said:


> What about this
> 
> https://www.scan.co.uk/products/net...sd-storage-w-65w-power-adapter-w-tb-05m-cable


I just received this enclosure and stacked it with 2 Samsung Evos. At first when I started the thing, the fan was annoying. Almost returned it. BUT it has a switch on the back and when you move it between fan positions it can be turned off completely. Completely silent!

When copying data I would turn the fan on, just in case. But when idling it doesn't become hot at all. I will need to test it when streaming kontakt libraries. So that'll be interesting. 

So far this looks great for studio and especially mobile use. It's super fast, lightweight, however it comes with an external power supply but it powers my MBP at the same time. So I can leave the Mac charger at home. Kind of cancels each other out.

Quick benchmarks 1275 write, 1580 read. With RAID I believe it doubles that but I'll use it mostly for Kontakt so I don't think RAID won't be any beneficial. 
4K random read +/- 45mb/s

Also I removed that greenish rubber cover immediately.. I prefer the aluminium case.


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## simsung

how about getting a pcie expansion box and the m2 ssd into that device?

i.e. 
Expansion box: 
the akitio node light tb3 

SSD Card: 
Asus M2 x16 Expansion Card

i just dont know if the card fits into the box ... but theoretically that could be a nice workaround


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## Chris Hurst

Ok, I’ve just completed my first film using the 2018 Mac mini and to summarise...this thing is a beast.

It was a supernatural thriller, so I wasn’t running a huge orchestral template more likely 50-60 Kontakt instances, but lots of plugins for sound design, also lots of automation.

I only heard the fans on exporting and the only stumbling block was the occasional Logic single core overload if I forgot to select an audio track as the track count increased.

I had one random shutdown, which was an inconvenience. I was running samples off external thunderbolt 3 ssd drives with no issues whatsoever.

Very pleased with the performance, however I will still likely go for an external GPU at some point, as that is likely to help.

Hope that is helpful.


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## ironbut

Fantastic report Chris! 
Can't wait to hear how and external GPU effects the performance. 
I think a few of us who are using our cheese graters have upgraded cards already so this is going to be a natural upgrade for the mini.


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## IFM

ironbut said:


> Fantastic report Chris!
> Can't wait to hear how and external GPU effects the performance.
> I think a few of us who are using our cheese graters have upgraded cards already so this is going to be a natural upgrade for the mini.


That’s what I was thinking too. I have a new Metal comparable card in mine.


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## N.Caffrey

Any more feedback from users? Quite close to ordering one.

Also, if I get the 32gb and want to upgrade to 64gb later, what will happen to my 32 gb? Will I have to pay for the full 64gb or will they deduct the cost from the 32gb?


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## FriFlo

N.Caffrey said:


> Any more feedback from users? Quite close to ordering one.
> 
> Also, if I get the 32gb and want to upgrade to 64gb later, what will happen to my 32 gb? Will I have to pay for the full 64gb or will they deduct the cost from the 32gb?


You will do it yourself or let some guy do it to sell the 32gb on eBay after that. This is one of the things keeping me from going for a Mac mini. Still waiting for the Mac Pro announcement. Some things about the mini are nice though! Mainly the 10gbe option for a great connection to slaves with VEpro. Other things not so much. The cost is very high at this point to buy 64gb ram and especially lots of space for samples (SSD) and also backup (HD). That is what keeps me holding out with my ancient 5.1 Mac Pro a little longer. Once you make the jump you say goodbye to everything PCIe and internal SATA. That makes it costly and on top of that Tb 3 might soon be obsolete again.


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## ironbut

OWC 64G ram $500.
On special now but it can't be long before guys like Crucial start to produce 32G sticks so we're off to the races (fingers crossed).


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## galactic orange

ironbut said:


> OWC 64G ram $500.
> On special now but it can't be long before guys like Crucial start to produce 32G sticks so we're off to the races (fingers crossed).


Thank your for posting. Having bought 32GB (16x2) only a few months ago for just under $300, I'm going to stick with that in my Mini for now and hope that competition drives down the prices further. But this OWC sale bodes well!


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## Mishabou

ironbut said:


> OWC 64G ram $500.
> On special now but it can't be long before guys like Crucial start to produce 32G sticks so we're off to the races (fingers crossed).



I see $750 on their site, are you sure it was OWC ? I'm looking to buy another Mini with 64 GB


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## ironbut

The one I'm looking at is regularly $559 but on intro sale.


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## Soundhound

I saw those numbers earlier also. I think the Ram on sale for under $500 is slightly different, a bit slower but I'm not sure how much slower...


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## ironbut

Yup.
The ram on sale is 2400mhz while the $750 pairs are 2666mhz.
Anyone here have any idea if the difference be detectable in the real world?


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## wuubb

ironbut said:


> Yup.
> The ram on sale is 2400mhz while the $750 pairs are 2666mhz.
> Anyone here have any idea if the difference be detectable in the real world?



Depends on the CAS latency, which ATM I can't seem to find on their site...

Most 2400 kits I see has a CAS of about 15/16/17, and most 2666 kits are 18, so assuming OWC is similar the result is, per the chart on this page, you're talking about a difference of < 1ns... In fact the difference is .67ns. If you assume a 3ghz CPU (3 instructions every ns), you're talking about 1 CPU instruction slower...which is totally irrelevant on it's own, but even more so when you consider the overhead involved in accessing any RAM instead of CPU cache/registers.

TLDR: Doesn't matter. That article is a great read though, I highly recommend it.


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## ridgero

Whats your long term opinion about the new Mac Mini i7?

Is there any major downside?

Is 512 GB enough? I mainly use external SSDs for libraries and I don't gonna change it.

Does anyone use 2x 2560x1440?

Greets


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## LinusW

ridgero said:


> Does anyone use 2x 2560x1440?


I use 5120x2880 + 2560x1440 on my i7 iMac. 
512 GB SSD depends on your amount of applications and plugins etc. Internal SSD will be faster than your external and not replaceable, worth considering.


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## newwest

Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. Running the I7 mac mini with 1TB SSD internal, 64 GB ram. eGPU with Radeon 7 driving 4 monitors. 2x2TB SSDs via TB3 etc. Running Cubase 10 pretty smoothly with a large template. Real time performance great at 1028, ok at 512. Keep in mind I have a lot of bussing, reverb, comp and eq for all returns and VEpro linked to a PC. This is a stop gap for me as I'm likely going MacPro when it comes out. This was an upgrade from my 2011 MacPro and it definitely out performs. Good luck!


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## ridgero

Bought a Mac Mini i7, 1 TB, 8 GB for CHF 1800,- today. Upgrading to 64 GB Samsung (350 CHF) by myself.


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## macmac

Can RAM be user-installed in the 2018 mini without having to disassemble the machine? I know the 2014 ones were not easy.


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## Eloy

See below link for 2018 Mac Mini ram install.


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## Nick Batzdorf

ironbut said:


> OWC 64G ram $500.
> On special now but it can't be long before guys like Crucial start to produce 32G sticks so we're off to the races (fingers crossed).



Or $340 here:



So $1750 for the deluxe version with an SSD that's too small. That's considerably better than the original price.

You still have to buy adapters to add drives and an audio interface, but I might have been tempted by this machine rather than a used 5,1 if it had been available when I last upgraded almost three years ago.


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## gsilbers

seems like apple could easily upgrade to i9 chips those mac minis. their laptops seems to be getting those. 
no rumors though so sept 10 might only be for iphones and bigger screen laptops. 
and their push towards apple TV+ which is obviously going to fail. 6billion dollars for a few shows and movies!? wish they put more effort on stuff like mac mini plus, thicker laptops and more QC on their software. oh well.


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## ridgero

Mac mini = desktop CPU
Macbook = mobile CPU


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## Nick Batzdorf

ridgero said:


> Mac mini = desktop CPU
> Macbook = mobile CPU



Is the difference innate?

I mean, I get that mobile CPUs run cooler and power = more heat, but how long must there be a spread between the two?


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## ridgero

Hey guys,

I'm planning to buy 2x TB3 USB hubs. Any suggestions?

Thanks


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## ridgero

ridgero said:


> Bought a Mac Mini i7, 1 TB, 8 GB for CHF 1800,- today. Upgrading to 64 GB Samsung (350 CHF) by myself.



In the end I payed 280 CHF (Around 250 Euro) for 64 GB Samsung M471A4G43MB1-CTD, delivery next week.


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## Matt Riley

For those of you that bought the 3.2 GHz 6-core, are you still happy with your purchase? 

I’m thinking about springing for the 1 TB internal drive. Do you all store your Logic project folders on the internal drive? I’m using an external drive with my current setup but plan to move it to the internal drive when I get the MM to take advantage of the speed. 

Is there any benefit to upgrading to the 10 Gb ethernet option? Well I see any benefit in VEP6?


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## tav.one

@Matt Riley Yes, still happy.

For me, currently-active projects stay on the internal, rest on external.
I have 512GB, 1TB internal SSD would have made things easier though.


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## Daniel Stenning

Matt Riley said:


> For those of you that bought the 3.2 GHz 6-core, are you still happy with your purchase?
> 
> Is there any benefit to upgrading to the 10 Gb ethernet option? Well I see any benefit in VEP6?



I have had a 3.2 GHz i7 2018 mini with 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD in it for quite a few months now. Up to now I've been running VEP on the one box too - but my templates just has had KOMPLETE instruments plus the EPIC 2 orchestra samples that come with VEP. 

This was working fine and no issue with fan coming on with evewerything loaded and Cubase 10 connected to VEP on my one mini. 

***However*** ....

.... When it came to my buying the new BBC SO library from Spitfire and loading up that library completely in VEP - this is when the fan came on - and although not a horrid noise I just can't stand any fan noise at all. Its not clear to me at this stage whether the high CPU load ( typically around 70% on all cores- judging from activity monitor - is due to the plugins used in BBC SO being much less efficient than Kontakt or Vienna Syncron plugins - or something else - for example merely the streaming load.. but...

So I had to rethink my setup so now the Mac mini sits in the hallway and connected via gigabit ( soon to be 10gbe ) ethernet to my 2018 MBP as client. This gets over the fan noise issue but does seem a waste of a lovely Mac mini - given its now just an expensive VEP server. 

I bought a new Caldigit thunderbolt dock so everything connects to VEP and screens etc via dock and not the 4 tb3 sockets - so the MBP remains a portable unit. 

But really I wish I could just have used the one Mac mini for a relatively minimal VEP setup... I'd planned to only be using one orchestra library - the BBC SO for some time in order to develop orchestration skills - and thought a 1 machine setup would work but fan noise with the BBC SO on Mac mini has pushed me to a client server arrangement with all the woes and costs and complexities that involves.

I'd also like to have the lowest buffer sizes - 128 or lower so am looking into 10gbe and in moment of madness even started googling and looking into the state of Infiniband and 100gbe systems. 

( NVIDIA just recently purchased Mellanox - which might bring down costs ...for non server-couples users... dunno... )


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## ptram

So, in the end, is the new Mac mini better than an old Mac Pro 2013 when used with a DAW? I'm still very confused by the benchmarks.

Paolo


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## wayne_rowley

ptram said:


> So, in the end, is the new Mac mini better than an old Mac Pro 2013 when used with a DAW? I'm still very confused by the benchmarks.
> 
> Paolo



Better is a subjective term I’m afraid. CPU wise its slightly better than the 6 core Mac Pro. Graphics performance is worse though (not really an issue with a DAW) and it may thermal throttle sooner. It is considerably cheaper than the Pro was of course.

In my case it does the job, but I wish Apple would have something with iMac like specs but without the screen.

Wayne


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## tav.one

wayne_rowley said:


> Graphics performance is worse though (not really an issue with a DAW)


In MacMini it is a serious issue with the DAW as well. If you have even 1 external 4K monitor it can't drive it in HiRes mode. If I open any plugin with spectogram or many plugins together, that spikes the graphics processor to 100%. The GPU here is so weak that it becomes an issue with DAWs as well.


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## SupremeFist

tav.one said:


> In MacMini it is a serious issue with the DAW as well. If you have even 1 external 4K monitor it can't drive it in HiRes mode. If I open any plugin with spectogram or many plugins together, that spikes the graphics processor to 100%. The GPU here is so weak that it becomes an issue with DAWs as well.


I just got a mac mini and am running a 4k display in native resolution at 60hz (via USB-c to displayport) with absolutely no problems/gui slowdown. You do need enough RAM because the integrated graphics share system memory. (I put in 64Gb).


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## N.Caffrey

It's so hard to decide, some have had really a bad experience with it, others great without hiccups. It really seems split. A bummer the recent update didn't improve anything.


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## Jeremy Spencer

N.Caffrey said:


> It's so hard to decide, some have had really a bad experience with it, others great without hiccups. It really seems split. A bummer the recent update didn't improve anything.



You could try a mini and return it within 14 days.


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## SupremeFist

N.Caffrey said:


> It's so hard to decide, some have had really a bad experience with it, others great without hiccups. It really seems split. A bummer the recent update didn't improve anything.


Before I bought mine, I read a lot of complaints about the graphics not driving monitors well enough, but from what I could tell this was people wanting to run at scaled resolutions. I knew I was going to use 4k native anyway.

Power-wise, I don't run enormous hybrid templates, but this mini (i7 64Gb) runs a Logic project of 70-odd VIs and soft synths with 3-6 inserts per track, a bunch of fx busses, and a heavy mastering chain on the output buss, with each core running at about 15% and no fan noise at all. So for what I do (most of which is much smaller than this) it's going to be plenty powerful enough for a decent amount of time.


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## Jeremy Spencer

SupremeFist said:


> Before I bought mine, I read a lot of complaints about the graphics not driving monitors well enough, but from what I could tell this was people wanting to run at scaled resolutions. I knew I was going to use 4k native anyway.
> 
> Power-wise, I don't run enormous hybrid templates, but this mini (i7 64Gb) runs a Logic project of 70-odd VIs and soft synths with 3-6 inserts per track, a bunch of fx busses, and a heavy mastering chain on the output buss, with each core running at about 15% and no fan noise at all. So for what I do (most of which is much smaller than this) it's going to be plenty powerful enough for a decent amount of time.



Encouraging, thank you. Did you install your own Ram?


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## SupremeFist

Wolfie2112 said:


> Encouraging, thank you. Did you install your own Ram?


I did! Am by no means handy with electronics but it turns out that if you can use a screwdriver and follow instructions it's very straightforward.


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## tav.one

SupremeFist said:


> I just got a mac mini and am running a 4k display in native resolution at 60hz (via USB-c to displayport) with absolutely no problems/gui slowdown. You do need enough RAM because the integrated graphics share system memory. (I put in 64Gb).


Running on native resolution being a big difference here. I'll buy a 65 inch TV to run things on native 4K.

I'm still on 16GB RAM, hoping to see improvement when I upgrade to 64 after lockdown.


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## SupremeFist

tav.one said:


> Running on native resolution being a big difference here. I'll buy a 65 inch TV to run things on native 4K.
> 
> I'm still on 16GB RAM, hoping to see improvement when I upgrade to 64 after lockdown.


Yes that might be a bottleneck if you're pushing the limits of available ram in your DAW already.


----------



## tav.one

I want to add to the thread that after the Catalina 10.15.5 Update (I installed the combo update), my Mac Mini has been very stable and I feel like almost all issues are gone. Even the DAW latency is low again. I can play logic projects in HiRes as well.


----------



## SupremeFist

tav.one said:


> I want to add to the thread that after the Catalina 10.15.5 Update (I installed the combo update), my Mac Mini has been very stable and I feel like almost all issues are gone. Even the DAW latency is low again. I can play logic projects in HiRes as well.


That's good to know for the future. When I got mine I wiped Catalina and installed Mojave to avoid the Waves update tax and breaking the driver for my Nanokontrol. Everything runs perfectly and I hardly ever hear the fans. (NB I did not install the security update from earlier this year.)


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## ptram

What I can say, is that Geekbench tests are meaningless for music applications.

An orchestral simulation that immediately saturated my quad-core Mac mini 2012, now only takes 17% of my new 12-core Mac Pro 2013.

According to Geekbench, it should have been just 2.5 times faster than the older one in multicore.

Paolo


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## mauriziodececco

ptram said:


> What I can say, is that Geekbench tests are meaningless for music applications.
> 
> An orchestral simulation that immediately saturated my quad-core Mac mini 2012, now only takes 17% of my new 12-core Mac Pro 2013.
> 
> According to Geekbench, it should have been just 2.5 times faster than the older one in multicore.
> 
> Paolo



Benchmarks use an “average” workload, where average means a mix of what an ideal user would do during the day. Music work is not average at all; a lot of discussions in this forum show how a single Daw or a single plugin or even a single patch or sample may have specificities that become predominant in defining the performance of your system for the work you are doing.


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## ptram

I did the New Logic Benchmark proposed here, and these are the results of my new, old Mac:

Mac Pro 2013 (6,1), 12-core, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD. Logic Pro X 10.4.8, 128 samples I/O buffer, Medium processing buffer.

115 tracks before overload. Sustained, no degradation.

Paolo


----------

