Cheap alternative to iMac?

piatti said:

Isn't that kind of old? Is it still powerful?

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They benchmark between 2009 and 2010 17" MBPs.

16GB of known working RAM (possibly more)
Up to 6HDDs with PCIe SATA card.
Runs brand new releases of Debian linux with tons of software, and can boot into OS X 10.5
G5s are completely upgradable and more fun to have than mac minis.

piatti said:

Isn't that kind of old? Is it still powerful?

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Just in case you don't know why that's not a great idea:

• Liquid cooled G5s have unreliable pumps, they are known to leak
• They can only run up to 10.5. No more security updates, no new software for OS X will run on them. No windows support (in before someone suggests emulation).
• The "install Linux" argument is stupid, they have worse hardware support in Linux than cheaper x86 boxes.
• They can run the amount of RAM as the current mac mini, just slower and more expensive because it's DDR2.
• Only have two SATA-I drive bays.

They're cheap for a reason, and that's because they're hobbyist machines. It's annoying that people are recommending them without making this clear because eventually someone will end up wasting their time and money.

A fountain pen and a notepad.

If you need and iMac, you need an iMac. Otherwise, you need a Mac Mini or MacBook Pro along with a 27" display.

I ordered an ASUS PA248Q and it has a PPI of ~94, so I'll see how that goes.
Hopefully going down from 109 PPI (or 226 for that matter) won't be too big of a problem.

piatti said:

If you put 32 GB of RAM on the iMac would it be still slower than the Mac Mini?

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That poster was referring to CPU speed. Here is the 3.2 Ghz i5 processor out of the $1999 27" iMac http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3470+@+3.20GHz scores 6603

The 2.3 quad mini http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3615QM+@+2.30GHz scores 7314. Upgrade to the 2.6 and you get another 1000 on top of that.

You would have to spend another $200 on top of the $1999 27" imac and max out the processor to top the mini in CPU power. However the iMac has way better graphics. It depends on what you use the machine for. 16GB of ram is plenty for most people.

The Mini is a good alternative, you just won't have a dedicated graphics card.

piatti said:

Does the iMac have way better graphics because of its dedicated graphics card? Would that be good for photos and movies?

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The dedicated GPU will not help that much with playing movies or viewing and editing photos, it is still a CPU dependant process.

piatti said:

Does the iMac have way better graphics because of its dedicated graphics card? Would that be good for photos and movies?

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It does not take much graphics power to watch movies. I've watched 1080p content on my mini and it was fine. People have used older minis as HTPC's. It helps having fast storage when viewing/editing photo libraries. Dedicated GPUs are good for things like gaming and heavy duty video editing.

But yes, to answer your question, dedicated GPUs are much more powerful than the integrated graphics in the mini.