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Mac mini 2012 noise compared to late 2009 model
- Thread starter pezmannen
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under a heavy load they both can get noisy. the 2012 quad is a huge cpu leap from the 2009. do you need it? the base model is about twice as fast as the 2009. I ask because you could get a base 2012 and an external ssd for about the same price as the quad
http://www.macmall.com/p/Apple-Desktop-Computers/product~dpno~9418664~pdp.iadfcjd this is 588
http://www.macmall.com/p/LaCie-Hard-Drives/product~dpno~9420336~pdp.iadgjgf
this is 199 total is 786. link to macmall from ebates and pay with a paypal credit card you get about 30 off you are at 756
you can buy parallels for 50 and get a 50 dollar rebate from macmall.
if you don't use parallels and windows it will sell on ebay for 35-40 knock your total down to 720. all warranty onl add ram if you think you need it. in fact you could sell the dead 2009 mini on ebay for 200 to 300 knock down your price to 400 AND SOME CHANGE
this would beat up on your current machine.
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The base i7 quad. Upgraded the RAM to 16GB. I've done some heavy duty audio work on it, and some HD video work. Haven't used Final Cut yet, and I don't use Handbrake, but for what I've done so far, it's just as quiet as my late 2009 Mini.
May i ask, what monitor you use with you mac mini, as i have a 2008 imac, and thinking about getting a new mac mini, as the new imac look good, but im put off you can't upgrade them
Thanks
Just to add to this, in case this is still interesting to some: My i7 2.6 Ghz Mac Mini becomes extremely noisy under heavy load (rendering in Final Cut Pro X or transcoding in Handbrake). I was a bit shocked at first by the amount of noise that thing can generate, seeing how I hardly ever heard anything from my 2009 Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is hidden away behind my monitor (with ample room for ventilation, of course), yet I could not listen to music at a "normal" volume while rendering a video in FCP X due to the fan noise. Not a major issue, as rendering/transcoding is usually a "dedicated" task (i.e. I don't expect to do anything else while doing that).
No other tasks have elicited any kind of fan noise though. I have an external WD hard drive and the silent "hiss" of the hard drive's fan is usually the only thing I hear.
Addendum: The fan noise only appears to occur when the CPU usage is pushed up to >700% (implying near-full usage of the 8 virtual cores), i.e. only when the CPU is used very efficiently, which FCP X seems to do during all rendering tasks, while Handbrake sometimes hovers around 400%, depending on the kind of task.
The Mac Mini is hidden away behind my monitor (with ample room for ventilation, of course), yet I could not listen to music at a "normal" volume while rendering a video in FCP X due to the fan noise. Not a major issue, as rendering/transcoding is usually a "dedicated" task (i.e. I don't expect to do anything else while doing that).
No other tasks have elicited any kind of fan noise though. I have an external WD hard drive and the silent "hiss" of the hard drive's fan is usually the only thing I hear.
Addendum: The fan noise only appears to occur when the CPU usage is pushed up to >700% (implying near-full usage of the 8 virtual cores), i.e. only when the CPU is used very efficiently, which FCP X seems to do during all rendering tasks, while Handbrake sometimes hovers around 400%, depending on the kind of task.
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I tried to stress my new 2012 mini and see if I could get the fans loud by running BOINC at 100% processor output on all 8 virtual cores for a few hours. The fans only got up to 2300 RPM (base is 1800 RPM) and I couldn't hear it at all. No fan control program installed. I was impressed.
Well, you won't have the optical drive noise at startup, that's for sure. I love the 09 Mini's -- which one did you have?
As my experience with my 2.6Ghz i7 Mac Mini is completely different, it seems to imply that the 2.6Ghz model gets significantly hotter.
The only other option is that the fans on my Mac Mini are broken.
I played a Bluray movie with VLC and the CPU percentage used by VLC stayed around 60% - hardly enough to cause any heat buildup or fan noise.How cool and quiet is Mac mini running while playing Blu-Ray movies, please?
I tried the 3D anaglyph option in VLC 2.1.0, and while it did not produce a usable result (I guess that option is a work in progress), it pushed the CPU load up to 120% (which one the one hand makes sense, as VLC then has to play two video streams at the same time, but which is on the other hand surprising, as you'd expect some processing load for the creation of the anaglyph image). Still not enough to elicit any fan noise.
The loud Samsung Bluray drive I use is a much bigger issue though. With that noisy drive, this would not be a living room option in my opinion.