2018 Mac mini Teardown: User-Upgradeable RAM, But Soldered Down CPU and Storage

#4: the HD fails.

I have a bazundle of dead drives. Many more than dead ram or CPUs.

 

You are so thoroughly wrapped up in confirmation bias that youve basically done all you can to avoid the truth. Blackmagic is not the only stable egpu. That is straight up propaganda. Apple themselves lists and supports stable alternatives that are not blackmagic in their own support documents.

 

I also didn’t say “it’s all on you” or it’s your fault. That’s why rather than addressing you directly, I said “someone” losing data. However, you did say you lost data.

Anyway, the point is; loss of data due to soldered ssd can be prevented by having backups. Whether you do it or not is not the issue here.

I also agree with you that I don’t see a benefit for the end user for having the ssd soldered to the logic board. The only one benefiting from this practice seems to be Apple.

 

That's pretty much the same config, as I'll be going for - for the same use. Nice to finally see a Mac, that's great for Pro Audio.

 

Demonstrable evidence of your claims or ****.

 

Where's the support for your claims? You're the one who said your claims were "well documented". In any case:

Apple recommends several that are not the blackmagic:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208544

And this is not to mention that the Razer Core has long been a reviewer favourite:
1. https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/25/revi...mac-macbook-pro-best-external-graphics-video/
2. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.for...ac-the-gaming-machine-it-was-meant-to-be/amp/
3. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.mac...77/hardware/razer-core-x-egpu-review.amp.html

 

I feel like both the Akitio Node & the Razer Core X look svelte and clean enough to be an attractive & unobtrusive part of a mini setup!

 

Crazy how big that T2 chip is.

 

Would be nice to have some real world benchmarks on the macmini with thise things, so far we had to compare them running on mobile cpu

 

Right?!
And with how impressive those benchmarks have been... I’m really optimistic!

I’m actually thinking the stock graphics may tide me for a bit. I’m trying to figure out my exact move. I use my 2014 mini that has the Fusion (hybrid) drive w/ 1tb hdd & 128gb ssd & 8gb RAM- primarily as a HTPC. Some light usage, but mainly to serve up content as a Plex server. It’s connected to a 55” 4K, so a bit awkward as an actual PC, for surfing and such.
It honestly would serve me well for another 3-4 years at least, were it not for the woeful integrated graphics.
I only notice it when attempting to view 2160p content, generally with high bitrate audio as well, of course. It can play a bit stuttery & drives me batty! I’d get one of these boxes for it & wait on the next update, but Apple recently removed TB2 eGPU compatibility & I’m not willing to disable SIP and run hacks to try to workaround it.
I wish Fusion drives were still a thing... as is, a 512gb machine w/ 16gb & the lowest 6-core comes in at just over $1500 & I’m struggling to justify that for my usage.

 

A must read:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-people-taken-reddit-complain-161054840.html

 

Because the soldering station to do that costs more than 3 Mac Minis.

 

Apple has not ever used a standard PCIe slot for their flash stoarage since the first implanted it in the 2010 MacBook Air, so I am not sure why anyone would expect them to do so at this point in time.

Apple has also moved to creating its own SSD controller encapsulated inside the T2 chip and so what they have now is simply a collection of NAND chips soldered to the motherboard. Even if Apple put them in a M.2 socket, no current NVMe drive would work anyways as they contain their own controller.

Besides, having an M.2 slot for anyone to slide in whatever SSD they want would be a horrible mistake on Apple’s part.

Meanwhile, Apple has been telling everyone what they were going to do when they introduced the 2015 MacBook and then with the 2016 MacBook Pros, so I am not sure why it comes as a surprise to anyone on these forums who follows Apple hardware closely.

--- Post Merged, Nov 10, 2018 ---

Sonnet Technologies eGFX Breakaway Box 350 Developer’s Edition w/Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX580 8GB is $425 on Amazon or you can get the Breakaway Box by itself and add a Radeon RX 580 on your own.

Reasonable enough, or would you want to spend more money?

The one caveat is that you are not going to be able to use it on your 2014 Mac mini without a bit of hacking. Go to eGPU.io. Good luck!

 

About to order my Custom Mac Mini. I'm having serious seconds thoughts on going with the i7. I see a lot of recent news on Side Channel Vulnerability for attacks on Intel's Hyperthreading. I think I may be safer with the i5. What do you guys thinks?

 

Very few people are actually going upgrade the CPU on any computer. Besides, by the time a user notices that they need a faster computer, its 5 years down the road the CPU Intel is selling will not work with the computer they bought. We are getting two generations per socket and chipset for the most part now. Z170 (Skylake& Kaby Lake), Z270 (Skylake/Ka by Lake), Z370 (Coffee Lake/Coffee Lake-R). Besides, there’s really no money to be saved by trying to upgrade from say, a Core i3-6100 to a Core i7-6700K, which, if you can find one, is still $350. So why would I bother doing that and not simply upgrade to the latest and greatest? Again, the average user, just doesn’t care. They are going to replace their computer once the one they are using is too slow to do what they want to do.

 

The problem with your reasoning is that you're only looking three years into the future, while most Macs last much longer than three years.

If I buy a used dual-core Mac from, say, 2012 - one I could upgrade from dual-core to quad-core myself - considering the price of a used 3770 has now dropped below $100 (and quad-core i5s now well below $50), it's definitely something I would consider.

Edit: Aside from the fact that Macs last longer than three years, if Apple keeps putting quad-core i3s into the base-model minis (and I really hope they don't), today's i7-8700 will continue to outperform those in multi-core. It doesn't make sense to sell your old model for a new one at the same price point if there's minimal performance to be gained.

This argument can also be applied to the RAM, so why did Apple decide to give us socketed RAM again? I think you know the answer as well as I do. The same logic applies to the CPU as well.

 

Since Apple soldered the damn CPu: get the best one you can afford.

 

I3 used to have 2 cores, i3 in 4 years time may have 6-8 cores but more importantly different architecture, more power efficient, new instruction set, better igpu etcc, a huge step up since they will move on from 14nm, or Apple may use their own chip.

 

The i3 was a dual-core processor from its initial release in 2010 through the Kaby Lake generation. That's 7 years. So there's no guarantee it'll be hex-core in 4 years time. (eGPUs will continue to vastly outperform the newer iGPUs if a better GPU necessary.)

But you could be right, and it's really all speculation at this point. Even plausible that Apple won't have a post-2018 Mac mini available 3-4 years from now.

 

They would be about neck to neck instead of “way faster”. With Mac mini winning mostly on single threaded apps. Remember i3 doesn’t have hyperthreading so 2016 mbp 15 i7 will be a bit quicker for certain cpu intensive tasks like video encoding. Also, ssd speed differences are hardly noticeable in day to day tasks.
You did mention gpu and at least the mbp has a dgpu option instead of the pathetic igpu that the mini has.

 

And they probably wouldn't work in the current Mac mini. The chipset has to support the CPU and Intel is big on new chipsets with new chips.

 

I was very excited when I heard about the Mac Mini 2018. After looking at the tear down I am seriously disappointed. New Mini seemed like a nice upgrade from my cMac Pro but soldered flash? If that fails its going to cost a lot of €€€ to replace the logic board.

To add insult into injury Apples flash upgrade prices are ridiculous, if this is their idea of fair price I shudder to think how much the new Mac Pro is going to cost!

 

Nope macbook would throttle down were i3 would keep 3.6 steady (is not a turbo frequency) so while they are on par in multithread geekbench it would be faster in a real world scenario the macbook can probably match the i3 mini only in quick multithread burst.

Sure macmini has an igpu we all know that, we also know that if you need gpu power you either don’t buy a mini or use and external gpu

 

Somebody can really explain me why Apple is well... Apple! I mean why they continue offering that ridiculous specs for high prices?

Why they can offer at least 1TB of SSD and 16GB or well 32GB of ram in a the mac Mini by default?

They can compete with that specs, is a marketing thing, they are simply greedy???? Somebody can explain me? I'm not a business person, so what's the secret about that ridiculous specs for high prices.

I basically buy apple products for the OS and well yes the well made hardware but I start to feeling tired of his prices for his low specs.

 

That picture on the left is of the Razer Core V2. Compared to the V2 the Razer Core X is boxier in design, slightly larger(can accommodate GPUs with larger HSF) and lacks the extra lighting/usb3 ports/LAN port (that is on the back of the V2). The X is also cheaper than the V2.