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Anyone else considering alternatives to an updated mini?

Mac pro.....you can't get 120 fps on ultra at 2560x1440 on battle field 4 with a mini. the mac pro comes with bragging rights but sadly i wont be enjoying hot meals at all this month 🙁
 
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jlus3 said:
You mean there be pirates 😱 among us?!? 😛
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Sorry to say yes... yes there is. 🙂 At least until something doesn't quite work right. Part of this experiment is that I didn't want to spend any time figuring stuff out. My old overclocking and spending 5 hours troubleshooting hardware PC rig days are behind me. If I can't manage to upgrade easily without breaking everything then I'll just have to turn this into a basic gaming computer
 
Well I was looking for an alternative recently and specwise there is nothing out there with the same specs, size from a respected company.

I really like the products from Asus and I believe that its possibly the only company out there that designwise can beat apple (replaced last year my 13,3 macbook pro 2009 with a zenbook UX32A and I am more than happy). I was looking at http://www.asus.com/gr/ASUS_VivoPC/VivoPC_VM40B/ which is a lot cheaper but specs are not better and you cannot add a second drive inside like I did with mini.

I never used OS (even with my previous imac and macbook pro) because some of the software I need for work are only available for windows so only looking at the specs. For one more time I decided to keep the mini and upgraded everything else, screen, keyboard, mouse & optical drive and I am really happy.

It will take some time to the other companies to reach those specs at that size.
 
I had a hackintosh once, it was an msi wind netbook. The thing that would sway me is the kernel panics and the having to update for every update, I use to love to tinker but currently I'd prefer the convience of a working computer without all the hassle.

As for the quad core i7 you can get one in the new Gigabyte Brix Pro with iris graphics and its smaller than the mini. The brix i5 with iris is also quad core. The problem with those for me is the fan noise since it seems like they are pretty loud from reviews. Its also not a mac.
 
I'll probably get hate for this, but he did say he didn't prefer OSX or Win7... But anyways... You could build a Mini ITX PC (Win7) with better specs for $100 less than the cheapest mac mini...
 
zachmo360 said:
I'll probably get hate for this, but he did say he didn't prefer OSX or Win7... But anyways... You could build a Mini ITX PC (Win7) with better specs for $100 less than the cheapest mac mini...
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Most Mini-ITX cases are larger than a mini. If I'm going PC I'm going to go with a brix or a nuc. Something tiny. Want to ditch my current loud big desktop.
 
dudedude said:
I had a hackintosh once, it was an msi wind netbook. The thing that would sway me is the kernel panics and the having to update for every update, I use to love to tinker but currently I'd prefer the convience of a working computer without all the hassle.
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They've come a long way since the netbook.

I can only go off of my own experience. I was really just giving it a shot since I've always just built my own PCs for 25 years. I already had a mac mini so I didn't have much to lose if it didn't work.

So what I did was put together one of the 'golden builds' which essentially is using components that are already in use in current Macs. No reaching at all, just as vanilla as you can go. What I ended up with was something similar to the maxed out iMac but with a 2gb Geforce 650ti, so a little better in the video department. Costs out the door I think were somewhere around $900.

The goal was: no trouble. No fiddling with it. No kernel panics. No weird problems or incompatibility issues, etc. It had to be rock solid.

It took me about 6 hours total to build the machine, install everything and then get OSx to work. Admittedly, it did take about 2 hours of troubleshooting to get all the components working (sound, wifi, bluetooth, etc). But since I've set it up, I've yet to have any weird problems. I've got it set up with Time Machine and I buy apps frequently on the App Store and pretty much do anything I normally do. I even upgraded it to Mavericks without any hiccups. Like I said, if this thing has any weird issues it's pretty much a straight shot to a 2012 Mac Mini but so far so good!
 
jlus3 said:
6 hours to build the thing, 2 hours to troubleshoot it.....



...at the same cost of a mini.



I'm sorry, what was the goal here again?



lol
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Haha, I had the same thought. Though, to be fair, for some people it's a hobby and half the fun is building it and getting it to work. For others, all they care about is having a working computer. Part of me thinks it would be fun to build a hacintosh but in the end I just want a fully functional computer that I don't have to worry about breaking every time I do a software update.
 
jlus3 said:
6 hours to build the thing, 2 hours to troubleshoot it.....

...at the same cost of a mini.

I'm sorry, what was the goal here again?

lol
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To be fair, much of the 6 hours was in just researching exactly what components to get. The actual construction part was probably only about 30-40 minutes.

But yeah it's far, far more powerful than a mini. The only reason of the costs were I was splurging on the processor, a 512gb Samsung EVO SSD and as much video power as I could justify spending. I suppose you could be conservative and build one for about $450. But again, really more of an experiment than anything else. I'm glad I did it so I know what's involved. And a couple hours of pain, thus far anyway, was well worth it.
 
Ok so I had been waiting on an updated mini and may still get one. But I gave up on trying to use a Mac as my main gaming machine and considering I needed to run windows in a VM as well I would have needed a more powerful machine than I would have wanted to purchase.

Anyways. I ended up buying a Gigabyte Brix Pro i5 which had the same processor as my base 21.5 iMac. The things runs great and using splashtop I have turned my Rmini into a nice kinda surface mini. I don't like the look of windows compared to OSX but the system runs great and is not loud for the general uses I have used it for so far.

I will be updating the system with 16gb ram today from Crucial I also have a Samsung Evo SSD in it. I will then hook it up to the Dell 24 inch 4k (UHD) display when that arrives. If any of you are interested in how it performs with the dell display and transcoding videos and what not I can post an update next week.
 
Mcdevidr said:
Ok so I had been waiting on an updated mini and may still get one. But I gave up on trying to use a Mac as my main gaming machine and considering I needed to run windows in a VM as well I would have needed a more powerful machine than I would have wanted to purchase.



Anyways. I ended up buying a Gigabyte Brix Pro i5 which had the same processor as my base 21.5 iMac. The things runs great and using splashtop I have turned my Rmini into a nice kinda surface mini. I don't like the look of windows compared to OSX but the system runs great and is not loud for the general uses I have used it for so far.



I will be updating the system with 16gb ram today from Crucial I also have a Samsung Evo SSD in it. I will then hook it up to the Dell 24 inch 4k (UHD) display when that arrives. If any of you are interested in how it performs with the dell display and transcoding videos and what not I can post an update next week.
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Keep us posted on noise levels. I'm interested in the brix pro but I've seen so many comments about how noisy it is that I'm a bit spooked.
 
Well looks like my plan to buy a Chromebox until the new Mini comes out is not gonna happen...Amazon,Newegg,Tigerdirect all sold out :-(
 
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