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Anyone return the base M4 for M4 Pro?
- Thread starter MrGimper
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Or when you want / need to go beyond 32GB RAM, perhaps without needing the extra GPU power.
Honestly, 70 degrees Celsius is not overheating if you’re using it. The chip temperature can surpass the 100ºC. In fact, for the M2 chip on the MBA, it was quite common to reach 108ºC under load.
No. Nor does tech support at Apple. They recommended it be returned.
According to Apple's tech support, the Mac Mini should not be at that temp at idle. It never dropped below 70c. Which caused it to throttle. What's the point of having an M4 if the throttling causes it to run like an Intel chip? The day it arrived the system temp was around 40c and there was no throttling. I took the advice of tech support and returned it.
Either you got a faulty device, or something you installed was cooking it.
Mine gets hot, but TBH only when I benchmark it!
Activity monitor showed nothing unusual. After exhausting all possibilities, both he and his superior came to the conclusion that the Mac was faulty. At this stage it appears I simply got a dud. It happens.
No. I figured I would wait and see if my Mac Mini was an anomaly or it was a sign of a deeper issue. Just me being me.
That is true. For everyday computing, there's very little need to get anything more than whatever RAM is in the base model. You memory pressure will be yellow, but it won't have any real world impact on the vast majority of people. My 16GB M1 Pro has been yellow for almost the entire 3 years I've had it and with the exception of when I'm trying to run something severely resource heavy like a 2nd instance of MacOS inside a Parallels VM, it just works.
I've had my base model M4 Mini for over a week and I have yet to use any swap memory in my day to day usage which includes running, my day trading software, Discord app, streaming live TV and watching YouTube videos in between live TV shows. All this with only 16gb of memory and 256GBs of storage. Although I have ordered an OWC Thunderbolt 4 enclosure to be used with a 2TB NVMe SSD. I plan on booting and running my OS from my external storage which should be a piece of cake.
I would keep my base model for long-term use. I worried about the RAM and SSD (256G) but convinced myself I could live with that.
1) The RAM pressure has no noticeable impact to use
2) I hooked an external 1-TB SSD, and moved most of APP data (LR, Capture one, Chrome, FCP, PS) to the external SSD, so I believe I don't need to worry about the 256G internal SSD.
I am satisfied with the performance of the base model so far.
1) The RAM pressure has no noticeable impact to use
2) I hooked an external 1-TB SSD, and moved most of APP data (LR, Capture one, Chrome, FCP, PS) to the external SSD, so I believe I don't need to worry about the 256G internal SSD.
I am satisfied with the performance of the base model so far.
Actually returning the M4 Pro even though it’s significantly faster for my workflows I cannot justify the extra $1300 for the base M4 Pro…
So you’re going back to the M4 mini? Was it fast enough? What configuration are you going with? 512/24?
The M4 is blazing fast enough. The only thing I will miss is the M4 Pro exports video at about 33% - 50% faster but that is not worth an additional $1200 right now.
I am sticking with the 16 GB, 256 Gb and using a 1M2 OWC with 4 terabytes externally.
Plus there have been some complaints of fan noise with the M4 Pro Mac Mini…so, if you don’t actually need it? There are some advantages to the base model.
Guess the problem is Adobe… I am using Affinity
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