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Anyone using a Mac Mini as download/file transfer slave?

UltraNEO*

UltraNEO*

macrumors 601
Original poster
At present I'm using my MP constantly but it's not always doing work stuff... and have recently I've notice the electricity bill to be astronomically high! Kinda like having a one or two bar heater on twenty-four-seven. Know what I mean? 😱😱

And, for a little while I've been using a MBP for the same task but I find condition the battery every so often to be a right pain in the rear, especially since it's not my main laptop and it's cells are constantly pumped full most of the time, thus constantly connected to the wall outlet🙄

So Yeah! To help cut down on my super high fuel bills and make my life a little easier. I'm thinking about buying a Mac Mini of my own, it'll probably be completely headless, cause I'm thinking of using it purely for downloads and huge online file transfers etc.

I am however curious, does anyone else use theirs as a slave, for the same or similar tasks?
 
I use a PowerMac G4 (mainly because I got it for free), but plenty of others use the mini as what you describe. My neighbor does some Software Update trick with his.

My Mac mini will be shifted to server duty as soon as I can get a better Mac. It's much more energy efficient.
 
I'm thinking about doing the exactly same. Mac Mini would be perfect for that.

I also thought about getting a quad-core Xeon PC because it would convert movies and TV shows faster (from .mkv to playable format in PS3) and it would have more HD bays, but as you said, electricity bill would be higher..

Are you getting brand new or used?
 
No slaves here. I use my mini to watch movies in Plex mainly. Although lately I haven't been watching any since I upgraded to Snow Leo and Plex don't play nice with it.
 
i thought about doing that, but for $600, the specs are awful. I'm just gonna get a quad core PC, put win 7 on it and use it as a HTPC, apple should bump the specs and it would be quite a competitor.
 
Hellhammer said:
I'm thinking about doing the exactly same. Mac Mini would be perfect for that.

I also thought about getting a quad-core Xeon PC because it would convert movies and TV shows faster (from .mkv to playable format in PS3) and it would have more HD bays, but as you said, electricity bill would be higher..

Are you getting brand new or used?
Click to expand...

Well... I know the CPU's in the MacMini are removable cause they're socketed. How about replacing the factory with a mobile Core2Quad? Or would that be a waste? ...they're not cheap either!

... though it would have to be last gen's mac mini.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Well... I know the CPU's in the MacMini are removable cause they're socketed. How about replacing the factory with a mobile Core2Quad? Or would that be a waste? ...they're not cheap either!

... though it would have to be last gen's mac mini.
Click to expand...

I think C2Qs don't go to Mini? At least what I've heard, 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo is the fastest that you can put in there. Furthermore, C2Q would be too expensive because they are very hard to find.
 
I picked up a refurb'd 1.66 CD a couple of years ago, mostly as a media server, but it also doubles as a time capsule and file transfer slave. Connected to my CRT TV via DVI-composite adaptor, it isn't headless per se, but I do control it almost entirely via Screen Sharing.

As far as file transfer, it works quite well. I delegate larger FTP or P2P transfers when my MBP is unavailable, and backup both family laptops to a connected external HD.

Power savings can be found, but all-in-all, I don't know how many KWh it'll take to break even, even on a used purchase.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia said:
according to data on the Apple web site, the first-generation PowerPC Mac Mini consumes 32 to 85 Watts, while the later Intel Core machine consumes 23 to 110 Watts. By comparison, a contemporary Mac Pro with quad-core 2.66 GHz processors consumes 171 to 250 Watts
Click to expand...
 
Hellhammer said:
I also thought about getting a quad-core Xeon PC because it would convert movies and TV shows faster (from .mkv to playable format in PS3) and it would have more HD bays, but as you said, electricity bill would be higher..
Click to expand...

Medialink is coming out with a new version which is going to have built-in transcoding so you don't have to convert your mkv's, just stream them and ML will do the work for you. ML isn't free, there are other solutions like PS3MediaServer but the reliability is very variable.

That said, you shouldn't be converting your mkv's, just changing the container format.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Well... I know the CPU's in the MacMini are removable cause they're socketed. How about replacing the factory with a mobile Core2Quad? Or would that be a waste? ...they're not cheap either!

... though it would have to be last gen's mac mini.
Click to expand...

The new ones are epoxied in place. You're not getting it out without damage to the socket.

EDIT: Whoops, you were talking about last gen.

That's still plenty for what you want to do.
 
I do this with my Mac mini - although it streams music, tv shows and movies to my Apple TV. Its on 24/7 and usually downloading or encoding something.

Hope this helps

pac
 
Hellhammer said:
I think C2Qs don't go to Mini? At least what I've heard, 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo is the fastest that you can put in there. Furthermore, C2Q would be too expensive because they are very hard to find.
Click to expand...

Oh so those Q9xxx don't fit and uses a different socket?
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
The new ones are epoxied in place. You're not getting it out without damage to the socket.
Click to expand...

Epoxy is easy to remove if you apply a heat source but not too much, cause as you say, you don't wanna damage the socket.

Shake 'n' Bake said:
EDIT: Whoops, you were talking about last gen.

That's still plenty for what you want to do.
Click to expand...

I think the latest revision are surface mounted. Kinda pointless putting in a socket, only to glue the chip in place - it's not very 'green'.
 
try a nettop. it would lower power utilization and would cost about half of the price of a mini if you built it yourself. just buy yourself a 1 terrabyte hdd and an atom motherboard and some memory and you are good to go. especially as you want to run it headless. you can even install osx on it and it will run well if you want.
 
300D said:
A Mini is an expensive slave, a $40 G4 would be ample.
Click to expand...

Might be so but doesn't the average G4 system consume more watts per hour than a tiny mini? And hard-drive expansion of the G4 mini is limited to 320Gb cause it's still only IDE.
 
ruku said:
try a nettop. it would lower power utilization and would cost about half of the price of a mini if you built it yourself. just buy yourself a 1 terrabyte hdd and an atom motherboard and some memory and you are good to go. especially as you want to run it headless. you can even install osx on it and it will run well if you want.
Click to expand...

Huh? Why on earth would i wanna waste money on a PC nettop? As I said in the original post, i'm using a laptop for the time being.

I was thinking with a Mac Mini, it'll have 1Gbit Lan, Wifi capabilities and easy migration into the existing network without too much messing about and I could probably manage the entire system from the MP prior to sleep.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Might be so but doesn't the average G4 system consume more watts per hour than a tiny mini?
Click to expand...
Not really. The Mini consumes 30watts and a G4 450mhz consumes 50watts. Pennies per month difference.

And hard-drive expansion of the G4 mini is limited to 320Gb cause it's still only IDE.
Click to expand...
Not with a SATA card.
 
Yeah.. I know older machine can have 3Gb ram max and the new 4Gb.. for s headless machine file transfer machine, 1/2Gb is still plenty.

But, in terms of raw processing speeds, is there much difference between the 2Ghz of the current range and the previous one?
 
UltraNEO* said:
But, in terms of raw processing speeds, is there much difference between the 2Ghz of the current range and the previous one?
Click to expand...

You mean current 2GHz and prev gen 2GHz, right? Answer, no. New one has better GPU and faster RAM but CPU is the same
 
Hellhammer said:
You mean current 2GHz and prev gen 2GHz, right? Answer, no. New one has better GPU and faster RAM but CPU is the same
Click to expand...

uh... no they are not the same proc. Yes they have the same clock speed and both are core 2 duo's but that doesn't mean they are the same procs. See: Front Side Bus
 
reebzor said:
uh... no they are not the same proc. Yes they have the same clock speed and both are core 2 duo's but that doesn't mean they are the same procs. See: Front Side Bus
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry I forgot that 😱

Previous generation Mini has T7200 with 667MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache while 2009 model has P7350 with 1066MHz FSB and 3MB L2 cache. Basically, there's no difference
 
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