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Anyone using the Satechi Mac Mini hub?
- Thread starter omeletpants
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I bought it on the recommendation of Alex Lindsay over on Mac Break Weekly.
i combined it with a 1TB Intenso SSD. It works fine. I put my photo catal on it, as it is 300GB in size.
it works very nicely. But I’ve only had my Mac mini a week.
No heat problems, yet. Everything cool and running silently. The unit has ventilation pass thru for the Mac, which seems to work.
Alex uses them as rendering stations, so I doubt he’d recommend It, if it was causing heat problems
i combined it with a 1TB Intenso SSD. It works fine. I put my photo catal on it, as it is 300GB in size.
it works very nicely. But I’ve only had my Mac mini a week.
No heat problems, yet. Everything cool and running silently. The unit has ventilation pass thru for the Mac, which seems to work.
Alex uses them as rendering stations, so I doubt he’d recommend It, if it was causing heat problems
Have one with my M1 Mac mini. Works good and have a 1TB SSD in it. Ports work ok and haven't had any issues with it. Not the fastest ports, but does the job. The SDXC and mini slots are a good addition. But in the design, the SDXC ports are up-side-down. Don't understand what they were thinking. I think the other ports are too (from memory). But others than that, it works good.
I guess we can agree to disagree has I find the ports on the front a lot more convenient to use which is one of the reasons I bought it.
Some on the front and some on the back would have been good, but the Mini already has the ports on the back.
For USB sticks, Yubikeys and memory cards, having them conveniently on the front is useful. For things like printers, external drives, keyboard and mice that will stay plugged in permanently / longer, having some of the back would be good... But you can't have everything in life.
For USB sticks, Yubikeys and memory cards, having them conveniently on the front is useful. For things like printers, external drives, keyboard and mice that will stay plugged in permanently / longer, having some of the back would be good... But you can't have everything in life.
My opinion only.
You'd do better to forget about a hub with a slot for a drive, and just buy a "bare drive" AND an external USB3.1 gen2 enclosure to go with it. The enclosures are cheap and plentiful.
Probably less money and possibly less "trouble" down the line...
You'd do better to forget about a hub with a slot for a drive, and just buy a "bare drive" AND an external USB3.1 gen2 enclosure to go with it. The enclosures are cheap and plentiful.
Probably less money and possibly less "trouble" down the line...
I have one with an external ssd drive; no problems with the drive, but the front usb ports are a bit tight and the sd card slot won't accommodate my microSD adapter
The older ones that don't accept a 2.5" drive are mostly empty space. Not much to them.
I'd try and get it swapped out/get a refund. The ports on mine are aligned well and the USB cables and the Yubikey I've used so far have all fitted well and easily. The same for my microSD adapter.
@frou - hardly a surprise, most of it is there to provide a holder for the Mac mini that matches its dimensions. In that respect, it works very well.
Actually, thanks to a redditor's suggestion, the SD card will fit if it is inserted upside down (on the Satechi); I don't use the front USB ports a great deal as I prefer the rear USB ports on the mini.
i use a Hagibis MC25 Pro and is awesome.
SD slot is layed out correctly
Has USB-C and USB 3.x also. NVMe SSD slot as well as SATA
Absolutely no heat issues, actually the SATA SSD is warmer than the M1 mini lol.
I set the Mini to never sleep, therefore i don't get any drive disconnects. Haven't actually tried to enable sleep since it messes up my monitor as well when waking up (or not). This things consumes at idle probably less than light bulb, so yeah...**** it, leave it on.
SD slot is layed out correctly
Has USB-C and USB 3.x also. NVMe SSD slot as well as SATAAbsolutely no heat issues, actually the SATA SSD is warmer than the M1 mini lol.
I set the Mini to never sleep, therefore i don't get any drive disconnects. Haven't actually tried to enable sleep since it messes up my monitor as well when waking up (or not). This things consumes at idle probably less than light bulb, so yeah...**** it, leave it on.
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I buy the same one, and was impossible convert the DP video output to HDMI.i use a Hagibis MC25 Pro and is awesome.
SD slot is layed out correctly
Absolutely no heat issues, actually the SATA SSD is warmer than the M1 mini lol.
I set the Mini to never sleep, therefore i don't get any drive disconnects. Haven't actually tried to enable sleep since it messes up my monitor as well when waking up (or not). This things consumes at idle probably less than light bulb, so yeah...**** it, leave it on.
I tried several cables and adaptors and nothing.
I don't have a DP monitor, but the guy who sell me it, show me a video with a DP monitor working ok...
Shall I need an active DP to HDMI adaptor?
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no idea, did you plug in the second usb cable at the back as well into the mini or monitor?
on the other hand why don't you plug in the monitor directly in Mac's HDMI?
Satechi hub came in today and I like it. I thought I could plug my Logitech unifying receiver into one the of the ports, but I immediately noticed the cursor stuttering. Bummer.
Weird. I use the Unifying Receiver on my Fan Dock and it works just fine. Did you try all 3 USB ports, perhaps one is bad.
I've been up in the air between the Satechi and the AGPTEK hubs with internal storage... the latter having a better port layout (for my needs) but the Satechi (the upgraded one which also has internal storage bays) is stylistically better-fitting (a minor thing, but hey....).
Then I came across this video, and I'm feeling rather apprehensive about the strain these non-powered hubs can put on the system. I don't know if he's just talking out of his rear-end, but he seems to know what he's talking about (though his voice and mannerisms are a bit grating). Apparently running with any power draw off the Mac is not advisable. He even disputes the manufacturer's recommendation for power on the model he does recommend, showing you how to pull power from (the right) external USB charger unit.
Wish I'd studied up on Amps / Volts / Watts and such....
I'd be interested in opinions — are his concerns valid?
Then I came across this video, and I'm feeling rather apprehensive about the strain these non-powered hubs can put on the system. I don't know if he's just talking out of his rear-end, but he seems to know what he's talking about (though his voice and mannerisms are a bit grating). Apparently running with any power draw off the Mac is not advisable. He even disputes the manufacturer's recommendation for power on the model he does recommend, showing you how to pull power from (the right) external USB charger unit.
Wish I'd studied up on Amps / Volts / Watts and such....
I'd be interested in opinions — are his concerns valid?
I couldn't be bothered to watch the full 30 min video, so here's just a few notes, based on the few scenes I watched:
USB3.0(A) is specified to provide 0.9Amps of power. For the standard 5V power that translates to 5V * 0.9A = 4.5W. There's a higher limit of 5V * 1.5A = 7.5W, if the port is designed according to the Battery Charging spec, but I don't know whether that applies to the ports in the Mac mini and will thus only consider the lower value below.
Thunderbolt 3 is specified to deliver up to 15W for a connected device. So if the hub is connected to both a TB3 and a USB3.0 port, itself and all connected devices together can theoretically consume 19.5W (even though it is considered bad design to connect to two separate USB ports for increased power supply - but technically it's possible). On hubs with a single TB3 connection, the power limit would be 15W respectively.
The 2018 Mac mini's PSU is rated for 150W. According to Apple it can consume up to 122W under load. My understanding it that this is without externally connected devices. That leaves 28W to spare, which would be sufficient for the formerly mentioned 19.5W (15W) for the Hub and its devices.
On the other hand, with components aging over time (especially in a crammed and heated case like the Intel mini), tolerances may add up in an unfortunate way, so the reserves may shrink!
According to this site a single SSD can consume up to 10 Watts during sequential writes (PCIe SSD's even more, but those don't apply here). Sequential transfers are not the norm and rarely sustained for longer periods of time, but I'd rather look at the worst case here to err on the safe side.
If you would connect multiple SSD's (or even platter drives) to the internal and external ports of such a hub and load them all at the same time, you may quickly exceed the given power limit.
The Hub suppliers do make a little gamble here, relying on most customers not connecting all available ports at once and putting load on all connected devices at the same time. Probably there's also something in the fine print about maximum connected/loaded devices as "cover-your-a$$" fallback.
If you approach this with reason and sum up the power draw of connected devices, you can make sure to not overload the system.
I'm not so sure about the video guy's recommendation of using a dedicated external PSU for powering the hub. In theory it sounds good, but I would be careful with providing power to a device from two separate sources (mini's PSU and external wall-plug PSU), as that could bring other unwanted negative effects.
tl;dr: Depending on workflow and connected devices on the hub - yes, there's a chance to actually overload the system under certain circumstances. In practice, the stars would have to align in a very negative way for that to happen.
USB3.0(A) is specified to provide 0.9Amps of power. For the standard 5V power that translates to 5V * 0.9A = 4.5W. There's a higher limit of 5V * 1.5A = 7.5W, if the port is designed according to the Battery Charging spec, but I don't know whether that applies to the ports in the Mac mini and will thus only consider the lower value below.
Thunderbolt 3 is specified to deliver up to 15W for a connected device. So if the hub is connected to both a TB3 and a USB3.0 port, itself and all connected devices together can theoretically consume 19.5W (even though it is considered bad design to connect to two separate USB ports for increased power supply - but technically it's possible). On hubs with a single TB3 connection, the power limit would be 15W respectively.
The 2018 Mac mini's PSU is rated for 150W. According to Apple it can consume up to 122W under load. My understanding it that this is without externally connected devices. That leaves 28W to spare, which would be sufficient for the formerly mentioned 19.5W (15W) for the Hub and its devices.
On the other hand, with components aging over time (especially in a crammed and heated case like the Intel mini), tolerances may add up in an unfortunate way, so the reserves may shrink!
According to this site a single SSD can consume up to 10 Watts during sequential writes (PCIe SSD's even more, but those don't apply here). Sequential transfers are not the norm and rarely sustained for longer periods of time, but I'd rather look at the worst case here to err on the safe side.
If you would connect multiple SSD's (or even platter drives) to the internal and external ports of such a hub and load them all at the same time, you may quickly exceed the given power limit.
The Hub suppliers do make a little gamble here, relying on most customers not connecting all available ports at once and putting load on all connected devices at the same time. Probably there's also something in the fine print about maximum connected/loaded devices as "cover-your-a$$" fallback.
If you approach this with reason and sum up the power draw of connected devices, you can make sure to not overload the system.
I'm not so sure about the video guy's recommendation of using a dedicated external PSU for powering the hub. In theory it sounds good, but I would be careful with providing power to a device from two separate sources (mini's PSU and external wall-plug PSU), as that could bring other unwanted negative effects.
tl;dr: Depending on workflow and connected devices on the hub - yes, there's a chance to actually overload the system under certain circumstances. In practice, the stars would have to align in a very negative way for that to happen.
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If you are still having troubles, try putting them on the end of foot long usb extensions often helps. They have bad problems with interference and bad range. I think most the Logitech keyboards come with an extension just for that.