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200 dollars to upgrade from 128gb to 256 and 400 to upgrade to 512gb. They are out of their mind but unfortunately so many people will be ripped off. Or they'll buy the 128gb version and end up running out of space in a year or two.

They do not use SATA 3 drives that tap out at 520MB/s Read and Write and can be picked up from Best Buy on Black Friday. They use custom NVMe blades that are getting 3.4GB/s Reads/2.2GB/s writes. They are not equivalent in the least.
 
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I'm gonna hold off and wait and see if we can upgrade the SSD. I'll wait till Black Friday to order, who knows they might go on sale if Hell gets cold enough.

I'd like to be able to add my own SSD or M.2 drive.. but 256 GB is more than enough for my OS, Apps and music. All of my other stuff is stored on a USB3 drive, no problems there. It's mostly going to be for video editing... would it speed up render times if I got an external GPU? Don't need one for gaming, but I have a Nvidia 1070 in my old PC, if that would help at all...?

The SSD/Flash Storage is not upgradeable. Buy what you think you need and use Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3 for the rest.

What video editor are you using? Premiere Pro? DaVinci Resolve? Final Cut Pro X?
 
They do not use SATA 3 drives that tap out at 520MB/s Read and Write and can be picked up from Best Buy on Black Friday. They use custom NVMe blades that are getting 3.4GB/s Reads/2.2GB/s writes. They are not equivalent in the least.

You were saying: https://www.google.com/shopping/pro...&ved=0ahUKEwiDlJ23jK_eAhXLrVMKHY7ND_wQ8wIIggQ ??

There is ZERO reason why Apple is charging double the retail price of the exact same type of SSD they are putting into the base Mac mini. Retail price: $197.99. Apple upgrade price: $400. The only reason they are doing this is dreams of avarice. No other consumer PC maker does this, none!
 
These are completely different technologies. The prices are not comparable. The production processes are different. In the computer world smaller and faster cost more. SSD is both smaller and faster. Yes, Apple does charge a premium for their upgrades. They aren't going back to spinning drives any sooner than they will add a DVD drive or serial port.

I'm not suggesting that Apple revert to old tech. But smaller and faster shouldn’t cost more. That’s absurd. In any event I’ve had this type of discussion before here. I’m just one of those who believes the world overall is overpriced for the average person (like 99% of us) to live in. Anyways this is not the place for that discussion.
 
No GPU but you can go eGPU, more cost of course however more flexibility, if it did have dGPU it would not be great and never be upgradeable, becoming irrelevant far quicker than the CPU.
Apart from the real poor GPU it seems a reasonable system. CPU-wise you can go up to 6core i7 and memory-wise you can go up to 64GB (user-replacable).

What is a good and affordable eGPU enclosure? I'm looking at what a decently decked out mini would cost when equipped with a eGPU.
 
Of course they could have. It's not like they have worked day and night for 4 years for this. Of course not. It's more likely that they did nothing, and then nothing and then nothing and then finally they decided to dust it off and upgrade it. It's not like it's the first time that have happened to Mac mini… (at least it was a nice upgrade this time except for the higher base price, the last one was such a disappointment).
Yes, of course. But we are not here to settle for ordinary with those prices. Apple set the bar high and most of us expect that level of detail to all products. I'm sure the Mac Pro users can tell you stories.
The more waves we do the more likely we get a chance for Apple to notice and improve. Thats why we have iMac Pro and thats why Apple said they will do better job with Mac Pro - all that because of noise from those that wanted something better with more attention.
Same logic applies here. We shouldn't be grateful that Apple finally updated its hardware after 4 years to reasonable specs. We should demand that Apple does that on regular basis.
Regardless, shame there is no proper GPU but on the other hand, it might be fine for most tasks :)
I'll wait for the Mac Pro and iMac to decide where I want to go. Lets hope I'm inspired and not disappointed :)
 
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That is not NVMe storage, it is straight SATA 3 and tops out at ~550MB/s R/W. You need to move up to the Samsung 970 Pro to get comparable transfer speeds and NVMe and that drive is $200 on Amazon.
I agree...the thing is, I'm not sure most users will benefit (that much) from the move from SATA3 to NVMe. Whereas the move from HDD to SATA SSD is huge!

In my mind, the best cost-effective solution would be a Fusion drive consisting of 128GB of NVMe + regular SATA SSD storage. More costly than HDD, yes, but performance would be excellent for all except the extreme tasks (large file writes, 4K video etc) where pure NVMe is needed.
 
Although the prices look like a Mac Pro rather than a Mini...

Pretty much. Maxed out the new Mac mini pushes over $4000. For that kind of money, you might as well get a base iMac Pro or a VERY well equipped iMac 5K 27" that has a FAR (which can be counted in the difference between us and Alpha Centauri in nanometers) better GPU and a built-in $1300 retail monitor. Plus it comes with a keyboard and mouse; you have to pay extra for those with the Mac mini.
 
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Apart from the real poor GPU it seems a reasonable system. CPU-wise you can go up to 6core i7 and memory-wise you can go up to 64GB (user-replacable).

What is a good and affordable eGPU enclosure? I'm looking at what a decently decked out mini would cost when equipped with a eGPU.

Akitio Node 3. Look it up. It is the cheapest you can get.
 
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What is a good and affordable eGPU enclosure? I'm looking at what a decently decked out mini would cost when equipped with a eGPU.

I have seen many mixed reviews, the only one that thus far appears to work out of the box and keep working is the BlackMagic, but of course at 599 you get a throwaway unit as it can never be upgraded. That said it could potentially last you years depending on your needs. And you will not find a quieter unit.

The Gigabyte RX580 seems popular but lots of reports it will connect and work today, not tomorrow.

Aside from that you could look at the AKiTiO case and put your own card in, stick with AMD cards, Nvidia can be troublesome due to the driver compatibility especially after OS updates.
 
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I have seen many mixed reviews, the only one that thus far appears to work out of the box and keep working is the BlackMagic, but of course at 599 you get a throwaway unit as it can never be upgraded. That said it could potentially last you years depending on your needs. And you will not find a quieter unit.

The Gigabyte RX580 seems popular but lots of reports it will connect and work today, not tomorrow.

Aside from that you could look at the AKiTiO case and put your own card in, stick with AMD cards, Nvidia can be troublesome due to the driver compatibility especially after OS updates.

For us who want to play games in Windows, Blackmagic is not an option.
 
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Went to apple site and they have a trade in....they offered me a big $35 for my 2011 Mac Mini...what a joke.

Yeah, they offered me $40 for my 2011 Mac mini. I just kept it and I'm going to use it to do remedial tasks like converting WMVs to MP4s and downloading torrents... both of which would eat computing power on my iMac.
 
No discreet GPU really sucks. An external GPU costs like 10 times the price that it should be. It's weird that the MacBook Pro gets to have a GPU while the Mac Mini doesn't, when it's a desktop. I believe that a computer without a discreet GPU is not really meant to be taken seriously, and this should reflect in the price.

This is where I am. While I expected a dGPU to be somewhat of a stretch, I expected an Intel offering a little more robust than the Intel UHD Graphics 630. It's no doubt more powerful than the Radeon HD 6750M in my old mid-2011 iMac, but not overwhelmingly better considering the six years between their releases. The cost, and (I guess I would not have been an Apple user for so long without this) aesthetic of adding an eGPU as another peripheral, makes it a tough sell for me. The Mac Mini, however, is an impressive little machine. The refresh gives most what they want, which is great for 4+ years of waiting. I just wish Apple made it a little closer to a high-end NUC (i.e., the Hades Canyon that I am looking to rid myself of already) killer.
 
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Pretty much. Maxed out the new Mac mini pushes over $4000. For that kind of money, you might as well get a base iMac Pro or a VERY well equipped iMac 5K 27" that has a FAR (which can be counted in the difference between us and Alpha Centauri in nanometers) better GPU and a built-in $1300 retail monitor. Plus it comes with a keyboard and mouse; you have to pay extra for those with the Mac mini.
It’s ridiculous to compare a maxed out mini, which has twice as much SSD capacity and twice as much RAM, to a base iMac Pro.

When configured in the closest like configuration—i7, 1 TB SSD, 32GB RAM and 10GbE—the mini is $2,599. That’s not iMac Pro money (but of course the mini is no iMac Pro).
 
curious, and likely silly question. i have a mac mini late 2012, currently connecting to a thunderbolt display using thunderbolt (1 i believe, cable). for the new mac mini would i then use hdmi and would i still support 2500x1440?
 
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