First Mac Mini Benchmark Surfaces Ahead of November 7 Launch

[mmomega]

Sounds like a plan!

Because of this Mac mini 2018 i7-8700, I am holding on Xeon workstations and MBP. I don't want to waste 4 grands on another overheat MBP.

If Mac mini is good, I might just buy any 13/15" Macbook as front end to remote connect to the backend mini. Let the desktop do the best they should...

Just curious what are doing to run for 3-4 hours? Any scientific or maths related?

No, just a bit of 4K to 1080 encoding.
Normally I'll have 30minutes to an hour or so but there are several times a month where I will have a few hundred GB to a TB of 4K footage to work with the encode to 1080.

 

[Jamers99]

About to order my Custom Mac Mini. I'm having serious seconds thoughts on going with the i7. I see alot of recent news on Side Channel Vulnerability for attacks on Intel's Hyperthreading. I think I may be safer with the i5. What do you guys thinks?

 

[SteveW928]

... Yes, the MacBook pro does cost more, but I would still expect the baseline 2018 15" to have better performance on anything GPU-bound, which should make up for the price difference for many mostly-stationary pro users. Especially considering you can nab the Pro at significant discount refurbished. To catch up with a mini you would need an eGPU which would close the cost gap. It seems like mostly a device for people dipping their toes into MacOS.

But then you have to deal with the whole laptop, screen, keyboard, complexity, stuff to break, etc. And, I don't think the MBP is going to cool as well. I actually don't want a laptop for my desktop.

I'd also guess that most people fall into a category where they don't need the extra GPU power, of if they do, they need more than the MBP offers... which means an eGPU either way.

Finally someone with some sense... You would think that 9/10 people have render farms in their houses the way people harp on about 'thermal throttling under full load'. I do gaming, programming, image and video editing and music creation and rarely hit a full load on my 4 core, let alone for a significant amount of time.

True, but I think the big problem with the MBP comes in if you do something that uses a combo of the CPU and GPU. But, you're right that the average person isn't going to max everything out in typical use.

So at th e end of the day, is MacOS, the Mini's design worth $300 to you?
The Mac Mini is an awesome looking computer. But the price is absolutely out of line with the industry parts.

To me, yes, absolutely. Macs are typically $100-200 more, so another $100 isn't that big of a deal. Also, while I haven't checked the specs of what you're referring to, most of the NUC comparisons I've seen so far aren't 'apples to apples.' Maybe they don't need to be, but having faster SSD or a couple extra cores, etc. is worth something to some of us.
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My understanding is that each port has that capability. OTOH, the Mini being able to source and/or receive that much data simultaneously at that rate doing something meaningful with it is a very different matter.

I'm pretty sure it's 2 controllers for the 4 ports (as opposed to a controller for each port on higher end machines). So, two full-bandwidth 'things' or some combination.

Well, considering how about 90%+ of the components are also used in PCs it's not surprising that they are being price compared. It does seem like Apple has increased their "premium" more recently though - it's probably Tim Cook trying to find the right balance (ie. most profit) between how much we're willing to pay for that premium before abandoning the platform, and everyone's threshold will be different. I think characterizing folks upset at the pricing (vs PC equivalents) as "PC trolls" is a little unfair. Apple definitely seems to be raising the prices on even their lower end products, and its unfortunate for folks who are Apple/Mac enthusiasts but also have to be budget minded.

Yeah. That is certainly what Apple is doing (in general), but in the case of the mini, it isn't really fair as it's just WAY more computer than it was at the $499 price point (and it hasn't been there for a while).

Also, Apple did go through a phase where the lower end Macs (and even higher end ones... I don't think I spent over $2k on a couple of my MBPs in the 2000s) were pretty price-competitive. It's sad to see that go, but historically, Apple wasn't all that price-competitive. Look at the prices of earlier Macs.

I like this usage very much.

For the last few years, I learnt that MBP is very expensive, unreliable, overheat and prone to high maintenance cost i.e., $600 display repair.

Going forwards, we must re-think the mix of laptop and desktop. And don't be under the illusion that an i9 MBP is the ultimate desktop replacement.

My only reservation is again now I have to maintain two Macs ....

Yeah, unfortunately, the MBP isn't what it once almost was (it was never great for heavy use). But, they really ruined it overall, IMO.

Also, I'm going more the better desktop / iPad route as I don't need the workflow/power while mobile anymore. That's an odd shift, as I had been headed more towards the laptop-as-all setup at one point.

Yeah, I'm coming to the same conclusion. I'd rather go for a Mac Mini/MacBook Air combo than a Macbook Pro. (And that's saying something, considering I have 2 MacBook Pro's sat on my desk right now!)

They really ruined the MBP, at least in the eyes of most people I know. I've owned a number of MBPs personally over the years, and a whole bunch of them under my control as an employee. I'm just not interested in it anymore. My son bought a 2017, and every time I use it, I'm just glad I waited. He seems happy with it, but has no real reference point.... which is maybe a lot of Apple's new MBP buyers?

I run them upside down (not very space efficient) with the vents up. TeamRender (Cinema 4D I presume?) is awesome - I had a dozen machines going at one point, very powerful! Now with cheaper multi-core machines farming is more affordably done.
cheers.

Aren't the vents on the back? I was thinking you'd want to run them with the back up, then. I'm an Electric Image guy (though haven't used it recently) but have done some Renderama setups in the past using a bunch of machines (including minis and Xserves too). They work great for that kind of stuff.

Also a 4K display may be enough for a lot of people, which is much more affordable than a 5K one. But if you want an amazing 5K display with a pretty reasonable computer, the iMac seems to be a good deal.

Yeah, if you need all the stuff or prefer an all-in-one, the iMac is a pretty hard deal to beat, overall. I hope they get updated soon too. But, as you say, I want a headless machine to use with my own config, especially the ability to use my monitor(s) with more than one device.