I’m looking at getting either a Mini or a Studio. My workloads involve numerical computing that tends to lean on single-core CPU performance, and from that standpoint, there’s not much benefit to M4 Max over Pro or base M4. (When things can be parallelized, Pro/Max obviously trounces the base M4, but a lot of my work isn’t easily parallelized.). Does anyone have experience with thermal throttling on Minis vs. Studios? A tricked-out Mini (Pro, 48/512) and the base Studio (Max, 36/512) are roughly in the same price range.
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How limiting are Mac mini thermals vs. Studio?
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My experience with an M4 Pro mini, single core can sustain the full 4.5GHz or so, and it won't make the fan audible nor will it thermal throttle. On the other hand, if you have too many third-party processes running in the background (most notably for me is Firefox or Xcode) then your P-core frequency can easily drop to about 3.9GHz, because Apple won't let us have the full 4.5GHz with more than about 1 active core in a core cluster.
For multithreaded workloads, get the Studio. The mini gets very hot and the fans get very noisy.
For multithreaded workloads, get the Studio. The mini gets very hot and the fans get very noisy.
I have a Mac Mini M4.
I installed a free CPU stress test program named Endurance, from the App Store.
When I run it, the maximum temperature of CPU cores, reaches 87C with fan running at 1134 rpm (out of 5000 maximum).
So neither it does overthrottle, nor it becomes noisy.
I installed a free CPU stress test program named Endurance, from the App Store.
When I run it, the maximum temperature of CPU cores, reaches 87C with fan running at 1134 rpm (out of 5000 maximum).
So neither it does overthrottle, nor it becomes noisy.
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