M5 Mini Pro or M5 Max Studio?

[Designerdrew2]

Hi all - I’m a graphic designer - print and pack with a little website stuff - no animation or music and very little A.I. I generally have Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat open and create image rich pages or packs. When I get to 48 pages of an Illustrator document things begin slowing down. Currently on an intel 2019 iMac which is no longer supported in November. This is 4.25 GHz and core i7. I’m assuming I’ll notice a significant jump in just about any new Mac product I buy in performance and speed but the question is will the new M5 Mac Mini Pro with 48gb memory be perfect for my needs and is the Mac Studio not really necessary? With the new Mini and Studio announcements Apple seem to have blurred the dividing lines between the two products.
Any advice greatly appreciated - Drew

 

[Surenmunoo]

A M5 Mini Pro with 48GB Ram would be very close to a Studio which would offer better GPU, speeds and cooling etc.

 

[dugbug]

A M5 Mini Pro with 48GB Ram would be very close to a Studio which would offer better GPU, speeds and cooling etc.

Assuming unbinned of each (you cannot get a 48GB RAM studio without upping the CPU to the unbinned)
you are looking at
Mini Pro: 2500
Studio Max: 3100
$600 clams.

If you wanted the binned mini pro you are looking at 2300, a difference of $800.

The math would work out differently if the M5 Max binned could get 48GB ram. But to be fair the $600/$800 is getting you a lot.

If you can live with 32GB there are a lot more options including the base M6.
-d

 

[aUsern@me]

The M5 Pro Mac Mini with 48 GB will be plenty for your situation. Really, an M6 would be ideal if not for the 32 GB of RAM limitation. Nothing you do requires a Studio. Pocket the extra cash or spend it on extra storage or great backup.

If you think you might someday do work with long sustained workloads, (compiling, rendering, etc…) then perhaps the Studio with its extra horsepower and cooling would be worth it. Your current work is all single-CPU bursty stuff. You would see no tangible benefit from a Studio.

 

[Designerdrew2]

Assuming unbinned of each (you cannot get a 48GB RAM studio without upping the CPU to the unbinned)
you are looking at
Mini Pro: 2500
Studio Max: 3100
$600 clams.

If you wanted the binned mini pro you are looking at 2300, a difference of $800.

The math would work out differently if the M5 Max binned could get 48GB ram. But to be fair the $600/$800 is getting you a lot.

If you can live with 32GB there are a lot more options including the base M6.
-d

Thanks very much that is food for thought.

 

[Designerdrew2]

The M5 Pro Mac Mini with 48 GB will be plenty for your situation. Really, an M6 would be ideal if not for the 32 GB of RAM limitation. Nothing you do requires a Studio. Pocket the extra cash or spend it on extra storage or great backup.

If you think you might someday do work with long sustained workloads, (compiling, rendering, etc…) then perhaps the Studio with its extra horsepower and cooling would be worth it. Your current work is all single-CPU bursty stuff. You would see no tangible benefit from a Studio.

Amazingly helpful thanks - yep I guess they maxed the mini M6 at 32 Gb precisely because any higher would cannibalise a potential up step to the Studio range.

 

[Bigwaff]

I’d be concerned with the lack of efficient cooling in the mini.

 

[StuAff]

Just ordered a base M5 Max Studio. The M6 & M5 Pro Mac minis remain great buys (not as good as before the price increases, but...), with the rather important caveat that upgrades start bringing them all too close to the Studio, or more so. I wanted TB5, which rules out the base mini. 10Gb ethernet is another £100 on the mini, I wanted that for future fibre services (I have 900mbps now, can get 2.5 and even 5GBps at a price already)…Going for more memory only helps performance if you're going to have memory pressure issues without it. Never had that problem on my Mac Pro (32GB), though I can't say I've had any issues on this MBP (16GB), so 36GB is almost certainly going to be more than enough for me. The Max chip is definitely going to be an advantage for video encoding and gaming. A M6 or M5 Pro mini might well be enough for your use case, but if you start ticking options off, the Studio is more than worth the extra.

 

[enricoclaudio]

Plus if you do photography, the Mac Studio has a front SDXC card slot as well. Plus the extra Thunderbolt 5 port and the 2 legacy USB-A ports on the back are handy.

 

[Designerdrew2]

I’d be concerned with the lack of efficient cooling in the mini.

Yep my thought too, I guess someone will sell a stand that slightly raises the mini to allow air flow underneath.

 

[Designerdrew2]

Just ordered a base M5 Max Studio. The M6 & M5 Pro Mac minis remain great buys (not as good as before the price increases, but...), with the rather important caveat that upgrades start bringing them all too close to the Studio, or more so. I wanted TB5, which rules out the base mini. 10Gb ethernet is another £100 on the mini, I wanted that for future fibre services (I have 900mbps now, can get 2.5 and even 5GBps at a price already)…Going for more memory only helps performance if you're going to have memory pressure issues without it. Never had that problem on my Mac Pro (32GB), though I can't say I've had any issues on this MBP (16GB), so 36GB is almost certainly going to be more than enough for me. The Max chip is definitely going to be an advantage for video encoding and gaming. A M6 or M5 Pro mini might well be enough for your use case, but if you start ticking options off, the Studio is more than worth the extra.

Yes very good points - once you actually spec up what you require then the Studio becomes a more compelling argument.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Yep my thought too, I guess someone will sell a stand that slightly raises the mini to allow air flow underneath.

There are dozens.

This is the most performant, IMO.

Qwiizlab Mac mini M6, M5 Pro, M4/M4 Pro USB Hub & Stand with 40Gbps NVMe SSD Enclosure, Silver

Qwiizlab Mac mini M6, M5 Pro, M4/M4 Pro USB Hub & Stand with 40Gbps NVMe SSD Enclosure, Silver

www.amazon.com

 

[aUsern@me]

I’d be concerned with the lack of efficient cooling in the mini.

Nothing they do requires cooling.

print and pack with a little website stuff - no animation or music and very little A.I. I generally have Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat open and create image rich pages or packs.

None of this is a sustained workload. Nor does any of it require more than one processor. Again, if you think your machine someday might be maxing out processors for more than several minutes - that's when you need to be worried about cooling.

It's the same reason the vast majority of Mac users can get by with a MacBook Air that doesn't even have a fan. Designerdrew2's work is certainly more demanding than browsing and word processing, but a Mini has more than sufficient cooling for print work.

 

[fathergll]

When I get to 48 pages of an Illustrator document things begin slowing down. Currently on an intel 2019 iMac which is no longer supported in November. This is 4.25 GHz and core i7.

OP you really need to provide a lot more details on your current issue in order to properly size what you should get. Anyone can say "yeah get a newer M series computer" but if you are trying to properly spec this computer for the next 7 years of long term use I would spend far more time on understanding what the bottlenecks are now. For all we know you have 64 GB now or more and are using massive amounts of memory since upgrading ram on the 2019 iMac is extremely easy. Yes Apple silicon has perceived snappiness with lower amounts of memory because of fast swapping internal storage but you still should verify what you actually require.

Whats you exact current iMac configuration(whats the memory configuration....do you have 64 GB...etc? Do you have fusion drive...etc? What specifically is causing your system performance? Have you look into the activity monitor? Is your memory suffering? CPU?

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

At this point, internal bandwidth will be the biggest differentiator. Studios hit around 450 GB/s base and go up to 650 for the upgraded Max and then 1.2 TB/s for the Ultra. The mini Pro peaks at 300.

There plenty of cores between each device to handle any workload and RAM isn’t as important as people think for SoCs because of how modular they are (every component has its own coprocessor). Even 16GB is plenty. Moreover, no design suite, Sketch, Adobe, Figma (electron), or equivalent can draw from the beefy processors anyway. You can test it out by comparing Photoshop on your Intel Mac to an M class yourself.

The biggest boost comes from removing those internal choke points. The Studio may be a lot more, but it is an all around sterner machine. It’s a bit like comparing a mobile GPU of the same flavour to a desktop class card. Night and day no matter what the marketing claims about the former one.