Mac mini high cpu %

[Akiak]

Hi, I have a Mac Mini (late 2014) i5 2.6GHz 5400rpm with 16GB ram.

I do music production and after noticing a bit of slowdown and stuttering I had a look at the Activity Monitor and noticed some pretty high CPU usage %s.

Logic Pro when not playing anything stays at about 20%, which I think is pretty normal. When playing audio the numbers depend on the amount of instruments but the average is about 65%.

While writing this I just noticed a temporary spike of 54% for a process called "trustd", not sure what that is.

I also use another program called Max MSP for audio, and I have one fairly complicated project which always goes in excess of 100% when activated.

When watching a youtube video there's an initial spike which goes up to 80-100 then it tends to settle down, although if I hover the mouse over the video (activating the UI) it goes back up again to 60-70.

I was on Yosemite but I just tried updating to High Sierra and haven't noticed any improvements.

Could these amounts be considered normal given my specs? I'm pretty sure this wasn't a problem until about a year ago.

Also, would upgrading to an SSD make any sort of difference?

Many thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

Sorry, but yeah - that sounds quite normal. – Now depending on what you use to measure though, 100% may not mean what you think it does. You see, if you have a 2-core processor, the way we usually specify a full load, is as 200%. 4 cores would be 400% - Not all tools account for that though, and just use 0-100%

Whether an SSD would help or not depends on the task at hand. With the playing of musical instruments in Logic that you have already loaded, and YouTube and all that, it will likely have no effect at all. Speeds of opening Logic (and other apps), first applying new effects and whatnot - well that could be sped up

 

[Akiak]

Thanks for clearing that up. I suppose I'll go for the SSD anyways just to improve what I can, since I don't think there's anything else I can upgrade.

 

[casperes1996]

Thanks for clearing that up. I suppose I'll go for the SSD anyways just to improve what I can, since I don't think there's anything else I can upgrade.

Aside from an all new Mac, yeah

 

[Yvan256]

Since I replaced the slow HDD in my mid-2010 Mac mini for an SSD, it's like a new computer. And it's a low-end SSD which is itself limited by the old SATA1 of the Mac mini.