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Mac Mini - Is it good enough ?

just get a hacintosh from PearC they deliver to france and their "hackintoshes" are no hackintoshes really ,as there is no hacking needed to install OSX and OSX is preinstalled and comes with the original Apple snow leopard disc , they are as reliable as MacPros if not better , they cost less , you can choose how powerful you need it to be cpu's from core i3,i5,i7 to westmare xeons ,GPU's from nvidia and ATI to your liking
come as standard with 2 year warranty on all parts
and under European Law they are legal to
a real alternative to the overpriced Mac's if you want to run OSX
http://pearc.de/home
sorry their website is in German and their PearC's are Made in Germany and sold for a fair price
Click to expand...

Yeah, PearC, I forgot about them... Actually I didn't really, but I wonder if this is good as a production machine. If it does, I can afford a really good config at really faire price compared to a Mac Pro. But they still didn't make the move to the Sandy Bridge Paltform... Is the later worth the extra money ??

What do you think of this configuration for 3500 euros ?

Intel XEON W3565 - 4x 3,20 GHz
12 GB DDR3 RAM 1333 MHz / Triple-Channel
ATI Raedon 5870 / 1024 MB
240GB SSD S-ATA 3GB/s
1TB 7200-rpm S-ATA 3GB/s
1TB 7200-rpm S-ATA 3GB/s
22x DVD±RW Double-Layer
4-Port PCIe Hardware RAID Controller
Firewire 800 Adapter (inkl. Firewire 400)
WLAN Adapter
"Eco" Netzteil, 650 Watt, 120 mm leiser Lüfter
Aluminium Midi Tower (schwarz, eloxiert)
Super Silent ( "Silent Paket" + vollständig gedämmt)


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities
 
Regarding doing Flash authoring on a Mini, I think there is some bad advice in this thread.

I've done heavy flash work on much less capable Macs.

The RAM in the base Mini is too low at 2GB. You must upgrade to 4GB.

If I were you, I would get the higher level Mini which includes 4GB RAM, faster CPU, and discrete GPU.

Note: as far as I can tell, the Flash authoring app won't take advantage of a discrete GPU. The Flash player can -- if all the stars align! -- but the current gen mini can play back anything even vaguely reasonable with or without it.

Regarding the Apple thunderbolt display, go see one in person before you buy one. If you didn't like the glossy iMac screen, you may not like the thunderbolt display either because they are glossy as well. There are different levels of glossy, though, so you might still take a look in person if you can. It's still hard to tell because you really want to see it in your work environment, not in a store... but it's still worth it to see it for yourself.

By the way: I like your idea of using the Mini as an upgradeable part in your setup. You can afford to upgrade on every revision if you want/need to. (If this is how you make your living and you do time sensitive work (who doesn't?), I'd actually keep one older mini as a backup when you upgrade.)
Click to expand...

Thanks. I still like the idea of a Mac Mini as a main setup and was actually thinking about the higher grade possible (which would cost me 1750 euros). It would have SSD and RAID NAS, and a screen of my own. As you describe it, the Cinema Display is not for me at all... And I find it a **bit** too pricey ;)

But I have two concerns about it: how much time it could stand with the constant evolution of the softwares (especially with such low ram for gfx) and if I buy the thunderbolt NAS, will I be able to plug to it a DVI adapter for the display as mentioned above ?

And compared to a PearC Hackintosh with internal RAID (see above), what is the best solution ? The more viable ? Knowing that I will spend for both something like 3000/4000 euros. Thanks


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities
 
Tatsuya Nakadai said:
Yeah, PearC, I forgot about them... Actually I didn't really, but I wonder if this is good as a production machine. If it does, I can afford a really good config at really faire price compared to a Mac Pro. But they still didn't make the move to the Sandy Bridge Paltform... Is the later worth the extra money ??

What do you think of this configuration for 3500 euros ?

Intel XEON W3565 - 4x 3,20 GHz
12 GB DDR3 RAM 1333 MHz / Triple-Channel
ATI Raedon 5870 / 1024 MB
240GB SSD S-ATA 3GB/s
1TB 7200-rpm S-ATA 3GB/s
1TB 7200-rpm S-ATA 3GB/s
22x DVD±RW Double-Layer
4-Port PCIe Hardware RAID Controller
Firewire 800 Adapter (inkl. Firewire 400)
WLAN Adapter
"Eco" Netzteil, 650 Watt, 120 mm leiser Lüfter
Aluminium Midi Tower (schwarz, eloxiert)
Super Silent ( "Silent Paket" + vollständig gedämmt)


-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities
Click to expand...

certainly a good choice , basically same spec as if you upgrade the basic MacPro with the westmare processor and the 5870gpu and 2 hdd's ,but the MacPro would cost you something in the region of € 4600 , so you save more then €1000 and get a more silent computer
and a 2 year warranty instead of 1 year

The mini is not bad , you get a i7 dual core in the mini and get a ati 6630m gpu with 256mb , not a bad card it will play 1080p videos :D , but doesnt even stand a chance against a proper desktop graphics card

even the PearC Starter if configured with only the i5 680 @3.6 ghz but geforce 240 with 1gb will run circles around the mini and will cost less


thats the great thing about Apples transition to intel now you can make direct comparisons especially with PearC's as those work with OSX too
OK one thing the PearC cant offer thats a tiny case with a :apple: on the case , to some that little :apple:alone is worth the extra money
..but you get in the box of the Snow leopard disc 2 nice Apple stickers in white if you buy a PearC , so you can put a Apple sticker on each side ...

and for some i dont want him to buy a PearC ,i would love to recommend a Apple Mac , but Apples quality is not was it once was before they moved production to china , which too would not be a problem , but the price Apple is asking for the parts used certainly is
nice designs and a Apple badge are not everything that makes a good computer
 
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I would not buy a hackintosh. The only reason I would make one and use one is to mess with. If you use this hackintosh to make your living then there is always the danger that an update may break it and become unfixable by you. I had OSX 10.6.7 running fine in my vanilla hack and when I installed 10.6.8, it broke the system. It's still broken to this day.
 
Okay this thread is full of bad advice and somethings that are plain rubbish.

(1) Adobe Flash Professional runs perfectly fine on the current Mini. Even the low-end one with Integrated Graphics. Heck, Flash Professional runs just FINE on my Core 2 Duo MacBook with Intel X3100 Integrated Graphics. A Graphics chip that truly did SUCK. The baseline Mini is a perfectly capable machine for what you want to do, if your using Flash a LOT (and I mean really a LOT), then get the higher-end model with the upgraded Graphics, which will be perfect for you. (I run Maya 2012 and Composite 2012 regularly on a worse Graphics Chip (the 320M in my MacBook Air), and their a lot more Graphics Hungry than Flash Pro ever is)
(2) If your connecting a DVI display to the Mac Mini, Hook it up to either the back of a Thunderbolt port on a daisy chained device if you need Over 1920*1200 resolution, or multiple displays. It should work just fine.
(3) I wouldn't get a hackintosh if its for serious work, whatever many of the people on this forum says. Hackintoshes make it very difficult to get software support, especially from Adobe, as when they ask "What Mac is it running on?" and you go "Oh its this box I made myself", normally all they say is "Go Away, We can't help you", and given the occasionally temperamental nature of Adobes Licensing Server, you might need this.
 
here read all that article

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-War-Beteen-Apple-and-the-Mac-Clone-Makers-112958.shtml
the important bit for the ones who dont want to read everything
Apple still does not have a big chance of forcing its EULA against PearC or RussianMac, given the fact that EU and Russia do not want companies to impose any restrictions on the usage of the sold product after the purchase (in this case, the OS X license). And, since the adoption of Intel processors for the Mac platform, Apple cannot argue that the Mac cloners have copied the hardware.

and i still think competition is good for the customer , as it will force Apple to do better or cheaper , they already dropped the price of the base mini in europe significantly in 2011 from £612 to £529 not only because of PearC ,but also because the hackintoshed atom based Netbooks and nettops are so popular here (cheap run OSX and play 1080p videos ), so the more competition Apple gets the more their pricing will come down to earth or the quality up to a accaptable level in relation to the money they ask for

the EULA is only valid in the USA nowhere else in the world
 
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MacHamster68 said:
the EULA is only valid in the USA nowhere else in the world
Click to expand...

That is complete and utter rubbish.
(1) Apples EULA IS enforceable in large parts of the EU, and it IS NOT something which the EU has direct control over. I know for a fact it is certainly enforceable within the United Kingdom (Part of the EU), but then again, we haven't given Brussels as much control as it would like.
(2) Apples EULA is also enforceable in other parts of the world, its not just applicable in the USA. You are completely, 100% wrong. Also, Russia is not part of the EU, and most of its laws are completely different, so its hard to draw comparisons between Russian and EU policy. Many of which are never enforced anyway, or enforced differently by different parts of the government, so determining somethings legality in Russia is a nightmare.
 
Okay this thread is full of bad advice and somethings that are plain rubbish.

(1) Adobe Flash Professional runs perfectly fine on the current Mini. Even the low-end one with Integrated Graphics. Heck, Flash Professional runs just FINE on my Core 2 Duo MacBook with Intel X3100 Integrated Graphics. A Graphics chip that truly did SUCK. The baseline Mini is a perfectly capable machine for what you want to do, if your using Flash a LOT (and I mean really a LOT), then get the higher-end model with the upgraded Graphics, which will be perfect for you. (I run Maya 2012 and Composite 2012 regularly on a worse Graphics Chip (the 320M in my MacBook Air), and their a lot more Graphics Hungry than Flash Pro ever is)
(2) If your connecting a DVI display to the Mac Mini, Hook it up to either the back of a Thunderbolt port on a daisy chained device if you need Over 1920*1200 resolution, or multiple displays. It should work just fine.
(3) I wouldn't get a hackintosh if its for serious work, whatever many of the people on this forum says. Hackintoshes make it very difficult to get software support, especially from Adobe, as when they ask "What Mac is it running on?" and you go "Oh its this box I made myself", normally all they say is "Go Away, We can't help you", and given the occasionally temperamental nature of Adobes Licensing Server, you might need this.
Click to expand...

Ok so...

1) You say apps like Cinema4D or Blender could run well on high end Mac Mini ? For what kind of use (can it handle big composition if I want to) ?

2) What is a "daisy chained device" ? My main wonder is if I buy a thunderbolt NAS, can I plug it to the Mini and then plug a TB --> DVI display on the back of the NAS ?

3) I don't think I want a hackintosh either. I mean, it's appealing and all, but it's taking too much risks for a few hundred dollars saving. And if some kind of inspection comes into my place to see if I've got legit products, I'm not sure I could get away with this too!

All in all, thanks for you advices :)

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities
 
I think the Mac mini would handle everything you want to do perfectly fine. As you have a decent budget you could put an SSD in there and max out the RAM.

All this Flash wont run well on Macs is BS, it used to run fine for me on a G3 and still does on a Xeon.
 
I'm thinking the mac mini might be enough processing power, but the hard drive and video chip are going to keep you waiting when processing illustrator, photoshop, and flash files.

iMac is a much better value, as you get much better specs and the screen, although you don't want that.

Did you already buy the adobe suite of software? A PC will be far better for the value as you can get a reasonably priced computer that isn't underpowered or overpowered and expensive.
 
Tatsuya Nakadai said:
Hi all, I'm on the fence of buying a new Mac, but came with the thought that a Mac Mini could be well enough for my needs. First I wanted a Mac Pro since I have 4000
Click to expand...

Unless you need internal expansion or do some seriously resource-intensive things with your Mac, a Mac Pro, though wonderful, is overkill. A Mac mini is fine, though I'd say the higher-end model (with the discrete AMD Radeon HD 6630M GPU) will definitely run faster and last you longer as a result. As someone else mentioned, you can outfit it with both a hard drive and an SSD, which will make the thing scream.

eric/ said:
iMac anybody?
Click to expand...

I'd agree with that suggestion were the iMac (a) not the worst Mac in terms of serviceability and its internal design (and thusly reliability on average), (b) the worst deal out of all of their desktops in terms of bang (performance) for buck and (c) a terrible deal compared to a Hackintosh.

ibuyufo said:
I would not buy a hackintosh. The only reason I would make one and use one is to mess with. If you use this hackintosh to make your living then there is always the danger that an update may break it and become unfixable by you. I had OSX 10.6.7 running fine in my vanilla hack and when I installed 10.6.8, it broke the system. It's still broken to this day.
Click to expand...

While I agree with this sentiment, it is possible to have a Hackintosh, use it as your primary computer, and have measures in place so that if you do break your system in updating to a new point release of Mac OS X, you can get it back up and running with little to no trouble. Examples of this include, storing your home folder/data on another drive, having an emergency Hackintosh partition that you only use to get the main partition back up and running, or both. Not the way I prefer to use my primary Mac, but it's still doable.

vistadude said:
I'm thinking the mac mini might be enough processing power, but the hard drive and video chip are going to keep you waiting when processing illustrator, photoshop, and flash files.

iMac is a much better value, as you get much better specs and the screen, although you don't want that.

Did you already buy the adobe suite of software? A PC will be far better for the value as you can get a reasonably priced computer that isn't underpowered or overpowered and expensive.
Click to expand...

In order:

1) If they gets either an SSD or a 7200RPM drive or both in that mini, hard drive wait times will be only comparable to their desktop counterparts; maybe less due to smaller drive cache, but still comparable. Video chip won't matter too much if they get the discrete GPU model, unless they do a lot of gaming or a lot of rendering/video processing.

2) See above for my anti-iMac sentiment.

3) I agree whole-heartedly with this. If all of the things that suck about Windows either don't matter or apply to you and you're pro about keeping it malware-free, or if you and your software are both platform agnostic, a PC will always be a better bargain, sadly.
 
Thanks for your answers.

I think I'll go with the Mini since I **really** don't like Windows, or should I say am to found of the MacOS interface to leave it behind!

The only thing that annoy me are the 256 mb of video ram on the mini, that makes me wonder if even small 3D scenes or highly ressource intensive photoshop effects can be handled corrctly.

And 8gb of Ram can be enough today, but how about next year for instance ? I've got 3gb right now on my iMac and Ram is full really quickly with Lion as an OS! If I just open few tabs on Firefox, I get only few hundred mb left^^*

How much are 2x8 gb of ram ?

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities
 
The mini will be good for you but get the server edition. You'll have to be doing a heck of a lot of heavy flash work for the mini to be slow. If you're worried just get a MBP 15" and hook it up to a thunderbolt display. The mini will be much faster than your 2006 iMac. If you don't like it return it in the first 14 days...

Mini allows for 3 monitors to be connected for extreme real estate - 2 thunderbolt displays & 1 hdmi display. I wouldn't buy an alternative to the Thunderbolt display if you're wanting a 27" as the dell 27" is just as expensive for a poorer piece of equipment..
MBP 15" allows for 2 thunderbolt monitors & the 15" display
 
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