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I got one of mine from here, not sure if they ship all over Europe! Curry’s is a huge big box retail store here in the UK so very safe. Not sure what the exchange rate is like just now. Edit: it’s about 550 euro. Someone got one for £400 a couple of months back. That guy was super lucky though!

 
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My 16gb dual internal TB SSD mini has been ageing well with CURRENT native OS Windows 10 boot for the last 4 years :cool:.

Wouldn't trade it for an M1 as no native windows compatibility... but that opens the whole OS can of worms :eek:.

Tom
Actually, I agree. The only thing making me consider keeping this 2014 mini, is Windows 10 bootcamp compatibility. But I'm convinced that, eventually, we'll be able to install Windows 10 (for ARM) on our M1 computers.
 
I feel you on the RAM thing, it sucks to be stuck with what you get. That being said, keep in mind that the machines with RAM slots are the 2012 and the 2018, while the 2014 allows you to change the Hard Drive for an SSD but not the RAM.

I have a 2014 mini, and it is a great machine even today, although with the huge release of the M1 Macs, I know it's not going to age well. But as of today, the 2014 is an excellent device (with the HDD replaced with an SSD). I have only 8GB of RAM on the 2014 and even tho it gets a bit short, due to the SSD, I don't notice the swapping too much. But I understand your concern so if RAM is important to you, go get a cheaper 2018 if you find it on the second hand market. Or look for a stock clearance sale. Or just buy it new, along with the RAM sticks.

Now, about the 2012 model. Don't. At least for those almost 600€, just don't! Yeah, my cousin has it, he bought it almost 7 years ago, and has been a great machine, but it is clearly near the end of life (it doesn't get Big Sur and believe me, it is a great change). I'm going to sell my 2014 mini for less than those 600€ (with a 1TB SSD) so go figure!

My recommendations are this two:
- 2018 Mac mini (plus some RAM sticks) if memory RAM is your main concern
- 2020 Mac mini if performance and future proof are your concerns.

Keep in mind that, regarding RAM, although the M1 Macs with 8GB won't magically perform like 16GB machines, due to the ultra-fast NVMe SSD, you will barely notice big performance drops when using the storage to swap from there. Maybe at the expense of the disk lifespan, but I don't think that will become a major issue.

Thank you for your accurate answer.
My supplier has also 2014 model (8gb and 16 gb version) but I think they are too much expensive (a new 2018 i3 is cheaper) and they have only dual-core cpu.
The 2012 model seems a very good option for my activities.
I know that 2012 can't get Big Sur but do you think that for my daily routine a machine with these specs and Catalina isn't good in long term? Actually I use a C2D E8600 late 2009 iMac with 16 gb ram and 1 TB SSD on macOS High Sierra and except for stuttering on YT 720p/1080p 60 fps videos it's still really a very good machine.
By the way, the options are the follows:
2012 model i7 (already with 16 gb, 500 GB SSD) - 584 €
2018 model i3 (with 16 gb, 256 GB SSD) - 877+60 € = 937 €
2020 model M1 (with 16 gb, 256 GB SSD) - 819+230 € = 1049 €
I'm not a professional user so I don't know if a 1k investment for a machine is a good idea.

I got one of mine from here, not sure if they ship all over Europe! Curry’s is a huge big box retail store here in the UK so very safe. Not sure what the exchange rate is like just now. Edit: it’s about 550 euro. Someone got one for £400 a couple of months back. That guy was super lucky though!


Thank you for the link.
Unfortunately the seller doesn't ship outside the UK.
 
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Hi everyone,
I'm going to purchase a Mac Mini late 2012 with these specs:

CPU: Intel i7 2.3 GHz quad-core (i7-3615QM)
Memory: 16 GB RAM 1600 MHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
Storage: Crucial MX500 500 GB SSD

Main use: browse internet, mail, YT videos, office suite, iTunes, adobe photoshop, 1080p mkv videos on vlc player...

Quick questions:
With these specs can I run 1080p YT videos at 60 fps without problem?
Is the integrated graphic card so bad? (I have a dedicated GPU in my iMac 21.5-inch late 2009 but it stutters on YT 1080p 60 fps videos)
Has this model manufacturing defects?
I will use the machine with an external Monitor/TV LED 1080p through HDMI port.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
I own a Mac Mini 2011 Core i5 dual core version and I have no issues running YT 1080p @ 60fps. No stutters. Even @ 1440p 60fps is no problem and that's 2K. Tried with Avengers End game; no issues as long as you have a fast SSD and 16Gb of ram which this Mini 2012 has.

The internal HD graphics 4000 isn't a bad iGPU and Photoshop will use it no problem. Photoshop is not demanding on GPU usage. You're going to get better performance from 2012 Mini compared to your 2009 iMac that's for sure as I also have a Macbook Pro 17" 2009 which I gave to my dad. That thing struggles much more than my 2011 Mini. There are no defects on the 2012 except that older machines tend to get dusty and dirty inside, so it needs to be cleaned internally. It's not tough to do either. At that age, the CPU and iGPU may need to be repasted with new paste and that can help with the cooling and the 2012 is a good machine to have now. I wouldn't advice getting any 2018 Mini models at all or any current Intels because of the M1 machines. Basically the M1 puts most current Intel machines obsolete, unless you need to run specific Intel Mac applications and Windows bootcamp or x86 emulation.

I think saving money for now getting the 2012 and then evaluating future M platforms, because you will see even the 2018 Minis drop drastically in prices when the new M1X or M2 come along in the future just like what happened to the PowerPC platform which I got burned very badly from with the distorted promises Steve Job gave. He dropped the PowerPC platform after Snow Leopard. I bet my money his successor will do exactly the same. It's business.

Fool me once, shame on me. Can't fool me twice Apple. Which is why I'm staying with what I have now and then decide to move into Apple Silicon when I get a sense of direction and need.

Hope this helps.
 
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I own a Mac Mini 2011 Core i5 dual core version and I have no issues running YT 1080p @ 60fps. No stutters. Even @ 1440p 60fps is no problem and that's 2K. Tried with Avengers End game; no issues as long as you have a fast SSD and 16Gb of ram which this Mini 2012 has.

The internal HD graphics 4000 isn't a bad iGPU and Photoshop will use it no problem. Photoshop is not demanding on GPU usage. You're going to get better performance from 2012 Mini compared to your 2009 iMac that's for sure as I also have a Macbook Pro 17" 2009 which I gave to my dad. That thing struggles much more than my 2011 Mini. There are no defects on the 2012 except that older machines tend to get dusty and dirty inside, so it needs to be cleaned internally. It's not tough to do either. At that age, the CPU and iGPU may need to be repasted with new paste and that can help with the cooling and the 2012 is a good machine to have now. I wouldn't advice getting any 2018 Mini models at all or any current Intels because of the M1 machines. Basically the M1 puts most current Intel machines obsolete, unless you need to run specific Intel Mac applications and Windows bootcamp or x86 emulation.

I think saving money for now getting the 2012 and then evaluating future M platforms, because you will see even the 2018 Minis drop drastically in prices when the new M1X or M2 come along in the future just like what happened to the PowerPC platform which I got burned very badly from with the distorted promises Steve Job gave. He dropped the PowerPC platform after Snow Leopard. I bet my money his successor will do exactly the same. It's business.

Fool me once, shame on me. Can't fool me twice Apple. Which is why I'm staying with what I have now and then decide to move into Apple Silicon when I get a sense of direction and need.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for the detailed infos from your direct experience and for your opinion regarding 2018 model and the transition from Intel.
I have really appreciated them.
Yeah, my benchmark is basically my late 2009 iMac so I think that this 2012 model is already a huge improvement for my standards.
 
That was the 2012 i5 model though, right? That is completely different from the i7 quads, I also had one. It was actually a very nice computer for the price but much slower all-around.
Thank you very much for the detailed infos!
I assume that the performance are related to a fusion drive storage because my iMac late 2009 with SSD (SATA II limitation, macOS High Sierra) boot up in about 25 seconds.
Can I expect similar performance with SSD on Catalina?
It's probably a combination thing.

1. The SSD isn't top tier, even for SATA-3
2. The Fusion drive is no doubt slower than strictly SSD -- but I wanted the simplicity of a single volume.
-- The benchmarked write performance is certainly embarrassing. Nevertheless, overall, immediately after the upgrade, it seemed at least 2x faster than the original HDD (solo).
3. APFS probably causes this particular storage setup to be even more pitiful.
4. Every OS upgrade does seem to have more boot activity.
Mac-mini_2012_Fusion.png
 
It's probably a combination thing.

1. The SSD isn't top tier, even for SATA-3
2. The Fusion drive is no doubt slower than strictly SSD -- but I wanted the simplicity of a single volume.
-- The benchmarked write performance is certainly embarrassing. Nevertheless, overall, immediately after the upgrade, it seemed at least 2x faster than the original HDD (solo).
3. APFS probably causes this particular storage setup to be even more pitiful.
4. Every OS upgrade does seem to have more boot activity.
View attachment 1695581

Yeah, thank you for the reply.
This is my speed test with 56,59% of the storage available. (Maxtor Z1 960 GB SSD limited by SATA II interface)

Schermata 2020-12-16 alle 18.43.22.png
 
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Yeah, thank you for the reply.
This is my speed test with 56,59% of the storage available. (Maxtor Z1 960 GB SSD limited by SATA II interface)

View attachment 1695602
Not bad. I didn't do a test before creating the Fusion drive. So, I don't have a comparison.

Iit does appear APFS could be a big part of the disappointing storage performance.
Lifewire said:

APFS on Fusion Drives: No​

The original intent of APFS was to work seamlessly with both hard drives and SSDs. During the initial beta versions of macOS High Sierra, APFS was available to install on SSDs, hard drives, and on the Apple tiered storage solution, the Fusion Drive. Fusion Drive is a combination of a small but fast SSD along with a large but slow hard drive.

Fusion Drive performance and reliability with APFS seemed to come into question during the betas of macOS High Sierra. When the operating system was publicly released, support for APFS on Fusion drives was pulled, and the operating system's disk utility was modified to prevent Fusion Drives from being converted to APFS format.

Speculation pointed to a reliability issue with converting existing Fusion Drives to the APFS format. But the real challenge may be a performance hit taken by the hard-drive component of the Fusion pair. One of the features of APFS is a new technique to ensure data protection called Copy-on-Write. Copy-on-Write keeps data loss to a minimum by creating a new copy of any file segment that is being modified (write). It then updates the file pointers to the new copies after the write is successfully completed. While this approach protects data during the writing process, it can also lead to file segmentation, scattering parts of a file around a disk.

On a solid-state drive, this is not much of a concern. On a hard drive, it can lead to disk fragmentation and reduced performance. On a Fusion drive, file copying can often happen because one of the functions of tiered storage is to move frequently used files from the slower hard drive to the faster SSD, and rarer files from the SSD to the hard drive. All this copying could cause fragmentation glitches on the hard drive when APFS and Copy-on-Write are in use.
Again, I didn't want to manually spread user data across drives. And, the experience isn't nearly as bad as the benchmark would imply -- certainly in part to plenty of RAM. Also... macOS Catalina auto converted the volume format to APFS.

Additionally, I just realized the Apple chosen HDD is SATA II.
MM_2012_SATA_HDD.png

Ultimately, I could squeeze more out of this mini if I bypassed the internal drives and went NVMe SSD through TB -- even TB 1 is 10Gbps. However, I find it completely acceptable until I get an M1 model and don't want to invest any more money into this unit.
 
Not really, e.g. where would a Windows DirectX driver come from for Apple's proprietary GPU?
Really, according to Craig Federighi, Apple Senior Vice President, Software Engineering. :apple:

In an interview with Ars Technica, Federighi joined his colleagues Johny Srouji and Greg Joswiak to talk about Apple Silicon in general, and while much of it touted the great things we’ve already heard about the M1 SoC and the future of Apple’s own chip development, when it came to running Windows on M1 Macs, Federighi made it clear that there’s no reason Apple’s new architecture won’t support it, but it’s ultimately up to Microsoft to make that call.

"That’s really up to Microsoft. We have the core technologies for them to do that, to run their ARM version of Windows, which in turn of course supports x86 user mode applications. But that’s a decision Microsoft has to make, to bring to license that technology for users to run on these Macs. But the Macs are certainly very capable of it."... :cool:

Tom

 
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If Microsoft licensed the software, Apple would presumably work with Microsoft engineers to help make the necessary drivers available.
 
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Merry Christmas everyone and an update: I have bought the Mac Mini.
The machine is awesome and it runs fast on Catalina, boot up 14 seconds, extremely silent.
However for curiosity I have done BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and the read speed is about 510 MB/s but write speed is only 50 MB/s (yes about 1/10).
Has anyone run into the same problem? Storage Crucial 500MX 500 GB (w/r up to 560 MB/s).

Thank you.
 
How full is the drive?

Have you looked at stats on the drive’s health e.g. using DriveDx?

I have a TB3 NVMe SSD hooked up to a 2011 Mini via a TB3 dock and I get faster speeds than would be possible with an internal SATA III SSD.
 
How full is the drive?

Have you looked at stats on the drive’s health e.g. using DriveDx?

I have a TB3 NVMe SSD hooked up to a 2011 Mini via a TB3 dock and I get faster speeds than would be possible with an internal SATA III SSD.

The drive is almost empty.
I have however noticed four volumes (two are not writable)...is it due to Catalina?
I will check with DriveDx and report here.
It's strange because in Mac Mini mid 2010 I have installed the same SSD and write speed is 215 MB/s (due to SATA II limitation).
 
Do you have Trim enabled?

Hard to know how used the drive is without looking at stats on the drive. It could be that the previous owner heavily used the SSD and that it is slowing down due to that. If a SSD has been written to more than what its rated for that could well explain the slow write speed.

If the computer is quite active that can impact the speed test numbers. You could have a look in Activity Monitor and what is being read from and written to the SSD.
 
Do you have Trim enabled?

Hard to know how used the drive is without looking at stats on the drive. It could be that the previous owner heavily used the SSD and that it is slowing down due to that. If a SSD has been written to more than what its rated for that could well explain the slow write speed.

If the computer is quite active that can impact the speed test numbers. You could have a look in Activity Monitor and what is being read from and written to the SSD.
Trim is disabled.
Read data 1.04 GB
Written data 78.2 MB
I have noticed however that the storage is Crucial MX200 and not Crucial MX500 (a little bit slower btw I don't know why the write speed is so dumb).
Here the DriveDx report:

Schermata 2020-12-25 alle 02.48.39.png


Schermata 2020-12-25 alle 02.48.59.png
 
Merry Christmas everyone and an update: I have bought the Mac Mini.
The machine is awesome and it runs fast on Catalina, boot up 14 seconds, extremely silent.
However for curiosity I have done BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and the read speed is about 510 MB/s but write speed is only 50 MB/s (yes about 1/10).
Has anyone run into the same problem? Storage Crucial 500MX 500 GB (w/r up to 560 MB/s).

Thank you.
Just late arrival, you bought it ?
The slow read and write you cannot compare to ssd nvme which 2k something. Even mine ssd in iMac 2017 also the same rate read speed
** as somebody else have suggest m1 and I have no idea you bought it. Even so the price is quite high.
 
Some of the cheaper SSDs are designed for significantly fewer writes over its lifetime.
 
@Andrea Filippini I wonde if your benchmark write speeds are APFS related.

Some of these are old but there appears to be consistency/consensus.

Old(er) hardware maybe not suited for how APFS operates.
 
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Hi everyone,
I'm going to purchase a Mac Mini late 2012 with these specs:

CPU: Intel i7 2.3 GHz quad-core (i7-3615QM)
Memory: 16 GB RAM 1600 MHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
Storage: Crucial MX500 500 GB SSD

Main use: browse internet, mail, YT videos, office suite, iTunes, adobe photoshop, 1080p mkv videos on vlc player...

Quick questions:
With these specs can I run 1080p YT videos at 60 fps without problem?
Is the integrated graphic card so bad? (I have a dedicated GPU in my iMac 21.5-inch late 2009 but it stutters on YT 1080p 60 fps videos)
Has this model manufacturing defects?
I will use the machine with an external Monitor/TV LED 1080p through HDMI port.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
A lot of people loved that model of Mac mini for the fact that it had a quad-core CPU, and BOTH expandable RAM and storage. However, considering that Mac mini tops out at macOS Catalina, which is a horrible macOS release, and the best one right before it has less than a year of security update support left, I'd say it's only sensible if you want it for Windows 10 (and even then, you can absolutely get better machines for that purpose for cheaper). If you're looking for a good Mac for the purposes of macOS, I'd either: (a) shop for a 2014 model that has an i7 (your uses will still work plenty fine on a dual-core Haswell i7; just remember that storage is upgradable on that Mac mini, but RAM is not) on the used market, (b) shop for a 2018 model on the Apple Certified Refurbished Mac section of the Apple Online Store (just remember that RAM is upgradable on that Mac mini, but storage is not), (c) shop for the current M1 model (remember that neither storage or RAM are upgradable).

There are no manufacturing/generational issues with any Mac mini dating back to the 2012 Mac mini. The 2011 model only had issues on the high-end (the one model that had a discrete GPU has GPU issues). The 2010 model was pretty stable as well. Basically, the current design is very reliable. But yeah, I wouldn't buy a 2012 at this point.
 
Trim can help a bit with write speeds.

In the Terminal try
sudo trimforce enable
Thank you.
I will check and report here.

Just late arrival, you bought it ?
The slow read and write you cannot compare to ssd nvme which 2k something. Even mine ssd in iMac 2017 also the same rate read speed
** as somebody else have suggest m1 and I have no idea you bought it. Even so the price is quite high.
Yeah, w/r speed obviously is not comparable to nvme but for my daily routine is good enough.
I have purchased this model because the M1 with 16GB is about 1100 € and it's the first item from Intel transition.

Some of the cheaper SSDs are designed for significantly fewer writes over its lifetime.
Yes, it's possible. However the DriveDx report shows a very good health.

@Andrea Filippini I wonde if your benchmark write speeds are APFS related.

Some of these are old but there appears to be consistency/consensus.

Old(er) hardware maybe not suited for how APFS operates.
Thank you man for the infos.
Maybe it's just APFS on Catalina. On High Sierra with APFS I have full performance from SSD. I need to check further.

A lot of people loved that model of Mac mini for the fact that it had a quad-core CPU, and BOTH expandable RAM and storage. However, considering that Mac mini tops out at macOS Catalina, which is a horrible macOS release, and the best one right before it has less than a year of security update support left, I'd say it's only sensible if you want it for Windows 10 (and even then, you can absolutely get better machines for that purpose for cheaper). If you're looking for a good Mac for the purposes of macOS, I'd either: (a) shop for a 2014 model that has an i7 (your uses will still work plenty fine on a dual-core Haswell i7; just remember that storage is upgradable on that Mac mini, but RAM is not) on the used market, (b) shop for a 2018 model on the Apple Certified Refurbished Mac section of the Apple Online Store (just remember that RAM is upgradable on that Mac mini, but storage is not), (c) shop for the current M1 model (remember that neither storage or RAM are upgradable).

There are no manufacturing/generational issues with any Mac mini dating back to the 2012 Mac mini. The 2011 model only had issues on the high-end (the one model that had a discrete GPU has GPU issues). The 2010 model was pretty stable as well. Basically, the current design is very reliable. But yeah, I wouldn't buy a 2012 at this point.
Thank you for the reply.
I have checked the Apple Certified Refurbished Mac section and they have only a 2018 Mac Mini i7 3.2 GHz 64 GB RAM 128 GB SSD PCIe for 2019 €. A great machine but the price is dramatically high. I'm not a heavy user so it would be a waste of money. My benchmark is the late 2009 iMac C2D 3.33 GHz 16 GB RAM and this model is nowadays fast and powerful for my standards. This 2012 i7 Mac Mini is amazing for me, I need however to understand why write speed is so slow.
 
Thank you.
I will check and report here.


Yeah, w/r speed obviously is not comparable to nvme but for my daily routine is good enough.
I have purchased this model because the M1 with 16GB is about 1100 € and it's the first item from Intel transition.


Yes, it's possible. However the DriveDx report shows a very good health.


Thank you man for the infos.
Maybe it's just APFS on Catalina. On High Sierra with APFS I have full performance from SSD. I need to check further.


Thank you for the reply.
I have checked the Apple Certified Refurbished Mac section and they have only a 2018 Mac Mini i7 3.2 GHz 64 GB RAM 128 GB SSD PCIe for 2019 €. A great machine but the price is dramatically high. I'm not a heavy user so it would be a waste of money. My benchmark is the late 2009 iMac C2D 3.33 GHz 16 GB RAM and this model is nowadays fast and powerful for my standards. This 2012 i7 Mac Mini is amazing for me, I need however to understand why write speed is so slow.
1100 pound for mac mini ? maybe tax . ?
I bought 2011 macbook pro for 154 pound and upgrade the ssd and ram to max 16 gb(37 pound) which maybe total invest range 200 early this year.

** not sure you can change easily the mac mini inside ssd but nowdays pretty cheap 42 pound for 480 gb . I bought it to upgrade my 2017 imac.
 
1100 pound for mac mini ? maybe tax . ?
I bought 2011 macbook pro for 154 pound and upgrade the ssd and ram to max 16 gb(37 pound) which maybe total invest range 200 early this year.

** not sure you can change easily the mac mini inside ssd but nowdays pretty cheap 42 pound for 480 gb . I bought it to upgrade my 2017 imac.
Yeah, M1 Mac Mini 16 GB RAM 256 GB SSD 1049 euro (included VAT and other tax).
Have you bought a 2011 macbook pro? Nice machine. How many inches?
Yes, SSD are cheap nowadays (Crucial MX500 500 GB about 60 euro).
The 2012 Mac Mini have two storage slots. In the future I could use it as a server.
 
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