Mac Mini with Siemens NX in a Parallels?

[RallyCamaro]

I'm considering retiring my 2009 Macbook Pro 17" (set-up in desktop mode with external monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers) with a 2012 Mac Mini. I'm curious about folks, in 2018, setting up six year old minis, are they still relevant?

I know the 2.7Ghz i7 will work swimmingly with all the apple apps as my old Core 2 Duo does well enough. Where I have a concern is I want to run Siemens NX in a Parallels partition. Will the 2.7Ghz i7 with 16Mb Ram, SSD and the AMD 6630M be able to run this software? It's not for professional work so I'm ok if it's not blazingly fast but also don't want to be making and pouring coffee waiting for assemblies to load. Any thoughts appreciated.

Rally

 

[Neodym]

The 2012 mini‘s i7 is only 2.3 or 2.6Ghz, but it is quad core (the 2011 i7@2.7Ghz is only dual core).

If Parallels and Siemens NX both support multi-core, you should not have a performance problem. Geekbench score on the 2012 i7 mini is about 3x that of the 2009 17” MBP for multi core (and still around 1.5x on single core).

Depending on your (intended) monitor setup, you may run into problems on multi-monitor and/or 4K setups, though: The HD4000 GPU in the 2012 mini supports max. 2 monitors (not counting USB-based solutions) and no 4k out of the box (not sure whether you can create your own resolution, running 4K@30Hz). 3440x1440 is officially supported @50Hz. DP-multi-monitor via Thunderbolt doesn’t work, too, due to lack of DP1.2.

 

[Yvan256]

I'm considering retiring my 2009 Macbook Pro 17" ... with a 2012 Mac Mini. I'm curious about folks, in 2018, setting up six year old minis, are they still relevant?

They better be, I'm still using a mid-2010 Mac mini as my main computer (upgraded to SSD and 16GB RAM though).

 

[Boyd01]

Will the 2.7Ghz i7 with 16Mb Ram, SSD and the AMD 6630M be able to run this software?

I'm afraid you're confused about the 2012 Mini. As Neodym said, the fastest one is a 2.6ghz quad core i7 and the graphics chip is the Intel HD4000, not AMD 6630M. I have a 2012 2.6ghz quad and it's a great computer, very fast. I use it for Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, but the HD4000 graphics are somewhat of a limitation. Sorry, I don't run Parallels and have never heard of Siemens NX.

Here are the 2011 2.7ghz mini specs - this seems to be what you are describing: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i7-2.7-mid-2011-specs.html

And this is the 2012 2.6ghz mini: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i7-2.6-late-2012-server-specs.html

Note the geekbench ratings, the 2012 is about twice as fast. Also, the 2011 mini only has USB 2.0. That would be a deal-breaker for me.