Mac Studio from Mac mini performance findings

[pshufd]

Before I had an M1 mini running my main production and an old iMac running office.

Right now I have the Studio running main production and some office with the remainder running on the M1 mini.

I'm using about 15% CPU and about 70% GPU on the (base) Studio and using 19 GB of RAM. It looks like I can easily run all of my office and main production on the Studio. The only other thing is video editing and I'm hoping that runs without problems on the Studio. I would ideally like to sell the M1 mini and just run everything on one system. If I had it to do over again, and there was no delay penalty for BTO, then I would have gone for 32 GPU cores. This is a seriously nice setup and system. I really like being able to run it all on one system instead of running it on two.

I will move my other applications and files over to the Studio over the next week and then I think that I can completely shut down the mini.

As for noise, I am 2.5 feet from the mini (it's behind a monitor) and I can't hear it at all.

On ports, I have it hooked up to three monitor port hubs with 1 USB-C downstream and 11 USB-A downstream. The only thing that I can think of to make it better would be a 4th 4k 27 inch monitor instead of the 4th 25 inch 2k monitor. I like symmetry.

 

[Pressure]

Were you concerned the Mac Studio weren't able to run office applications and Non-Linear Editors? 🤨

The last one they especially highlighted in the launch of the Mac Studio. It's better than every Mac before it, even the Mac Pro 2019 with the $10K accelerator card.

 

[Think77]

Which one of the Studio models do you have? And what software do you run? I am myself considering moving from my M1 mini to the Studio Max base for music and graphics production.

 

[pshufd]

Which one of the Studio models do you have? And what software do you run? I am myself considering moving from my M1 mini to the Studio Max base for music and graphics production.

I got the base Max model, run Think or Swim, Active Trader Pro.

Some additional issues this week:

• My trading stuff alone is using about 80% of the GPU cores.
• I got UTM with Windows 11 running on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro and it would be nice to be able to run it on the Studio.
• I'm not sure that running video editing during the day is a good idea if the GPU is already heavily used for my other stuff. It's something that I will have to test.

If the noise issue wasn't a possibility, then the decision would be easy - just return the base Studio and get a refurbished with 32 GPU cores and consider 64 GB of RAM. There are currently a ton of different refurb Studios for sale today where they only had two models yesterday. Today's the last day to return it but I think that I'll keep it and run it alongside another system if it isn't enough to run all of my stuff at the same time.