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phalseHUD

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 7, 2011
283
357
Digital Sprawl
I've had my late 2012 quad core Mac mini repaired several times under AppleCare warranty (wireless and main board twice) and the store have kindly offered to replace the whole machine...

However, the new Mac minis are dual-core only, so although I'm getting a replacement, I'm not overly chuffed about the offering. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but the reality is my old machine outperforms (when it's working) the replacement I'm being offered (2.6ghz).

I mostly do processing intensive work such as movie and music editing, video conversion, and photo work.

Just wondered if anyone has found themselves in a similar position and keen to hear constructive advice.

Thanks!
 
You'd probably have a good case to ask for the i7 3.0 Ghz dual-core at the very least. Also benchmarks vs. real world usage can be very different. I suppose the only way to tell for sure would be to take one home and try your usual heavy work loads and see if there is a noticeable difference.
 
I mostly do processing intensive work such as movie and music editing, video conversion, and photo work.
That sucks. For your usage, the quad core is significantly better than the dual core. Can they still "repair" the 2012 mini or is that no longer serviceable?

Why do you think it keeps breaking - is it over heating on all those video encodes?
 
I've had my late 2012 quad core Mac mini repaired several times under AppleCare warranty and the store have kindly offered to replace the whole machine...

Ditto the question from ixxx69 about what was breaking?

I would not suggest keeping the old machine and installing the heatsink correctly (see comments from rwprater in my thread about "how to keep a mac mini from overheating?") because that would probably void your applecare.

If you do take a new machine of course you want the i7 but you might ask for the 1TB SSD to compensate for losing the quad core.

Incidentally the Intel specs on the chips i7-3615QM and i7-4578U in the 2012 and 2014 models say under load they dissipate 45W and 28W, so the 2014 is cooler, but rwprater says the heatsink on his 2014 was even worse than on his 2012. If you do take a new machine be sure to buy another 3 years of applecare!

Another possibility is buy a used base model 2010 Mac Pro. They would not burn out. I have seen them listed for about $1600 at OWC. You want to make sure to get the real 2010 model and not an earlier model with new firmware.
 
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Thanks for all the replies. I'd have loved a Mac Pro but it was simply too big for me (I don't have a lot of space), not to mention expensive. Aside from the issues, the mini has been fantastic and is on 24/7.

Issue 1 wireless failure
Issue 2 SD card reader gave up (common apparently) and regular kernel panics/halts and shutdowns with fans going bananas.
Issue 3 repeat of 2.

I quite disappointed with the dual core offering. I'm seeing them today so will let you know how things go. Thanks again for the constructive replies!
 
One big difference - in video editing, the new one will smoke the old one thanks to Intel QuickSync. But yeah, for everything else, that's not the greatest swap...
 
One big difference - in video editing, the new one will smoke the old one thanks to Intel QuickSync. But yeah, for everything else, that's not the greatest swap...
The 2012 has QuickSync as well (Ivy Bridge). The 2014 has a newer version with Haswell that supports more features.

From what I've read, while QuickSync shows great promise for video editing/encoding, though currently it's not always all it's cracked up to be as far as quality and file size. In any case, there's not a ton of OS X video editing/encoding software that supports it yet, but hopefully that will change as QuickSync matures.
 
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