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Purchasing my first Mac mini, will this setup be enough?

J

jkundi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi everyone, I have been waiting for the M5 Mac mini's or Studio to drop however, I'm starting my educational courses next month and my 2018 MacBook Pro is on its last legs. I'm thinking for now purchasing a Mac mini M4 Pro (12 core cpu, 16 core gpu), 24GB RAM and 512GB.

I'd like to last me a year and half (likely I'll switch to M5 Max Studio) of heavy applications such as Photoshop, Capture One, Lightroom, Final Cut, Teams, Outlook etc maybe some AI prototyping work. Overall I'm looking for a lag free smooth experience.

What are your thoughts? Should I consider upgrading anything or am I good?

Thankyou
 
I wouldn't buy an M4Pro when the M5 is around the corner. A regular M5 with 32GB of ram would probably be better and hopefully cheaper. I have found the M5 mbp to feel really fast compared to my M4mini. The faster SSD speed helps too.
 
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Hi, Jkundi,

My M1 Mac mini has been serving me since 2021 with Pixelmator, Blender, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and so on, with an experience I would certainly call "smooth" and "lag-free." I think the M4 (non-pro) is measured as at least around a third more capable than that, as a loose figure.

The only area I'm not so familiar with is "AI prototyping," and the time spent processing whatever you're processing there (generating video clips from nothing on-device?) might be more significantly cut by the latest and greatest.

Overall, though, you'd certainly get by for 18 months with even a used older Mac.
 
madmin said:
I wouldn't buy an M4Pro when the M5 is around the corner. A regular M5 with 32GB of ram would probably be better and hopefully cheaper. I have found the M5 mbp to feel really fast compared to my M4mini. The faster SSD speed helps too.
Click to expand...
I agree. The M4 Pro vs the M4 doesn't make sense dollar wise IMO, for student use.

Do you care if a task takes 3 minutes or 5 minutes? Maybe. Is it worth almost doubling the price? Maybe not. The downside is that the M4 is limited to 32GB. If you're doing LLM stuff that might be problematic, but otherwise for general use it's likely. And if the M5 is around the same price point then it probably makes sense to wait at this point IMO.

If you're doing LLMs, you already know if 32GB is a barrier. I do LLMs on my 24GB MacBook Air M4 and for simple stuff it's amazing. If I was being paid by the hour or doing coding, different story.
 
jkundi said:
Hi everyone, I have been waiting for the M5 Mac mini's or Studio to drop however, I'm starting my educational courses next month and my 2018 MacBook Pro is on its last legs. I'm thinking for now purchasing a Mac mini M4 Pro (12 core cpu, 16 core gpu), 24GB RAM and 512GB.

I'd like to last me a year and half (likely I'll switch to M5 Max Studio) of heavy applications such as Photoshop, Capture One, Lightroom, Final Cut, Teams, Outlook etc maybe some AI prototyping work. Overall I'm looking for a lag free smooth experience.

What are your thoughts? Should I consider upgrading anything or am I good?

Thankyou
Click to expand...
More than enough. I am on the base model of 16GB and 256GB and that's all I need really.
 
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I've decided to pull the trigger and managed to find the Mac mini on eBay UK (where I am) for £1050 sealed brand new. I had initially ordered it from Apple but cancelled my order before it shipped. Good bit of saving for the Pro model!

Yes often use external storage, such as Samsung T7 2TB HD which I use to store all my Lightroom raw files.
 
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jkundi said:
I've decided to pull the trigger and managed to find the Mac mini on eBay UK (where I am) for £1050 sealed brand new. I had initially ordered it from Apple but cancelled my order before it shipped. Good bit of saving for the Pro model!

Yes often use external storage, such as Samsung T7 2TB HD which I use to store all my Lightroom raw files.
Click to expand...

Congrats jkundi. I have a Mac Mani M4. Just the base model though. It is fantastic and one of the best Apple purchases I have made to date. Your spec will be even faster.
 
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