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pinkoos

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 15, 2005
597
66
Texas
What would you all consider the "sweet spot" in terms of price vs performance for a 2018 mini intended for home use?

-3 user accounts
-about 350 to 400 GB of combined system, users and data, though much of the data (music and movies, about 250 to 300GB) can be offloaded to an external drive)
-apps generally open include Messages, Tweetbot, Mail, Calendar, iTunes and Safari with maybe 7 to 8 pinned tabs and then anywhere from 5 to 10 additional tabs open at any time
-uses include what the above apps do as well as basic Office, rare video transcoding and other sundry uses

No heavy duty stuff like video editing, photo editing, etc.

Just trying to figure out if I can get by with a base model or a customized base model or need to bump up to the $1099 model with or without customization.

Thanks.
 
"350-400GB" combined minus "250-300GB" music and movies is still around 100GB, so a 128GB internal SSD may be(come) too small for you(r household).
 
I don't think you need the upgraded processor of the $1099 model. The base model with more storage, 256gb or 512GB, would work.
 
I don't think you need the upgraded processor of the $1099 model. The base model with more storage, 256gb or 512GB, would work.

But then just a $100 delta between upgraded base and standard $1099 configuration (assuming upgrading the base to 256GB).

What about RAM?
 
I don't think you need the upgraded processor of the $1099 model. The base model with more storage, 256gb or 512GB, would work.
but once you upgrade the storage of the base (i3) model, the price difference with the equivalent i5 is down to $100 - that's why I got the i5/8/256 in the end (eventhough the i3 is good enough for me, now)
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But then just a $100 delta between upgraded base and standard $1099 configuration (assuming upgrading the base to 256GB).

What about RAM?
with what you do at the moment you should be fine - can be upgraded (by yourself) down the road (maybe 3-4 yrs time)
 
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Base i3 - upgrade to 16GB RAM or base i5 - upgrade to 16GB RAM.

Personally, I would buy the i3 128 gb and upgrade ram to 32GB for around $215 (on sale).

Come in cheaper than the base i5 model with 4 times the RAM. 32 is overkill but resale would be quite good.
 
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