Upgrade 2014 Mac Mini w/ 1TB NVMe SSD or purchase M1 Mac Mini?

[ronster22]

Hi there at a cross roads. I currently have a 2014 Mac Mini (2.6GHz i5 with 8GB of RAM). I currently have a 1TB Hybrid drive installed with Mojave at around 50% capacity. Lately I’ve noticed the Mini is just slow all around.

My plan was to install a 1TB NVMe SSD (with adapter) to hopefully speed up the Mini as you cant upgrade the RAM. But now seeing all of the reviews and posts on the new M1 Mini and how fast and efficient it is...I’m intrigued.

I’m not a power user on my Mini - mostly personal, music streaming and some light work related stuff. No gaming, no video editing, etc.

Price wise its way cheaper to go the SSD route. - $200 CDN (i already have the adapter). Pricing out the M1 its $899 base, $1349 CDN with 16GB of RAM with 512GB SSD and $1649 with 1TB. And unfortunately you cant upgrade the RAM or SSD.


Should i just upgrade and save the pennies down the road Purchase? Maybe if they refresh with a M2?

Or just bite the bullet?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I put a Crucial SSD in my 2012 Mini and the boot times were dramatic. Catalina cold boot to desktop with the original 5400 rpm drive was around 1min and 18 secs. Catalina SSD cold boot to desktop was in the 40 sec range.

Me personally I would wait until your Mini is no longer supported then buy an Mx Mini. You will probably be in the 2nd to 3rd generation of Apple silicon mini's.

 

[ronster22]

Thanks. The more i look into this the more just performing the upgrade makes sense for now. Eventually i would assume in the next iterations the RAM limit will increase and more options will come.

But man, from the reviews the performance now on M1 looks crazy good...

 

[rcstevens]

Hi there at a cross roads. I currently have a 2014 Mac Mini (2.6GHz i5 with 8GB of RAM). I currently have a 1TB Hybrid drive installed with Mojave at around 50% capacity. Lately I’ve noticed the Mini is just slow all around.

My plan was to install a 1TB NVMe SSD (with adapter) to hopefully speed up the Mini as you cant upgrade the RAM. But now seeing all of the reviews and posts on the new M1 Mini and how fast and efficient it is...I’m intrigued.

I’m not a power user on my Mini - mostly personal, music streaming and some light work related stuff. No gaming, no video editing, etc.

Price wise its way cheaper to go the SSD route. - $200 CDN (i already have the adapter). Pricing out the M1 its $899 base, $1349 CDN with 16GB of RAM with 512GB SSD and $1649 with 1TB. And unfortunately you cant upgrade the RAM or SSD.


Should i just upgrade and save the pennies down the road Purchase? Maybe if they refresh with a M2?

Or just bite the bullet?

I have a late 2014 Mac Mini which I upgraded to an Nvme drive with a paltry 4 GB of ram and now MacOS Big Sur and I am totally surprised at just how fast it is, especially with Apple apps like Safari and Apple News. Nvme drive is showing 700Gb write and read speed. Unfortunately the Nvme drive is hobbled by the 2 lane interface, but it makes a large difference in practice. Also Big Sur seems to be significantly better at memory management.
having said all that that M1 sure makes a compelling case.

 

[ronster22]

I have a late 2014 Mac Mini which I upgraded to an Nvme drive with a paltry 4 GB of ram and now MacOS Big Sur and I am totally surprised at just how fast it is, especially with Apple apps like Safari and Apple News. Nvme drive is showing 700Gb write and read speed. Unfortunately the Nvme drive is hobbled by the 2 lane interface, but it makes a large difference in practice. Also Big Sur seems to be significantly better at memory management.
having said all that that M1 sure makes a compelling case.

Thanks! Yes i‘m going to purchase a Sabrent 1TB NVMe drive (already have the adapter) as the speeds for the 1TB are faster than the 512GB (looking at the TLC based drives). Which make and model of drive did you install?

 

[adam9c1]

I reloaded OS on a 2012 i5 2.5 8GB when I put in an Apple SSD.

From press of a button to login screen under 25 sec (that means no tweaks, cache, apps) - clean OS.

 

[chriz74]

Hi there at a cross roads. I currently have a 2014 Mac Mini (2.6GHz i5 with 8GB of RAM). I currently have a 1TB Hybrid drive installed with Mojave at around 50% capacity. Lately I’ve noticed the Mini is just slow all around.

My plan was to install a 1TB NVMe SSD (with adapter) to hopefully speed up the Mini as you cant upgrade the RAM. But now seeing all of the reviews and posts on the new M1 Mini and how fast and efficient it is...I’m intrigued.

I’m not a power user on my Mini - mostly personal, music streaming and some light work related stuff. No gaming, no video editing, etc.

Price wise its way cheaper to go the SSD route. - $200 CDN (i already have the adapter). Pricing out the M1 its $899 base, $1349 CDN with 16GB of RAM with 512GB SSD and $1649 with 1TB. And unfortunately you cant upgrade the RAM or SSD.


Should i just upgrade and save the pennies down the road Purchase? Maybe if they refresh with a M2?

Or just bite the bullet?

It’s not clear how you mean to use the ext NVME. Install the OS there or just use it as storage? The NVME should transfer at 2500 Mb/s but I don’t know if you would see any real difference from the internal SSD. Anyone tried? There are no videos on YT about this kind of upgrade.

 

[chriz74]

I have a late 2014 Mac Mini which I upgraded to an Nvme drive with a paltry 4 GB of ram and now MacOS Big Sur and I am totally surprised at just how fast it is, especially with Apple apps like Safari and Apple News. Nvme drive is showing 700Gb write and read speed. Unfortunately the Nvme drive is hobbled by the 2 lane interface, but it makes a large difference in practice. Also Big Sur seems to be significantly better at memory management.
having said all that that M1 sure makes a compelling case.

In theory if you put the NVME in an external Thunderbolt adapter and boot from there you should get 2500 Mb/s . There are adapters at 69$ on aliexpress.

 

[timothybrooks]

My late 2014 mini had just 4 GB RAM and as you know, that's not upgradable. With the advancing OS the computer had slowed to almost not useable. I decided to swap the HD to an SSD and it has made a big difference in the computer speed, especially when using multiple applications. The process is easy and there are multiple videos on youtube about how. I would add one thing, the screws are Torx Security. I had a basic Torx set but needed find the Security Torx. The bits are available on eBay, etc.

 

[ronster22]

It’s not clear how you mean to use the ext NVME. Install the OS there or just use it as storage? The NVME should transfer at 2500 Mb/s but I don’t know if you would see any real difference from the internal SSD. Anyone tried? There are no videos on YT about this kind of upgrade.

I currently have an 1TB SSHD Hybrid drive (the one where they add 8GB of NAND / SSD to a standard HD) as my main OS / Storage drive. My plan is to replace it with an internal NVMe drive, but leave the Hybrid drive in place for redundancy (and the fact I don’t have to totally take apart the Mini).

I didn’t think the speeds off TB2 external would be that much faster.

 

[ronster22]

My late 2014 mini had just 4 GB RAM and as you know, that's not upgradable. With the advancing OS the computer had slowed to almost not useable. I decided to swap the HD to an SSD and it has made a big difference in the computer speed, especially when using multiple applications. The process is easy and there are multiple videos on youtube about how. I would add one thing, the screws are Torx Security. I had a basic Torx set but needed find the Security Torx. The bits are available on eBay, etc.

NVMe or regular SSD?

I have the adapter to use third party NVMe...just waiting to get the 1TB...