Which Mac Mini

[nickos94]

Wirelessly posted

I am planning on doing a mac mini colocation. I can't decide if the i5 2.3 model or the i7 2.0 model will fit my needs. I'd be upgrading whichever one I get to 8gb, so ram and disk space isn't important.

I will be using standard osx server features like a mail server, mamp server, etc. I also want to run a virtual machine to run a linux server that will run game servers like TF2, Counterstrike, and Minecraft.

My main concern is if a 2.3ghz i5 will be able to handle this because I'd like to save the money. My game servers would be pretty low traffic like 10 people between all three servers. So do you think a 2.3 with 8gb of ram would do?

 

[anomie]

I am pretty sure it will do the job. I got a 2010 mini and the only slow thing is the harddrive.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Wirelessly posted

I am planning on doing a mac mini colocation. I can't decide if the i5 2.3 model or the i7 2.0 model will fit my needs. I'd be upgrading whichever one I get to 8gb, so ram and disk space isn't important.

I will be using standard osx server features like a mail server, mamp server, etc. I also want to run a virtual machine to run a linux server that will run game servers like TF2, Counterstrike, and Minecraft.

My main concern is if a 2.3ghz i5 will be able to handle this because I'd like to save the money. My game servers would be pretty low traffic like 10 people between all three servers. So do you think a 2.3 with 8gb of ram would do?

Personally, I'd say go for the Server model as quad-core i7 (with turbo-boost if you don't end up using those extra two cores) will be nice and fast, and I'll echo what anomie said about the hard drive, unless you are planning to have a lot of read/write activity and not just a ton of read activity. But if the $400 premium is too much, you will likely be more than fine with the 2.3GHz i5 entry model and the Mac App Store purchase of Lion Server.