Quick story:
I bought the 2018 mac mini back in November. I was initially interested in the idea of a small, powerful, desktop computer.
So I bought mac mini 6-core 3.0. $1100
Then I got the LG 4K display for $630.
But the video card in the mini is so awful, I started looking at the external gpu (radeon pro 580) which would have cost an additional $700.
So the setup I was looking at would be around $2500 total with tax. That, by the way, is with only 8gigs of ram, and a 250gb ssd.
So I compared that to a 27 inch i5 3.8ghz iMac at the refurb store. To buy that, plus a 2TB samsung 860 Evo SSD that I could install interally, along with 32 additional gigs of ram (40gigs total) would bring the price total to - you guessed it - right around $2500 ($1949 for imac, $260 for 2TB SSD, $230 for 32 gigs of ram.
The advantages of the iMac vs. the mac mini I can configured: a bigger, better monitor, and less mess and wires all over my desk. A MUCH bigger SSD and MUCH more ram for the same price.
The advantage of the mac mini setup I had configured: Slightly higher geekbench scores.*
*But here's the thing, since the mac mini is a 3.0ghz processor that turbo-boosts to 4.1ghz, it can essentially 'trick' geekbench for the short time it tests, since turbo-boost does not overheat the processor in that amount of time. But for long encodes or renders (which I do a lot) the mini will NOT be able to sustain it's turbo boost speed and drop down to 3.0ghz after not too long. Meanwhile, the 3.8ghz i5 will maintain it's speed for the duration of a long render, making likely a little bit faster than the mac mini in my use case.
Bottom line, for me, the iMac was a no brainer choice over the mac mini.
I bought the 2018 mac mini back in November. I was initially interested in the idea of a small, powerful, desktop computer.
So I bought mac mini 6-core 3.0. $1100
Then I got the LG 4K display for $630.
But the video card in the mini is so awful, I started looking at the external gpu (radeon pro 580) which would have cost an additional $700.
So the setup I was looking at would be around $2500 total with tax. That, by the way, is with only 8gigs of ram, and a 250gb ssd.
So I compared that to a 27 inch i5 3.8ghz iMac at the refurb store. To buy that, plus a 2TB samsung 860 Evo SSD that I could install interally, along with 32 additional gigs of ram (40gigs total) would bring the price total to - you guessed it - right around $2500 ($1949 for imac, $260 for 2TB SSD, $230 for 32 gigs of ram.
The advantages of the iMac vs. the mac mini I can configured: a bigger, better monitor, and less mess and wires all over my desk. A MUCH bigger SSD and MUCH more ram for the same price.
The advantage of the mac mini setup I had configured: Slightly higher geekbench scores.*
*But here's the thing, since the mac mini is a 3.0ghz processor that turbo-boosts to 4.1ghz, it can essentially 'trick' geekbench for the short time it tests, since turbo-boost does not overheat the processor in that amount of time. But for long encodes or renders (which I do a lot) the mini will NOT be able to sustain it's turbo boost speed and drop down to 3.0ghz after not too long. Meanwhile, the 3.8ghz i5 will maintain it's speed for the duration of a long render, making likely a little bit faster than the mac mini in my use case.
Bottom line, for me, the iMac was a no brainer choice over the mac mini.