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Worth a wait for M5 at this point?
- Thread starter jazzer15
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The idea of upgrading sounds great, doesn’t it?
Until you realise that if you bought appropriately in the first place in terms of CPU speed - by the time you need to upgrade the machine is 5-10 years old and even if you can find an appropriate CPU upgrade, the rest of the machine is 5-10 years old and likely to fail, the RAM standard changed, storage IO standards moved on, external connectivity standards moved on, etc. Also your OS drops support for your platform.
Essentially most (non gamer) PCs never really get significantly upgraded because by the time they need it, it is not really financially worth it.
Source: building PCs since 1990.
Guess so. Most motherboards are maxed-out processor-wise, with the fastest supported RAM, and an up to date, competitive graphic card. Two NVME’s and a strong PSU, and you’re off to the races - proudly posting benchmark results everywhere you can.
In 5-10 years time, you can’t even give it away, and the only thing worth saving is the case and water-cooling system!
Well, there's always the chance that individual parts break down and need replacing - rather than trashing the whole device you just replace the one thing (hopefully) that was faulty.
The mini is such an odd device in apple's line up, I can see them holding off on the M5 longer then their other models. Its a great inexpensive desktop computer. Personally if it were me, I'd probably wait and see until June, but the risk is with rising ram prices we don't know how that will play into apple's pricing come 2026
If you have a microcenter near you and they have available stock, a 400 dollar mini is really hard to pass up. My local Microcenter has exhausted its supply of Mini's a week or two ago.
If you have a microcenter near you and they have available stock, a 400 dollar mini is really hard to pass up. My local Microcenter has exhausted its supply of Mini's a week or two ago.
An amazing deal and I'd snap that up if there was a similar deal in the UK, typically 3rd party retailers like Amazon UK sell it for £509. I wonder if sales figures have reflected the online buzz that reviewers have been giving the mini on release.
The next big disrupter is likely to be the A series powered MacBook that's rumoured this year but who knows how much RAM that will come with - the spectre of price increases due to RAM will have to be monitored for the next Mac refresh whatever happens though.
Ironically, Apple's MO would be to retain price stability throughout the life of any give product - it would have to be major for them to change the price of an existing product without a refresh. The Mini has more reason than others to simply remain on sale as the M4 model with no price adjustments to try and drive people to buy Mac Studios - launching an M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio and bumping up the price at the same time there would be easier to hide a price increase within.
At the price sensitive side of the lineup if Apple launch an M5 mini and up the price by $100 to cover RAM increases that's not a very good look at all for the mini unless they hide the price increase inside a further spec bump.
I think you missed the point. But it’s a forum, and we’re having fun…
I have an i7 6700, with 32GB of 2400 DDR3 RAM. A GTX1060 card, and 2 x 970 Evo NVME’s running 3.5GB/sec each - one straight into the processor. A Next case and water-cooling, with a silent PSU.
It can’t play Stalker 2, or support Win 11.
What was once a fantastic, futuristic machine, is now limited to ‘legacy’ gaming. Like Far Cry 5!! Or F1 2012. My last game was Elite Dangerous Odessy.
Sure, if the PSU died, or an NVMe went south, I’d replace them. But the whole setup is worthless to anyone else - except for the case, PSU, and water-cooling.
I’d love to play F1 2025, with a steering-wheel setup and 3 screens, but it won’t be happening.
That would cost me £4000 in new parts - more if I want VR.
Crazy world we live in.
Back in 2016, I knew I wanted to experience Far Cry 5, after all the good reviews.
The i7 6700 tower was £400 used, and I added the NVME’s and extra RAM. A Samsung CJ791curved 21/9 monitor was £400 used.
Include a gaming mouse, and the game itself, and I was into £1200, just to play one game!
I’ve since enjoyed all the Far Cry series, Elite Dangerous, and System Shock 2 - but that was a lot of money to me.
I couldn’t imagine spending £3000, just to run Win 11, and Cyberpunk 2077, or those pesky F1 games.
I do however, lust after an M3 Studio Ultra to do my full-time music on. I think that is where I’m going, and that should easily play any game they can conjure up. I only left Intel i7’s this year, to go M4 - which leap-frogged me 12 years, and what a shock performance-wise.
My main point is that there’s many of us out there running utter junk. Valuable to us, but landfill to anyone else - which is a shame. I’m sure there’s loads of under-provided kids that would love those Far Cry games, and F1 2012. But current legislation doesn’t allow for donations of electricals to charities.
**** me, there’s kids in Sri Lanka that would think Donkey Kong on a Pentium 1 was magic. Or Chess on a Sinclair Spectrum!
The world is ****ed up.
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Will it?
I just don't see a slower laptop that does less is going to be a draw for people. Apple already has a the MacBook Air at 999, if they go lower with less they risk tarnishing their premium brand. What is the market for that?
Of course the M5 Mini will be more money than the M4.
Granted, it might come with base 24GB/512GB, and be $1099 - $100 of which is towards RAM price increases.
An M5 Mini, with 16/256, for $700 would sell as fast as you like though.
An M5 Ultra Studio. Yes please. That should bring down M3 Ultra prices nicely.
Welcome to the world of PC depreciation
With an intel ecosystem you always get the option of Linux - or a Windows 11 'hack' to allow it to run on pre Coffee Lake architecture. If it was just games you needed isn't there a Steam/Linux variant that will allow it? At least in the PC world you can select the components you want.
The M3 Studio Ultra will have an expiry date attached when Apple deem it to be not good enough to run some macOS version in the future which is not a great thing.
This is why in the UK I have been waiting on another reduced deal for an M2 Max Mac Studio base unit. At £949 it was a very interesting deal even though M4 in theory matches or outperforms it in most benchmarks.
I have no doubt that an M4 Max Mac Studio for (say, £1299) would be a great deal too but that's relying on an M5 Max Mac Studio coming outing then probably waiting on months of reduced deals for the M4 Max to linger around.
A base M5 Mini in this case would also be attractive with longest support available and likely much better graphics than M4 and better single core performance.
I think the market is the $650 Walmart M1 MacBook Air that's been a continual deal for ages - Apple probably want to line up a time when they will drop the M1 series for macOS support. While they could still sell that M1 MacBook for cheap they will want to at some point stop supporting M1.
A19 Pro Performance will be largely similar to M1, it should still feel snappy for the basic users owing to superior single core performance.
Only question is for me how much RAM it'll come with - 12Gb with the A19 Pro seems about right.
Next question would be Apple risk doing a $399 Mac mini with the A19 Pro, 12Gb RAM and only USB-C ports? Would there be a market for that?
Please choose a side of the fence Lunar. Otherwise replies are not worth the bother.Welcome to the world of PC depreciation
The M3 Studio Ultra will have an expiry date attached.
This is why in the UK I have been waiting on another reduced deal for an M2 Max Mac Studio base unit. At £949 it was a very interesting deal even though M4 in theory matches or outperforms it in most benchmarks.
The M3 Ultra here would serve me 10+ years, never be updated, or connected to the internet, and would run Cubase 14 and Wavelab like a dream, with Audio Gridder. They can bury me with it.
The M2 is not, in theory, a match for an M4. Good machine, but slower everything, memory bandwidth/speed. It is £1299. The M4 Max Studio is now £1699 if you search. No-one would buy an M2, unless it’s the Ultra, for Orchestral music with minimal plugins - then it would be useful, but an M4 Max Studio walks all over it x 2. Maybe an M4 Pro Mini does too.
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Having struggled for ages using an i7 2015 chip for music in Cubase 13, I decided that I would take advantage of the yearly discounted sale of Cubase 14, and coincide that with a 2025 M4 machine.
The Mini M4 has been a delight.
I’m a year behind on Cubase, and still run Sequoia, but very happy as it is.
I keep my eye on Studio and Ultra prices. We’ll see what the next 3 months brings.
For what I do musically - I think an M5 Mini, with 24GB/512GB and TB5, would be my sweet spot, if the internal drive-speed is 6GB/sec or so.
If it’s £999, then game-on.
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I’ll clarify, and say that I didn’t want to buy an M4 Mini out of warranty. So in Sept 2025, I bought a unit that had been purchased in June 2025.
Mainly because I couldn’t believe that sellers could buy an M4 Mini, and sit on it for a year unused. I so hate fraudulent sellers - so June-Sept seemed realistic for someone that tried Mac OS for the first time, and didn’t like it.
I got a genuine article - immaculate, with original Apple Store sales receipt.
Doesn’t really matter when it was made - could have been during the last supper for all I care, in between the starters and main-course.
What is important is that I had to be Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple rolled into one, to navigate the eBay playing field, in order not to get a machine that had mined bit-coin for 9,000 hours.
The Max Studio M4 isn’t far off that $1699 price now.
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Thanks. Conventionally I'm pointing out year model Macs & not purchase date Macs.
If I were adventurous, I'd pick up an Apple-refurbished m4 Mini, with a 32gb RAM/256gb SSD configuration.
That should keep the buy-in price down.
And then, "bump up" the internal SSD with one of those 3rd-party 2tb SSD upgrades that have come onto the market.
(sigh)
But I'm not as "adventurous" as I used to be...
(that's why I got my refurb m4 in a 32gb/1tb configuration instead)
That should keep the buy-in price down.
And then, "bump up" the internal SSD with one of those 3rd-party 2tb SSD upgrades that have come onto the market.
(sigh)
But I'm not as "adventurous" as I used to be...
(that's why I got my refurb m4 in a 32gb/1tb configuration instead)
I'd normally advise just picking a SKU which satisfies requirements without too many optional extras bolted on and getting 24Gb Ram invites an upgrade to the Mini Pro model (which comes with 512Gb storage) but the CPU upgrade itself from M5 to M5 Pro costs an extra £400 in the UK - this is expensive!
Sure, go pro if you want. But most people don’t need it. Not unless you’re making heavy use of large LLMs or gaming. Outside of GPU the base M series are still properly quick devices.
24 is probably enough but on device AI is going to take a bit and 16GB is baseline today in most machines. I’d go 32 to be safe (and generally just better performance) for the OPs workload for the next 3-5 years.
I was doing all that with my previous machine in 16GB but that was a 2021 model and requirements are certainly going to go up as time passes.
If you ever need a windows VM that’s 8-12GB to run that comfortably straight up.
Kinda confused. Not once in your post, did you mention Mac mini, and yet so many of the responses talked about that particular model!
What's wrong with the fan, on the iMac? Are you sure it isn't clogged up with dust, whereby all you need is a screwdriver kit off of amazon, and can of compressed air?