Mac Mini VS iMac

[madhermit]

I did the benchmark test. Seems pretty awesome to me!

Logic Pro Multicore Benchmarktest !

[Dr. Spaceman]

Hey Hermit thanks for the test appreciate it for taking the time.

I am also looking at the mini was wondering if you had any plugins running on the tracks

if you did, a guess on how many. Again thank you for your time.

[divine source]

Originally Posted by madhermit

I did the benchmark test. Seems pretty awesome to me!

Logic Pro Multicore Benchmarktest !

Tnx for making the test
looks like the MacMini (2.6 quad i7,16GB) gonna be more then enough for my needs

[grooveminister]

Originally Posted by jklmno

Should I get the mac mini with or without the OSX server?

I have to answer the exact question myself!
If you care about warranty, and want two HDDs, the MMS is the only choice.
To make your own choices on HDDs the faster non-server model is great, but you are own your own risk if you swap or add drives.

[skira]

Macworld put out (more generalized) benchmarks a couple of days ago for the mini:

Lab Tested: 2012 Mac mini gets a nice speed boost | Macworld

and today posted a full review:

Review: New Mac mini offers an attractive bang for the buck | Macworld

If you need more than 16Gb RAM the mini's not your machine, but otherwise it seems like a solid release and a very nice update.

[skira]

Originally Posted by grooveminister

If you care about warranty, and want two HDDs, the MMS is the only choice.

It's a shame that there is no SSD+hard drive option but apparently Apple wants to nudge non-server buyers into the Fusion upgrade.

If you're not fumble-fingered you could crack open the case and add/replace internal drives, and if the machine ever needed repair you'd just need to replace the internals. Apple wouldn't know. If I wanted lowest-cost flexibility I'd buy the mid-level mini and upgrade the drive myself. Personally, I'm not too into that but some might be.

Regardless, I'm not a huge fan of 5400rpm drives. Thunderbolt externals are still a little pricey but I don't doubt that it will be the way to go in 2013 and beyond. For $560 right now you can get a WD My Thunderbolt Duo Dual-Drive external drive with two 3Tb 7200rpm drives, meaning that for just $360 more than Apple's mini Server you get an internal 1Tb drive and 6Tb external storage @ 7200rpm. (or the My Book with two 2Tb drives for $450, just $250 more than the mini Server with two slow 1Tb drives.) I think that's a much better deal overall for performance.

Alternatively, you could get a CineRAID external 4-bay RAID box for $159 on sale at newegg right now. It's eSATA and USB 3.0 CineRAID makes huge multi-bay pro RAID boxes for the television and film industries and this is one of their little consumer boxes. (If you don't like RAID you can set it to 'normal' mode and just access the drives individually.) Then add whatever drives you prefer, purchased at the lowest prices you can find. (I like the WD Caviar Green 2Tb drive for $100 apiece - 4 of them plus the CineRAID box costs just $560 [same price as that external 6Tb Thunderbolt box] for 8Tb data. Awesome.)

[Silky Smoove]

A happy footnote to what skira is saying: There are tons of choices out there, and choices that won't force you to put a second mortgage on your house. On top of that, those choices are becoming less expensive all the time. Great time for technology.

[ProPower]

From a storage point of view on the new mini, this is my thinking (should have all up and running this weekend!)

I care about warranty issues but more about convenience...

I chose the MacMini 2.6 with internal 256SSD (16GB ram from new egg). The SSD is big enough for a boot and program disk with full apple warranty, plus support for trim and their own custom firmware (~$100 to $150 more than buying a samsung 830 and DIY).

For all the rest....
Samples and audio recording on Samsung 840 500G SSD (500MB/s read 250MB/s write) - $400 in Thermaltake Silver USB3 case (capable of full 5Gb/s USB3 speed). Bottom line, this $40 case gets me at least 1/2 of the internal SATA bus speed (and hopefully more). WAY more than enough to record 16 tracks, use some VI's and playback 100 tracks. Not to mention it is all in PT10HD with the timeline cached into 16G of ram.

Now this could have easily been a big spinning drive but I am a silence freak! I hate fans and drive spinning sounds.

-Can always go Thunderbolt if NEED last ounce of speed.
-Can always separate Audio and samples to two different USB3 channels.
-FW 800 is there if I need even more..... this has a open dock for just dropping in any SSD or Spinning drive....
-Plus an assortment of other ports on Thunderbolt Display.... ethernet for Artist series controllers... etc... (typing and waiting for the fedex truck :-)... I hear something.... )

But for all other BIG things, backups and archives I have a NAS that does 40MB/s+ over ethernet.

[skira]

Originally Posted by ProPower

I chose the MacMini 2.6 with internal 256SSD (16GB ram from new egg).

That's the exact setup I'm thinking of getting. $1200 for the faster CPU + SSD, and another $90 for 16Gb RAM from Crucial.com

I'm holding off until the iMacs become available for preorder later this month so I can see what the BTO options and prices are... just in case there's some amazing deal in there somewhere.

[madhermit]

As for the Server part of the OS. It is easy to not even set it up. It is just a program/add-on now, so if you don't set it up, you are running regular OS X, so no compatibility issues.

In other words, Mac Os Server is easy to run as regular Mac OS in Mountain Lion.

[jklmno]

Okay now I'm caught up between 2 options:
1. 1 TB HDD + 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

2. 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and adding an external thunderbolt HD?

Which is the better option?

[phas3d]

Probably the 2nd. The 1TB HD is 5400rpm

[skira]

The stock internal drive is relatively slow 5400rpm.
The BTO 256Gb SSD will not void your warranty, and will always have TRIM enabled by the OS.
External storage: you have a much greater variety of inexpensive choices in hard drives.

So I'd say #2.

[jklmno]

The stock SSD is so expensive (+$360). I'd rather replace it on my own

[phas3d]

How about an 8GB, 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7? Get a 256GB SSD and 2 4GB modules from somewhere else and exchange it for the HD. Get a case for the HD and use it for backup. It's just a 5400rpm so not that good for audio work and get an external 7200rpm drive for audio.

[ProPower]

As far as I can gather the OP wants

Plug computer into 32" TV.... will buy keyboard and mouse and wants to know if it is better to

Add two drives in himself or use external TB for one....

I don't know what the application here is but I will try to be helpful.

- i7 2.3 or 2.6 is a lot of computer and will handle any CPU task from pro audio to Handbrake encoding.
- the i5 may be all you need
- Internal SSD's are always fastest. If you are willing to void warranty go for as much as you can afford (Samsung 830's have a great track record).
- For Audio always best to have two drives. Two SSD's if you can afford, -or- One SSD for programs and a big spinner for everything else. The stock apple drive is 5400rpm but specs on it are much better than the old 5400's (search macrumors forum for info). Would be fine for recording audio.
-TB is great, so is USB3. You can hang a ton of externals and if they are 7200rpm drives you can hit their full bandwidth with either of these ports.

[madhermit]

One thing to note about using a TV as a monitor. It may or may not sleep properly. Mine does not go into standby mode when the computer sleeps. It displays a solid blue screen. I have no idea what the mode/feature is called where a screen will actually go into standby mode when the computer does.

[madhermit]

Originally Posted by ProPower

As far as I can gather the OP wants
- For Audio always best to have two drives. Two SSD's if you can afford, -or- One SSD for programs and a big spinner for everything else. The stock apple drive is 5400rpm but specs on it are much better than the old 5400's (search macrumors forum for info). Would be fine for recording audio.
-TB is great, so is USB3. You can hang a ton of externals and if they are 7200rpm drives you can hit their full bandwidth with either of these ports.

Where can you find specs on the internal drives? I would love to check them out.

Thanks

[phas3d]

We've seen a couple of threads from guys with new 5400s who had issues and they solved them by getting 7200s. If you use a lot of samplers then yes a second SSD will be a good option.
For the TV issue it should be in settings energy saving but it depends on the manufacturer.

[jklmno]

Btw guys, I'm using Windows atm but my laptop is slowly dying.. Not really looking forward to using Windows 8 as well.

I'll still be waiting till the new iMacs come out.

[mat1]

Originally Posted by skira

Regardless, I'm not a huge fan of 5400rpm drives. Thunderbolt externals are still a little pricey but I don't doubt that it will be the way to go in 2013 and beyond. For $560 right now you can get a WD My Thunderbolt Duo Dual-Drive external drive with two 3Tb 7200rpm drives, meaning that for just $360 more than Apple's mini Server you get an internal 1Tb drive and 6Tb external storage @ 7200rpm. (or the My Book with two 2Tb drives for $450, just $250 more than the mini Server with two slow 1Tb drives.) I think that's a much better deal overall for performance.

Alternatively, you could get a CineRAID external 4-bay RAID box for $159 on sale at newegg right now. It's eSATA and USB 3.0 CineRAID makes huge multi-bay pro RAID boxes for the television and film industries and this is one of their little consumer boxes. (If you don't like RAID you can set it to 'normal' mode and just access the drives individually.) Then add whatever drives you prefer, purchased at the lowest prices you can find. (I like the WD Caviar Green 2Tb drive for $100 apiece - 4 of them plus the CineRAID box costs just $560 [same price as that external 6Tb Thunderbolt box] for 8Tb data. Awesome.)

How fast are these external spinners compared to an internal SSD?

I have about 150gigs of samples so I think a 512 SSD will probably do

[phas3d]

New 7200 are fast but not comparable to SSD. Of course RAID changes things but if you have the drives close enough the noise is really a problem. A cheaper option would be a 256GB SSD since you say you have 150GB of samples.

[inthere]

I wonder if the "Fusion" drives are as fast as the "Hybrid" drives Seagate makes, those things are beasts now and pretty stable.

[phas3d]

They are 2 different things. Fusion drive is in reality 2 separate drives SSD+HDD that create a logical drive where the most used apps are always on the SSD and data is only deleted from one drive after the copy is completed which is pretty good. Also the total space is the sum of both drives. From what I've read the OS does whole the work and someone has already replicated it by using 2 drives and some terminal commands.
The Seagate hybrid drive is an HDD drive that uses SSD just for cache.
Personally I would prefer 1 SSD drive for OS and 1 HDD for audio but that's a mater of personal choice really.

[skira]

Originally Posted by inthere

I wonder if the "Fusion" drives are as fast as the "Hybrid" drives Seagate makes

Faster. Seagate Momentus drives just have a tiny cache. Apple's solution includes a 128Gb SSD where apps reside, and all saves are done to the SSD (with files and little-used apps migrated to the hard drive in the background later). So the speed is there, but it's not the most important consideration.

The real question is how bulletproof is Apple's software is that performs this trickery. Remember how many people complained about the initial release of 10.8 ... and 10.7 ... and 10.6 ... and 10.5. Do you really want to trust your data to version 1.0 of this file-system add-on?

Also there is the question about how of if current 3rd-party backup software (which I find better than Time Machine for a number of reasons) will recognize all the files as one drive -- Apple warns that they might not.

[krushing]

Bumpity. Does anyone know (or willing to check) which FireWire chipset the new Minis use? I'm about to go down this route as well. Or more directly, if someone has experience with Focusrite interfaces (I have the Saffire Pro 40) & current Mac Minis, that'd be even more awesome. Thanks.

[jklmno]

I'm holding back on the mac mini until they resolve the display issue. Also would it be better to upgrade to SSD + HDD straight away or after a while?

[krushing]

Display issue? The flickering problem associated with Mountain Lion or something else?

[madhermit]

My mini has the display issue. The screen goes off for a few seconds once in a while. Sounds like a firmware fix to me. I hope. I have AppleCare, so I am not overly worried.

[Kamurah]

I have had the fully loaded 2012 Mini (2.6ghz i7, 16gb RAM, 256gb Apple SSD, OSX 10.8.2) for a few days and it is a very nice machine indeed.

Audio interface is a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP via FW800 to FW400 cable-> no problems in general but I cannot get VRM to work. I think this is a known problem to Focusrite with 10.8.x . (I was running 10.6.8 on my previous machine, a 2.4ghz C2Duo Macbook Pro because it was stable with everything.)

I also have a Virus TI Snow that is working in TI mode in Logic. Had to update to the beta OS5 for the TI to get it recognized but seems to be working fine now. Knock on wood.

Overall amazing speed bump from what I was using. I haven't tried to max it out yet...but it easily handles some softsynths that used to make the Macbook Pro beg for mercy. Nice seeing 8 cores show up in Logic.

For visuals I am using it with the TB out via a Displayport to HDMI adapter and running it into a 27" Asus monitor. With this configuration I have not had any of the screen blanking / flicker issues that are reported.

I have not tried going straight out of the HDMI port...but I am almost 100% certain this would be problematic based on the sheer number of people having issues with the Mini.

It definitely is a problem Apple needs to address...I hope a future update (in downloadable form) can take care of this.

Right now I don't need the TB port....I am running a second hard drive (a 256gb Samsung SSD) as an external drive in a USB3 enclosure. This too is wickedly fast and I don't see a need for Thunderbolt transfers in my meager setup....

But who knows in the future what kind of cool goodies are coming our way with TB? Would be a shame to have to hang the monitor off that port forever.