Base model Mac Mini 4gb for home internet use - working for anybody?
March 5, 2016 10:07 AM Subscribe
Do you have a base (or low) model recent Mac Mini? How does it work for general internet use, including streaming and itunes? I like to use Firefox and open a lot of tabs, and use a few script heavy sites like Amazon. Interested in your experience with THIS PARTICULAR SETUP (or maybe the higher model Minis).
Does it work fine? Or does it choke? Thx!
It should be noted that the current Mac Minis have soldered RAM, which means you can't upgrade it later. So if you think you might want 8 or 16GB, you have to do it at purchase.
posted by bluecore at 10:29 AM on March 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by bluecore at 10:29 AM on March 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Can't speak to the recent ones, but we have several Mid-2011 Mac Mini's including the low end dual-core 2.3GHz ones and one of the Server editions. They tend to perform poorly, until you upgrade them. Make sure there's 16GB of RAM in them and an SSD. All our Macs tend to be used to run (sometimes two or three copies of) Windows inside of VMware Fusion, with only light duties for the actual OS X platform itself. I would not call the performance stellar, but it is certainly acceptable and they outperform my laptops.
I use the Server one as my backup administrative workstation for managing lots of VM's, which isn't exactly easy work.
How it responds to Firefox and scripts is going to be heavily dependent on the scripts, and Firefox is kind of fat and pudgy compared to Chrome these days.
The Mac mini is overdue for an update, and the 2014 ones aren't really anything to write home about, given that they've got the RAM soldered in and cannot be upgraded. Please check out the Wikipedia on the Mac mini for some other performance comments. It might be worth waiting to see what comes next. However, on the flip side of that coin, it is worth noting that CPU speeds haven't increased dramatically in recent years. Be sure to compare results over at Geekbench. For example, interesting that the 2011 entry level pulls in around 4400 while the 2014 pulls in around 4800.
posted by jgreco at 10:31 AM on March 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
I use the Server one as my backup administrative workstation for managing lots of VM's, which isn't exactly easy work.
How it responds to Firefox and scripts is going to be heavily dependent on the scripts, and Firefox is kind of fat and pudgy compared to Chrome these days.
The Mac mini is overdue for an update, and the 2014 ones aren't really anything to write home about, given that they've got the RAM soldered in and cannot be upgraded. Please check out the Wikipedia on the Mac mini for some other performance comments. It might be worth waiting to see what comes next. However, on the flip side of that coin, it is worth noting that CPU speeds haven't increased dramatically in recent years. Be sure to compare results over at Geekbench. For example, interesting that the 2011 entry level pulls in around 4400 while the 2014 pulls in around 4800.
posted by jgreco at 10:31 AM on March 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Current Mini maxes out at dual core i7, whereas the previous gen could be configured with i7 quad core. This has led to a disappointing performance shortfall for users who want a fast Mini.
posted by w0mbat at 10:58 AM on March 5, 2016
posted by w0mbat at 10:58 AM on March 5, 2016
Response by poster: I just want to shop for stuff on Amazon and watch Craftsy videos.
posted by bluesky78987 at 11:59 AM on March 5, 2016
posted by bluesky78987 at 11:59 AM on March 5, 2016
Best answer: Bought a base model current generation Mini for my Mum who basically does as you've described and she's very happy with it. When I've used it, I'd be thinking about an upgrade to an SSD but otherwise found no issues (plus I'm comparing the performance to a new top-end MacBook Pro costing several times the Mini's price tag, so I'd discount my grumblings about sluggishness)
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 12:26 PM on March 5, 2016
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 12:26 PM on March 5, 2016
Best answer: You'll be fine, go for it. We have three generations of Minis around the house and one (the most recent model) is used for the exact things you want.
posted by mwhybark at 12:36 PM on March 5, 2016
posted by mwhybark at 12:36 PM on March 5, 2016
Response by poster: Thanks everybody so far. I guess as a follow up question, would a 1.4mhz mini with 8gb perform significantly less well on internet use than a 2.6ghz processor with the same memory? Does internet use tax the processor at all?
posted by bluesky78987 at 1:33 PM on March 5, 2016
posted by bluesky78987 at 1:33 PM on March 5, 2016
Best answer: The Mac Mini is essentially a laptop minus the bits that would make you think of it as a laptop. It features a CPU that was designed for laptop use. One of the neat things about those CPU's are that they are capable of a significant turbo boost when demand is placed on them. That 1.4GHz part in the current Mac Mini will turbo up to 2.7GHz - almost double speed - when system load calls for it.
Our laptops around here are based on the i5-4200U, which is similar to the i5-4260U in the current low end Mac Mini. I have no trouble keeping two or three dozen tabs and some lightweight virtual machines running on the laptop, though my browsing habits include default blocking of stuff like scripts.
The biggest impediment to performance, in my opinion, are the slow laptop grade hard drives in the Mac Minis. If you are handy with hardware, adding a nice quality SSD such as an Intel 535 480GB (currently $160 at NewEgg) is fairly easy. Kits that provide the necessary cables and tools are available from OWC, and that will leave the existing hard drive in the Mac for data storage. You can also pay the price premium to Apple for the Apple Fusion Drive and avoid impacting your warranty, but that provides a much smaller SSD (128GB IIRC).
The next biggest impact comes from additional RAM.
The least important thing is probably the actual CPU, since in most modern machines, there is plenty of it for everyday tasks like web browsing.
posted by jgreco at 2:27 PM on March 5, 2016
Our laptops around here are based on the i5-4200U, which is similar to the i5-4260U in the current low end Mac Mini. I have no trouble keeping two or three dozen tabs and some lightweight virtual machines running on the laptop, though my browsing habits include default blocking of stuff like scripts.
The biggest impediment to performance, in my opinion, are the slow laptop grade hard drives in the Mac Minis. If you are handy with hardware, adding a nice quality SSD such as an Intel 535 480GB (currently $160 at NewEgg) is fairly easy. Kits that provide the necessary cables and tools are available from OWC, and that will leave the existing hard drive in the Mac for data storage. You can also pay the price premium to Apple for the Apple Fusion Drive and avoid impacting your warranty, but that provides a much smaller SSD (128GB IIRC).
The next biggest impact comes from additional RAM.
The least important thing is probably the actual CPU, since in most modern machines, there is plenty of it for everyday tasks like web browsing.
posted by jgreco at 2:27 PM on March 5, 2016
Best answer: I had an old Mac Mini, maybe from 2008, and used that as an entertainment server. It ran for years and years and years. Great little machine. It was fast enough to stream video content from websites so I think you will be alright. Here are the specs:
Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MM11.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.3f4
Serial Number: RM8080DFW0B
posted by pandabearjohnson at 2:49 PM on March 5, 2016
Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MM11.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.3f4
Serial Number: RM8080DFW0B
posted by pandabearjohnson at 2:49 PM on March 5, 2016
Best answer: My experience is that mine doesn't bog down, but I got 16G of RAM and an SSD.
posted by DaveP at 6:37 AM on March 6, 2016
posted by DaveP at 6:37 AM on March 6, 2016
Best answer: In my experience, cpu isn't really the factor at all for this kind of use. Also, you might be misled by focusing on the GHz number; the fact that 1.4 is a lower number than even my 4yo mac mini doesn't really provide any information on its actual performance (I wouldn't be too surprised if it benchmarks better than mine). A lot of benchmarks seem to be looking at upgraded models, but here's a review that actually looked at the very basic model. "When playing around in GarageBand while simultaneously streaming HD video from Netflix and YouTube, I didn't experience a hint of slowdown. " I would upgrade both RAM and disk (to fusion drive*) before upgrading CPU, and probably disk before memory for your use case (though I'm a lot less sure about this ranking, and if you're upgrading at all I'd try to do both).
* side note in response to an earlier comment: the fact that the SSD part of a fusion drive is relatively small compared to some pure SSD options doesn't matter, because this isn't two drives: it automatically moves stuff in an out of the SSD portion as needed, you don't have direct control over this. This works really well, and in my experience the "feel" of a fusion drive is basically equivalent to that of an SSD except it's 1TB.
posted by advil at 8:57 AM on March 6, 2016
* side note in response to an earlier comment: the fact that the SSD part of a fusion drive is relatively small compared to some pure SSD options doesn't matter, because this isn't two drives: it automatically moves stuff in an out of the SSD portion as needed, you don't have direct control over this. This works really well, and in my experience the "feel" of a fusion drive is basically equivalent to that of an SSD except it's 1TB.
posted by advil at 8:57 AM on March 6, 2016
Response by poster: That was a good article, Thanks Advil.
posted by bluesky78987 at 9:52 AM on March 6, 2016
posted by bluesky78987 at 9:52 AM on March 6, 2016
Oh one more thing to point out: the mac mini is probably due for a refresh soon-ish. If I were buying one of these around now I'd probably try to wait for the Mar 21 media event just in case they refresh them then. However that's a bit of an outside chance (the media event is probably going to be mainly about an ipad update), and it might be that refresh at WWDC this summer is more likely, which wouldn't be worth waiting for. Don't get too hung up on this but since there is that media event coming up so soon I thought it would be worth mentioning.
posted by advil at 10:03 AM on March 6, 2016
posted by advil at 10:03 AM on March 6, 2016
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posted by advil at 10:25 AM on March 5, 2016