2014 Mac mini still fast in 2025?!

[EugW]

I think the problem is that those slow devices eat a few seconds here and there all the time. You waste your life with slower hardware where time is more important than the expense of getting a replacement.

Yeah, but it depends on what you are doing with it. For example, as a simple music server as some have described, an 8 GB 2014 Mac mini would be totally fine.

For my business app usage it was also OK, because I was just using Safari (up to 5 tabs), Mail, Messages, Word, Calendar, and a VPN and stuff like that. Even if there were a couple of seconds missing here and there, it wasn't a big deal since most of the time, the machine mostly just idle anyway when I'm using these apps. It takes me longer to type in Word than it does for the CPU to bog down. I suspect the main problem for me though was that it was an 8 GB machine. I believe most of the pauses were due to disk swapping. I found that if I was just using a few apps it was fine, as the swap would remain small. However, if I was actively more heavily multi-tasking, my swap would grow to over 2 GB, and that's when I'd notice the pauses. The total time lost would only be say a minute or two a day, but it just got annoying after a while, so I upgraded to an M1 Mac mini with 16 GB RAM.

We had three machines in a similar performance class, all three on Monterey:

8 GB 2014 Mac mini with Haswell 2.6 GHz dual-core i5-4278U
8 GB 2017 13" MacBook Air with Broadwell 1.8 GHz dual-core i5-5350U
8 GB 2015 13" MacBook Pro with Broadwell 2.7 GHz dual-core i5-5257U

My wife still uses that 8 GB 2017 13" MacBook Air and it's fine for what she does... except for one thing, and that is viewing some videos for some of our kids' activities. They are sometimes sent to us in h.265 HEVC format, which the Broadwell i5 does not support in hardware, so playback is just a slideshow. In fact, this is the main reason I am buying an M4 MacBook Air for her this year. I thought about getting a discounted 16/256 GB M2 MacBook Air, but I'll just wait for the Back-To-School sale instead which will bring the cost of the 16/256 M4 much closer. And since we're talking about video playback, the M4 has the bonus of adding hardware AV1 playback as well. However, the main reason for getting the M4 instead of the M2 is just because the M4 will get a few more years of macOS updates than the M2 will going forward.

My daughter is still using her 8 GB 2015 13" MacBook Pro. She hasn't needed HEVC playback on that machine so it's been fine for her. Most of her schoolwork is in the cloud and browser based or lightweight app based, so that old i5 is sufficient for now. Also, when I bought it used in 2021, the battery was nearly brand new, so it still has a lot of life left in it. I'll probably get her an M5 or M6 MacBook Air though.

 

[Boyd01]

Yeah, but it depends on what you are doing with it. For example, as a simple music server as some have described, an 8 GB 2014 Mac mini would be totally fine.

My experience was that a 4gb 2014 Mini was also fine for that (running iTunes under Mojave). When my 8gb 2014 Mini had that disk problem, I went back to the old 4gb Mini and didn't really notice any difference. And I was using it mainly as a video server for my AppleTV's, not music.

I think the bigger problem is that each day brings these old macs a day closer to their grave and when you can replace the whole thing for $49, it makes no sense to waste time and money fixing them. I picked up a new base m4 16/256 Mini on Black Friday for $519 and that's my new media server. It will be supported for many more years and can just sit inside a cabinet silently doing its job. The only hard part for me was making the transition from iTunes to the new TV and Music apps.

 

[Snowlover]

I have 2 2014 minis.
One used to stream internet video content to my tv - 2.6gb i5, 8gb, 256gb ssd, windows 11.
One used for photo editing using photoshop cs6 and other general tasks - 2.6gb i5, 8gb, 500gb ssd, dual boot Mojave and windows 11.
Both are plenty fast enough for me.
Bought one for $100 2 years ago and the other for $75 last fall ( both off ebay) and have had zero issues.

Edit: the reason I chose the 2014 model is that I'm not a fan of macos past mojave, and it is the easiest mini for windows 11 installation.

 

[Antainín]

When I'm not travelling, my workhorse is a late-2014 iMac (27", 3,5GHz Quad-Core i5). After the Fusion drive collapsed a few years ago, I replaced it with a 1TB SSD and topped up the RAM to 32GB. Am grateful to OCLP allowing me extend the life of the machine and have had no problems with Ventura. I'll cautiously patch up to Sonoma later this year and hope for another couple of years' use, mainly for business apps and Adobe CC suite.

I'm in awe of this beast of a machine I bought for several thousand Euro and that still delivers a decade later. Did I mention the distinctive, bevelled edging that aesthetically outshines the current blocky crop? *sigh*

 

[EugW]

When I'm not travelling, my workhorse is a late-2014 iMac (27", 3,5GHz Quad-Core i5). After the Fusion drive collapsed a few years ago, I replaced it with a 1TB SSD and topped up the RAM to 32GB. Am grateful to OCLP allowing me extend the life of the machine and have had no problems with Ventura. I'll cautiously patch up to Sonoma later this year and hope for another couple of years' use, mainly for business apps and Adobe CC suite.

I'm in awe of this beast of a machine I bought for several thousand Euro and that still delivers a decade later. Did I mention the distinctive, bevelled edging that aesthetically outshines the current blocky crop? *sigh*

The 2014 iMac quad-core is way, way, way faster than a 2014 Mac mini. Also, the 2014 Mac mini's RAM cannot be upgraded. The 2014 iMac is in a completely different performance league.

 

[Rychiar]

I highly doubt that. And a current GEN mini is faster than every Mac Apple ever made by far. All of the M series just feels so much snappier in every aspect

 

[Boyd01]

Also, the 2014 Mac mini's RAM cannot be upgraded.

This is always what I thought too and it's true for most of us... but then there's this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-mini-late-2014-ram-upgrade.2338205/

 

[mslilyelise]

Does anyone else have a 2014 Mac mini or other similarly aged Mac that is still impressively fast? Despite being dual core, this Mac mini of mine feels almost as fast as my M2 MBA! Just happy my old Mac still has some life left. Feel free to share your stories.

I totally get this.

We have a 2014 iMac, the hobbled 1.4Ghz education model. I use it as a media/file server, but it also does duty as a writing machine when I feel like sitting at a desk, or briefly browsing the Internet. I've had an M2 Air but lost it to an unfortunate accident, and while I wouldn't put the machines in the same league, I am constantly impressed with how well this little iMac keeps up with basic usage. Hell it can even transcode a couple 480P video streams at once if nothing else is running. I run Sequoia on it using the OCLP patcher, so it's still got a couple years of security support before its dead-dead (we'll know if Apple pulls Intel chip support from the next macOS).

My other daily right now is a 2017 Air and I would say it's feeling the strain more than our iMac is. Starting to get a little sluggish and scatterbrained, though a third party SSD helped with that a bit. I had other computer hardware I had to update last year so maybe by the end of this year I'll get an upgrade and then it can be relegated to a Linux testing machine. I'm sure it'll last for a long time yet, just not with Apple software.

 

[Boeingfan]

As an owner of 2014 Intel i5 and 2020 M1 Mac mini's currently, I can state that the i5 is far slower than the M1, let alone an M2.

Having said that, you've not mentioned the spec's of each in your original post, so perhaps there are beefy spec's on the 2014 mini, and basic spec's on the M2? I don't know, but whatever the case, I'm glad you're impressed with your old girl 😀

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Also using mine attached to our projector as a media streamer, works great. 8 GB, 2.6, PCIe SSD and HD also

 

[Siliconguy]

OCLP, dude.

OCLP is cool, but it can not make up for not having Metal 3 on a 2014 Mini, nor can it substitute for the AVX instructions not available on a 2010 Mac Pro.

So yes, the OS will boot, but the software you wanted to use may not run. The Mac programmers don't check the CPU/GPU very hard. If they compile their program for Monterey since all Macs rated for Monterey have AVX they assume it's present. When it isn't thud goes the Mac, or at least the program.

Even the Music visualizer in Ventura crashed the 2014 Mini (which does have AVX) which I assumed was due to the Metal version. So the Mini stays on Monterey until it's time to go to Linux on that one too.

That said, Monterey ran really well on that Mac Pro. The video editing programs I wanted to run, not so much. So now it's Mohave on the SSD or Linux on the NVME in the PCI-e slot depending on what I want to do.

 

[Andres Cantu]

I had one of those many years ago. No comparison between that and an M2 MBA. The boot up times and app launch times are on completely different levels.

 

[ilikeavocados5893]

I have a 2014 Mac mini that is being used as a Plex server. Works pretty well. Replaced the stock hard drive with a PCIe SSD using the adapter.

 

[twisted panties]

My 2014 Mac Mini (8GB, 2 Economy Cores, Zero Performance Cores...) replaced a big, noisy, energy-wasting NAS. The Mini has room inside for a 4TB SSD as well as a 1TB boot PCIe card. It sits atop one of those Mac Mini expansion pedestals, with another SSD in that for backups.

The whole thing is silent, draws little power when in operation, and virtually nothing while it sleeps (which is most of the time, like its owner). It's also a whole lot easier to manage sharing than the NAS. It's headless and I remote desktop to it from my iMac with one click.

I'm quite fond of it, and for its purpose, there is no benefit from later OS versions. I'll use it until it eventually fails.

 

[henrikhelmers]

Does anyone else have a 2014 Mac mini or other similarly aged Mac that is still impressively fast? Despite being dual core, this Mac mini of mine feels almost as fast as my M2 MBA! Just happy my old Mac still has some life left. Feel free to share your stories.

If you compare the Geekbench scores of the top of the line models, the the 2014 one gets 986/1949, and the 2024 3826/20189.

That's almost 4x faster in single core and over 10x faster in multi core applications.

In the past have upgraded when you can get about 2x improvement (single core), as that would feel like a proper upgrade. But most of the time, the computer is waiting for me to type something, rather than me waiting for it to process. In that sense it might be more than fast enough, depending on what you do.

 

[Larsvonhier]

OCLP is cool, but it can not make up for not having Metal 3 on a 2014 Mini, nor can it substitute for the AVX instructions not available on a 2010 Mac Pro.

So yes, the OS will boot, but the software you wanted to use may not run. The Mac programmers don't check the CPU/GPU very hard. If they compile their program for Monterey since all Macs rated for Monterey have AVX they assume it's present. When it isn't thud goes the Mac, or at least the program.

Even the Music visualizer in Ventura crashed the 2014 Mini (which does have AVX) which I assumed was due to the Metal version. So the Mini stays on Monterey until it's time to go to Linux on that one too.

That said, Monterey ran really well on that Mac Pro. The video editing programs I wanted to run, not so much. So now it's Mohave on the SSD or Linux on the NVME in the PCI-e slot depending on what I want to do.

That´s again the time when some regard the glass as half empty while others say half full.
We have many Macs running OCLP and up to Sequoia. The vast majority of programs still runs fine and even Metal-1 of some older AMD cards or Nvidias is sufficiently supported.
So YMMV, but it´s hard to generalize.
Of course, situation will not get better for the legacy machines. Once Apple drops intel altogether, the show is over a couple of months later anyways...

 

[apostolosdt]

I used to own a Mini 2014 i5, 8 GB, 1 TB Fusion; adequate but not super. Regarding the other Minis mentioned here, I think the 2018 i7, 64 GB, 1+ TB SSD, is an excellent buy if you find one in good shape.

By the way, the M4 base model is overestimated, IMHO. It only beats that 2018 in graphics.

 

[chrfr]

I used to own a Mini 2014 i5, 8 GB, 1 TB Fusion; adequate but not super. Regarding the other Minis mentioned here, I think the 2018 i7, 64 GB, 1+ TB SSD, is an excellent buy if you find one in good shape.

By the way, the M4 base model is overestimated, IMHO. It only beats that 2018 in graphics.

The M4 mini is faster than the i7 2018 in every respect. Single core processor benchmarks are more than twice as fast and multicore benchmarks are roughly 4 times faster. Where did you get the info that the i7 is only beaten “in graphics”?

Most people have no need for anywhere close to 64GB of RAM and it won’t speed up general operations, so it’s a waste of money and you’re still buying a Mac that’s nearly at the end of its supported OS lifetime. The fans also run loudly at even the slightest hint of work.

 

[leifp]

I found it too slow when I had that model new. Very happy for you that a decade later it’s still fast enough for you.

 

[apostolosdt]

The M4 mini is faster than the i7 2018 in every respect. Single core processor benchmarks are more than twice as fast and multicore benchmarks are roughly 4 times faster. Where did you get the info that the i7 is only beaten “in graphics”?

Most people have no need for anywhere close to 64GB of RAM and it won’t speed up general operations, so it’s a waste of money and you’re still buying a Mac that’s nearly at the end of its supported OS lifetime. The fans also run loudly at even the slightest hint of work.

Of course it is faster! But, for a base Mini, speed cannot be the only deciding factor; I mean, you aren't going to use a base Mini for tasks requiring "pro" speed, are you? (It reminds me of people who rave about a photographic lens's sharpness, only to use it shooting film in the streets.)

As for my info sources, they are my base Mini M4 and my maxed 2018 Mini lying in my study. Real-life comparisons.

 

[chrfr]

As for my info sources, they are my base Mini M4 and my maxed 2018 Mini lying in my study. Real-life comparisons.

But what are you doing with these computers? In any case what you’re saying about the M4’s performance is factually incorrect.

 

[apostolosdt]

I write technical stuff and I also do a lot of photo processing work. For the former I need typesetting apps and any decent machine is quite adequate; for the latter, well... the Topaz AI, for instance, is practically useless on the 2018 and that's where the M4 excels.