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27" iMac just died - which M4 Mac Mini config?

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kmpowell

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 16, 2003
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I woke up this morning to find the dreaded question mark of doom flashing on my trusty 9year old (late 2015) 27" iMac. After a few hours trying to recover/reinstall etc, it's clear the SSD has completely died. The iMac was bought upgraded to 16GB RAM, with an upgraded i5 3.3, and an upgraded 1TB SSD, all so it had a bit of longevity.

For the past few months I'd been debating in my head about moving to Silcone, by getting the new impressive M4 Mac mini with an Apple studio display (the 24" iMac is too small for me, before anyone suggest I buy one of those). So, this SSD failure has forced my hand...

My usage is a mixture of work and recreational, so very HEAVY multiple tab web applications, heavy excel and powerpoint, and productivity such as Slack, chatGPT etc. Nothing I do makes me think I need the M4 Pro, as I don't do media/video editing.

2TB family iCloud+ plan is used, but my photos library is near 300GB. That 300GB is on my iCloud+ but instead of optimising like I do on my iPhone, on my Mac I like to have that pre-loaded local on my computer. Before it went kaput, my total iMac usage was 440GB(inc photo library) used of the 1TB.

My key considerations are:
  • Longevity of minimum 5yrs
  • Optimise v local for my 300GB Photos library
  • All other files (backups etc) are up in my iCloud+ (circa 50GB)
  • Trying to avoid paying Apple's extortionate HD upgrade prices unless needed, so coupling a fast external drive to run my photos library.
  • Is 16GB RAM going to be enough for the future once AI really kicks in, should I get minimum 24GB
My £aim is to save as much money as I can from my max £1000 budget for the Mac Mini. So, what HD/RAM combo config’ would you go for?

TIA
 
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kmpowell said:
I woke up this morning to find the dreaded question mark of doom flashing on my trusty 9year old (late 2015) 27" iMac. After a few hours trying to recover/reinstall etc, it's clear the SSD has completely died. The iMac was bought upgraded to 16GB RAM, with an upgraded i5 3.3, and an upgraded 1TB SSD, all so it had a bit of longevity.
Click to expand...
My late 2015 iMac also died last year.
Before you go for a new Apple Studio Display. Let me suggest you have a look at rebuilding your iMac to a DIY 5k Display. This is what I did, and I am happy with the result.


Save a lot of money, and put it into your new mac mini ;)

edit: unless you need the built in camera and mic
 
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RAM I could guess at if I knew your memory pressure & swap from your old computer… but in your budget the options are pretty limited.
16GB RAM and 1TB storage
24GB RAM and 512GB storage
32GB RAM and 256GB storage

Assuming £999 is a hard limit it and does NOT include the external storage and display, I’d go with 32/256. Your current storage used, less photos library, is only about 144GB and while you can “do things” to augment storage, you can’t ever add RAM.

256 is going to become a “pinch point” going forward though. If you’re comfortable using symlinks to move other data off in the future as needed, it’s not insurmountable. If that sentence makes you nervous 😉 go with 24/512.
 
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My immediate thoughts; to save money, get a cheaper screen than the apple display. Just focus on it being large enough for your taste. Macs will work with most any display. You might consider dropping the M4 mini and getting a used M2 Pro, M1 Ultra, perhaps a M1 Studio. Those are powerful machines still and will be for years. Something with 16 or better 32GB ram. Use your internal drive for system and apps, and buy as much external NVMe storage as you need. That way you can get away with even a 256GB internal.

If you get a display without a camera and mic, get a usb one, those cost almost nothing.
 
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kmpowell said:
After a few hours trying to recover/reinstall etc, it's clear the SSD has completely died.
Click to expand...
I believed my internel SATA 1TB SSD had died as well (Apple support upgrade)
But installing a new SSD blade and a new SATA SSD, did not fix the problem. I believe something on the motherboard must have broken.
 
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My own late 2015 27" iMac is showing the signs of age. The Fusion drive seems to be ok, RAM is good, but the Screen is showing some artefacts.

I went for the second level up Mac Mini (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD). The reason for that was that I never used more than 400GB on the iMac for Users' files.
All archives and large files like Installer files (Mac, Windows and Linux) are kept on external drives.

I don't do large scale video, photo or sound editing, nor am I up for gaming more complex than Zork, so I don't need a go-faster machine. The current one is fast enough.

I had spare keyboards and meeces lying around, as the iMac had been put away.

The screen was an issue. I usually kept the iMac set to 2650x1440, so a FHD monitor at 1920x1080 wasn't going to be good enough. I tried (i.e. borrowed for a couple of days) my wife's 4kUHD monitor (3840x2160) and set it to 2650x1440. However, that isn't a proper fraction of UHD, so everything was a bit fuzzy. I decided on a native QHD (2650x1440) monitor, and that, while not as sharp and crisp as the iMac, was a lot cheaper than a 5k monitor set to 2650x1440.

A good quality USB C to USB A hub, and my external drives are available.
 
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Since you're used to a 1tb SSD, better make that "a requirement" of any new Mac you buy.

16/18gb of RAM minimum, 32/48 is better.

If and when I buy a '24 Mini (not for a few more months yet), I wouldn't consider anything less than the base m4pro CPU.

You kept the old iMac for close to 9 years.
Better be sure that a new Mini is well-equipped-enough for similar "longevity"...
 
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Thanks all, really great feedback and advice.

I forgot to say in my original message that I picked up a Studio display in the Black Friday sales for just £1100, so that's been sat patiently waiting for any future incoming Mac separate. It’s just the failure of my iMac that has promoted this move quicker than anticipated.

After lots of deliberation today I think I’ll either go one extreme or another. The most likely is a base 16/256 with a fast external drive (£80 appears to get a decent 1TB), in the knowledge I’ve saved hundreds and hundreds of pounds to put towards an agree machine sooner in the future. Or im still wondering about going back on my original thoughts and pushing the boat out completely on a pro 24/512, using the money I saved on the display towards the pro bump from a normal 24/512, committing to hopefully a much longer purchase cycle.

In short I’m not sure doubling the cost of a base Mac to 24/512, or paying for an individual RAM (to 24/256) or SSD (to 16/512GB) bump really gains me any proper longevity.

🤔
 
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£1100 for the Studio Display is a great deal!

Personally, I would never get a HD below 512GB capacity. So for me, that would be an essential upgrade and I think that is probably the best machine for your use case (16GB RAM/512GB HD). I don't think you need more than 16GB RAM.

Once you start upgrading anything more than that, you are fast approaching the price of the M4 Pro Mini.

If you care about any of the following, maybe you should consider the pro mini instead:
  • Better GPU (obviously) --> occasional gaming perhaps?
  • Almost 2x Faster SSD
  • Thunderbolt 5
 
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Don't forget, people, you can always assign your Users folders to an external volume (like a fast SSD) if you start to run out of space on your internal drive. Just make sure it is formatted to APFS.
 
kmpowell said:
After lots of deliberation today I think I’ll either go one extreme or another. The most likely is a base 16/256 with a fast external drive (£80 appears to get a decent 1TB), in the knowledge I’ve saved hundreds and hundreds of pounds to put towards an agree machine sooner in the future.
Click to expand...
Nothing is totally future-proof, so you're really just spending money for an extra year or two.

FWIW, I have an M2 mini I bought about a year ago (my 2015 iMac also was getting long in the tooth). I put a larger external on it for media files, and it works just fine with the thunderbolt connection. I'm not doing heavy video editing though so YMMV. TBH I probably should have stuck to 256 SSD rather than 512 but it saves me worry about running out of built in space.
 
I fell down a rabbit hole of MM SSD speeds, and I saw this 256GB v 512GB.

Surely this makes the 512GB upgrade a no brainer...?

 
I did get the 512GB model, and it duplicates the results in the video.

However...
I have also duplicated my internal SSD drive to an external 512GB Samsung T7.
When I test it, I get read/write speeds of about 700 Mbytes/s, as against 3,000~4,000 Mbytes/s.
It's a lot slower, but still no slouch.
Booting up though, is a different story.
Booting from the internal drive, from power-on "Boing" to log-on is 14 seconds.
Booting from the external T7, from power-on "Boing" to log-on is 16 seconds.

I would still recommend the 512GB model, though.
 
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Yeah the Mac OS first time login process is so slow that wouldn't make much of a difference.

I have a small bunch of 24/512 Pros with external Lacie TB SSD's as Macs I'll actually sit in front of (as opposed to the base M4's I got as appliances) that I intend to hang onto for 5 years minimum. I'm not expecting to do much AI on these beyond AppI so I'm not particularly concerned about the memory pressure of LLM's, or from much else.

For my main Mac workload I'll wait to upgrade my old Studio to whatever M4 equivalent releases, and demote the current Studio to probably something to do with virtualization.
 
I decided to replace my 2020 Intel iMac 27 40RAM/1TB. Bought Studio display for about 1100 pounds or $1300 US plus tax. Hope the display lasts 10 years +. Considered a M4 Mini 24/512. Decided after talking to my accountant to go for a M4 Pro 24/1TB with educational discount. I am aware that this is much more machine than I need now but with more AI coming down the pike I thought that this would be prudent. I will be retiring in a few years so this will probably be the last machine I can write off on my taxes.
 
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ubinko said:
£1100 for the Studio Display is a great deal!

Personally, I would never get a HD below 512GB capacity. So for me, that would be an essential upgrade and I think that is probably the best machine for your use case (16GB RAM/512GB HD). I don't think you need more than 16GB RAM.

Once you start upgrading anything more than that, you are fast approaching the price of the M4 Pro Mini.

If you care about any of the following, maybe you should consider the pro mini instead:
  • Better GPU (obviously) --> occasional gaming perhaps?
  • Almost 2x Faster SSD
  • Thunderbolt 5
Click to expand...
You missed one - memory is 2.7x faster on the Pro, too.

OP: I'd go for M4 Pro (I did - specs in sig - still waiting for delivery!).
 
kmpowell said:
My usage is a mixture of work and recreational, so very HEAVY multiple tab web applications, heavy excel and powerpoint, and productivity such as Slack, chatGPT etc.
Click to expand...
That, to me, sounds like a case to boost RAM beyond the minimum. Apple has been so stingy with base config. RAM for so long that I don't trust what they consider the minimum to serve as a solid foundation for making it your primary system for a long time (i.e.: 'future-proofing'). You can add an external SSD for storage; you can't add external RAM.
kmpowell said:
My £aim is to save as much money as I can from my max £1000 budget for the Mac Mini. So, what HD/RAM combo config’ would you go for?
Click to expand...

kmpowell said:
After lots of deliberation today I think I’ll either go one extreme or another. The most likely is a base 16/256 with a fast external drive (£80 appears to get a decent 1TB),
Click to expand...
Like some others, I wouldn't go for a 256 gig SSD; I'd say at least 512. There are threads on this forum talking about things like Apple Intelligence not working if you boot off an external drive, moving your 'home folder' to the external to compensate, some occasional hassles with using an external SSD is your Startup Disc - see Posts #6 and #11 (a link) in https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...sues-than-internal-why.2438026/?post=33442015

There've also been mentions of some app.s expecting content to be on the startup disc.

In a nutshell, if you want this system to last a long time, it seems to me you ought to buy one with enough internal storage to remain your startup disc and handle more content than you presently see the need for.
kmpowell said:
Or im still wondering about going back on my original thoughts and pushing the boat out completely on a pro 24/512, using the money I saved on the display towards the pro bump from a normal 24/512, committing to hopefully a much longer purchase cycle.
Click to expand...
If you're bumping memory and SSD anyway, going to the M4 Pro and gaining Thunderbolt 5 seems nice.
 
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