Best year mac mini for upgrading

[SpacemanSpiffed]

Thanks. As long as the clock speed difference does not translate into a big performance difference then the 2.3GHz is what I should be looking at as the basis of my calculation. Add to ebay price the cost of maxing RAM plus adding 256GB SSD. If it's close to similarly appointed 2.6Ghz or loaded 2.3Ghz, then buy higher end; else buy lower end and do upgrade myself.

One thing is for sure: I'm getting pretty burned sifting through ebay listings. Happens every time. This thing must end! ; )

I am of the view that you should include the 2011 server model in your search if.. and it's a significant *if* ... if you don't expect to need the faster speed of the USB 3.0 ports. which usually translates to - "Am I going to be using an an external USB hard drive a lot?".

The 2011 server is a Sandy Bridge quad core CPU - which is a huge jump from the Core 2 Duos in the 2010s and similar IPC (performance) to the Ivy Bridge CPUs in the 2012s. It will turbo up to 2.9Ghz under load (vs 3.3 for the 2.3/3.3 for the 2012), and get the job done.

The integrated graphics in the 2011 (HD 3000) are fine, unless you are playing games or doing 3D graphics - in which chase the 2012s have around twice the 3D graphics performance of the 2011 quad core. Anything 2D, or video playback should be just fine.

Having done some heavy duty software development on the mac, I can attest that for some situations the quad core really makes a huge difference (like when I would have multiple things running at one - server instance, xcode, iOS simulator, etc), and it sounds you are using a commercial software package which has multiple components running at the same time.

anyway, that's my 2 cents.

 

[macmesser]

Thanks for comments. The software is a client-server image database and I want the mini for the server and also as a workstation. I'll look at the 2011 servers on ebay. I think the mini servers generally come with personal OS and two large drives, which bumps the price up, and often less than full RAM. Do the regular 2011 minis come with the Sandy Bridge quad core processor?

 

[jpietrzak8]

I'll look at the 2011 servers on ebay.

BTW, Other World Computing (my personal favorite supplier of Apple stuff on the net) has a couple of 2011 Minis available in their used computer section at this moment:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Apple-Systems/Used/Mac-mini

 

[SpacemanSpiffed]

Thanks for comments. The software is a client-server image database and I want the mini for the server and also as a workstation. I'll look at the 2011 servers on ebay. I think the mini servers generally come with personal OS and two large drives, which bumps the price up, and often less than full RAM. Do the regular 2011 minis come with the Sandy Bridge quad core processor?

The regular 2011s were dual core (with all but the base model having discrete Radeon Graphics that year only) The quad core was introduced with the server model. For the 2012 models, the Quad Core migrated into the non-server models, with the dual-core becoming the base model.

I suspect the loss of the Quad Cores from the mini lineup is due to Intel's troubles and schedule changes with Haswell/Broadwell production, but that doesn't help us right now.

 

[ActionableMango]

As others have already warned, I'd be really wary of getting a 2011 if you ever plan to use external drives with lots of data. USB 2.0 is excruciatingly slow. Although it also has FW800 which is faster, those devices are relatively rare and still quite slow compared to USB 3.0.

However, you are probably in a networked work environment? If so you probably share your files that way anyway.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

...It appears that Amazon is chock full of 16 Gb sets for less than $80.

The i7 Quad-Core processors in the 2012 Macs (Intel "Ivy Bridge") support up to 32 GB RAM, for example:
http://ark.intel.com/products/64900/Intel-Core-i7-3615QM-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

Crucial has now some new SO-DIMM RAM modules (2 x 16 GB; 1.35 V):
http://www.crucial.com/csrusa/en/ct2kit204864bf160b

Are they compatible with the 2012 Mac mini computers (firmware)?

 

[SpacemanSpiffed]

The i7 Quad-Core processors in the 2012 Macs (Intel "Ivy Bridge") support up to 32 GB RAM, for example:
http://ark.intel.com/products/64900/Intel-Core-i7-3615QM-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

Crucial has now some new SO-DIMM RAM modules (2 x 16 GB; 1.35 V):
http://www.crucial.com/csrusa/en/ct2kit204864bf160b

Are they compatible with the 2012 Mac mini computers (firmware)?

Interesting question. The 2012 Mac Mini uses the HM77 chipset, but I don't think that impacts supported RAM. I have no idea, but I suspect some firmware support may be missing as they didn't exist at the time.

 

[macmesser]

BTW, Other World Computing (my personal favorite supplier of Apple stuff on the net) has a couple of 2011 Minis available in their used computer section at this moment:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Apple-Systems/Used/Mac-mini

I like OWC as well. Good stuff and excellent support. Nice thing about them is knowing you're buying not only the right thing but also the best thing, as support provides guidance.

 

[macmesser]

As others have already warned, I'd be really wary of getting a 2011 if you ever plan to use external drives with lots of data. USB 2.0 is excruciatingly slow. Although it also has FW800 which is faster, those devices are relatively rare and still quite slow compared to USB 3.0.

However, you are probably in a networked work environment? If so you probably share your files that way anyway.

I finally got my mini on ebay. Lost some great prices on auctions as I'm a casual ebayer but finally connected with a late 2012 2.6GHz; what I started my epic quest in search of. I agree about desirability of USB 3. Although none of my Macs except this Mini has it, I have about four USB 3 external 500 GB drives free. I had been using them for backups at home and office. They'll be perfect with the new Mini for its intended use. My LAN just got faster as we installed a high end switch to replace an 8 year old D-Link that had become a bottleneck.

 

[macmesser]

Interesting question. The 2012 Mac Mini uses the HM77 chipset, but I don't think that impacts supported RAM. I have no idea, but I suspect some firmware support may be missing as they didn't exist at the time.

Some of the confusion about cores is due to the fact that Intel puts different i# designations on their chips depending if they are "Desktop" or "Mobile" CPUs.

A Desktop i5 is (usually) going to be a Quad Core CPU without Hyperthreading, and a small amount of cache missing (either due to manufacturing defect, or fused off), while a mobile i5 is (usually) going to be a Dual Core CPU with Hyperthreading.

I say usually because Intel keeps messing with their designations from year to year, as new chip generations come and go. After a few years, it gets ... messy

The main differences between Desktop and Mobile chips are in two ares: Power Consumption and built-in GPU.

Desktop chips are going to have smaller integrated GPUs, but a much higher power consumption profile (TDP) - which translates into higher clock speeds. The less powerful graphics are made up by the fact that desktop users are more likely to (and can) have a dedicated graphics card.

Mobile chips need to work in laptops where battery life is very important and tiny systems where cooling is very important. The clocks speeds they give up compared to their desktop counterparts give them a huge edge in power (and heat) - To get that last gigahertz of clock speed takes a disproportionately large amount of the total power consumed, and produces a proportionately large amount of the heat that has t be dealt with.

Mac Minis have always used the laptop chips, allowing for their tiny size and great efficiency.

Anyway, back to the OP: Given the usage situation you described, I suspect that you will want to upgrade to an SSD drive as well as making sure you have enough RAM. For a database application that is going to get some use, the SSD should result in much better perceived and actual performance compared to a regular hard drive. The difference I suspect is going to be *many* times greater than the clock speed differences between a 2011 quad-core server and a 2012 quad-core mini.

Just got the late 2012 2.6 GHz w. 16GB RAM and a 256 GB crucial SSD + 1TB HD, from ebay. It still has a year of Applecare and came with wireless keyboard and mouse. Sometimes indecision is rewarded. Have yet to fire it up. Will do so as soon as I get a monitor cable. Wondering what the best way to connect a monitor to this machine is. Monitor has HDMI, VGA, DVI-D and USB for a built in card reader. Won't be using that with USB 3 on the Mac as I think it would slow down the bus to USB 2. An HDMI to DVI-D adapter came with the Mini. It's a 6 year old Acer monitor so a new one may be my next purchase, but my wallet needs to heal first. Can't wait to check this baby out. After I sign off here I'll borrow the HDMI cable and boot it up. : )

 

[ActionableMango]

I finally got my mini on ebay. Lost some great prices on auctions as I'm a casual ebayer but finally connected with a late 2012 2.6GHz; what I started my epic quest in search of. I agree about desirability of USB 3. Although none of my Macs except this Mini has it, I have about four USB 3 external 500 GB drives free. I had been using them for backups at home and office. They'll be perfect with the new Mini for its intended use. My LAN just got faster as we installed a high end switch to replace an 8 year old D-Link that had become a bottleneck.

There are some really good USB 3.0 solutions for classic Mac Pro these days.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-is-the-state-of-usb-3-0-on-mac-pro.1501482/

 

[macmesser]

There are some really good USB 3.0 solutions for classic Mac Pro these days.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-is-the-state-of-usb-3-0-on-mac-pro.1501482/

Thanks for link. Will check for my 5,1 flashed Mac Pro.

 

[macmesser]

Does anyone know if the USB 3 ports on the 2012 Mac mini share one controller? I'm guessing they do but it would be great if each had its own.

 

[ActionableMango]

Does anyone know if the USB 3 ports on the 2012 Mac mini share one controller? I'm guessing they do but it would be great if each had its own.

I seem to remember my 2012 as having two USB 3.0 controllers, so one controller per two ports. But it was a long time ago when I looked. To be certain, you can check yourself quite easily--just open System Profiler, expand the "USB 3.0 Superspeed Bus" category and see what's listed there. (Oh, unplug any USB hubs beforehand to avoid confusion in the list.)

If you need an additional dedicated USB 3.0 path, you could hook up a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter. Unfortunately such things are surprisingly expensive.

HDMI is probably the best way to hook up your existing monitor, but if you already have a DVI cable, that's fine too with the supplied adapter.

 

[macmesser]

I seem to remember my 2012 as having two USB 3.0 controllers, so one controller per two ports. But it was a long time ago when I looked. To be certain, you can check yourself quite easily--just open System Profiler, expand the "USB 3.0 Superspeed Bus" category and see what's listed there. (Oh, unplug any USB hubs beforehand to avoid confusion in the list.)

If you need an additional dedicated USB 3.0 path, you could hook up a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter. Unfortunately such things are surprisingly expensive.

HDMI is probably the best way to hook up your existing monitor, but if you already have a DVI cable, that's fine too with the supplied adapter.

Thanks for the tips. Will keep the adapter in mind. Two controllers should be OK. I might have two drives on one controller but I'm thinking that would be fine. I found an extra HDMI cable that the cable guy left us and all is working well. The fusion drive is pretty zippy with just the OS; I'm wondering at what point it will start behaving more like its 80% HD side. Nice little machine.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Just got the late 2012 2.6 GHz w. 16GB RAM and a 256 GB crucial SSD + 1TB HD, from ebay. It still has a year of Applecare and came with wireless keyboard and mouse. Sometimes indecision is rewarded. Have yet to fire it up. Will do so as soon as I get a monitor cable. Wondering what the best way to connect a monitor to this machine is. Monitor has HDMI, VGA, DVI-D and USB for a built in card reader. Won't be using that with USB 3 on the Mac as I think it would slow down the bus to USB 2. An HDMI to DVI-D adapter came with the Mini. It's a 6 year old Acer monitor so a new one may be my next purchase, but my wallet needs to heal first. Can't wait to check this baby out. After I sign off here I'll borrow the HDMI cable and boot it up. : )

You scored the right model, congrats! I am sure you will be extremely happy with that mini. Thumbs up!

 

[macmesser]

You scored the right model, congrats! I am sure you will be extremely happy with that mini. Thumbs up!

Thanks! I'm loving it already. Quite a zippy little guy.

 

[Celerondon]

...The fusion drive is pretty zippy with just the OS; I'm wondering at what point it will start behaving more like its 80% HD side. Nice little machine

Never!
That is the elegance of the engineering behind the Fusion Drive (FD). Although a targeted task (huge file) can reveal the difference between a FD and a solo SSD once the SSD portion of the volume approaches capacity, there is always a reserved "landing zone" to accelerate routine disk writes.

My FD is two years old and contains ~350Gb of information. I did not notice any change or impairment at the 128Gb threshold or anywhere else. I believe that there has been a change but I would need to test the mini to reveal the difference.

What is your boot time from chime to login screen? Come back to this forum to let us know how your FD performs as you fill it up.

 

[occamsrazor]

What's the difference between the 2012 mini and 2012 mini server? I understand the server came with two drives, but internally is all the hardware and slots present to support two drives in the standard mini. Eg if you get a standard mini with 256gb SSD can you add a second drive just by slotting it in?

 

[Celerondon]

What's the difference between the 2012 mini and 2012 mini server? I understand the server came with two drives, but internally is all the hardware and slots present to support two drives in the standard mini. Eg if you get a standard mini with 256gb SSD can you add a second drive just by slotting it in?

Nope.

That is one advantage to purchasing the server model. It comes with cables and hardware for a second drive whereas the single drive models do not.

A similar situation exists with the 2014 Fusion Drive (FD) models. They are the only new minis that are sold complete with full set of storage connections. in other words, the 2014 FD with cables and hardware for the PCIe SSD and SATA storage makes it easy and less expensive to upgrade either drive.

 

[occamsrazor]

Nope.

That is one advantage to purchasing the server model. It comes with cables and hardware for a second drive whereas the single drive models do not.

A similar situation exists with the 2014 Fusion Drive (FD) models. They are the only new minis that are sold complete with full set of storage connections. in other words, the 2014 FD with cables and hardware for the PCIe SSD and SATA storage makes it easy and less expensive to upgrade either drive.

Wow, I didn't realise that... Thank you for your reply. So basically if you think you'll want to use both drive slots, then your choices are:

2012 Mini Server
2014 Mini with Fusion Drive

Wasn't the 2012 non-server also available with Fusion Drive?

Thanks...

 

[Celerondon]

Wasn't the 2012 non-server also available with Fusion Drive?

Yes it was offered that way. In fact, I am using a 2012 FD right now.

You can always purchase the additional hardware later if you decide to purchase a single-drive mini. The additional bits can get rather pricey for the 2014 with PCIe storage. The newer minis are a bit tougher to get into as well. Of course, that speed advantage that PCIe has over SATA has pushed plenty of forum users to add a blade type SSD to their 2014 mini.

 

[occamsrazor]

Yes it was offered that way. In fact, I am using a 2012 FD right now.

You can always purchase the additional hardware later if you decide to purchase a single-drive mini. The additional bits can get rather pricey for the 2014 with PCIe storage. The newer minis are a bit tougher to get into as well. Of course, that speed advantage that PCIe has over SATA has pushed plenty of forum users to add a blade type SSD to their 2014 mini.

Thanks for the continued info. What are the "additional bits" called, as in how would I search for them on the net? I'm currently looking to replace my aging early-2009 mini and debating which models. While the PCIe SSD in the 2014 models would be nice, the lack of a quad-core is a real turn-off for me (I do a lot of CPU-intensive tasks like re-encoding of music etc) so I'm looking at a 2012 2.6 i7 (as it seems a lot of people are given the uninspiring 2014 "upgrade"). So to sum up within the 2012 models.....

- 2012 Mac Mini non-server with single HDD or SSD would NOT have the storage connections for a second drive
- 2012 Mac Mini non-server with Fusion Drive WOULD have the storage connections for a second drive
- 2012 Mac Mini Server of all configs would have the storage connections for a second drive

Is that correct?

 

[SpacemanSpiffed]

Thanks for the continued info. What are the "additional bits" called, as in how would I search for them on the net? I'm currently looking to replace my aging early-2009 mini and debating which models. While the PCIe SSD in the 2014 models would be nice, the lack of a quad-core is a real turn-off for me (I do a lot of CPU-intensive tasks like re-encoding of music etc) so I'm looking at a 2012 2.6 i7 (as it seems a lot of people are given the uninspiring 2014 "upgrade"). So to sum up within the 2012 models.....

- 2012 Mac Mini non-server with single HDD or SSD would NOT have the storage connections for a second drive
- 2012 Mac Mini non-server with Fusion Drive WOULD have the storage connections for a second drive
- 2012 Mac Mini Server of all configs would have the storage connections for a second drive

Is that correct?

occamsrazor, what you need for a 2011 or 2012 mini with a single drive is this: [Amazon.com] iFixit Mac Mini Dual Hard Drive Kit. I used one in my 2012 i7 2.6 to add a 2tb Samsung laptop HDD

OWC and others also makes similar kits.

One thing about the 2014s is that the shift to PCIe (M.2?) SSD drives wasn't to make the Mini less upgradeable or something like that. The reason they did it was speed - SATA was designed for spinning drives, and the interface maxes out data transfer at 600MB/sec (~550 in practice) - more than traditional hard disk can manage, but without moving parts, the flash chips in SSDs are capable of much more than that - over a gigabyte a second if enough PCI lanes are available.

 

[occamsrazor]

The reason they did it was speed - SATA was designed for spinning drives, and the interface maxes out data transfer at 600MB/sec (~550 in practice) - more than traditional hard disk can manage, but without moving parts, the flash chips in SSDs are capable of much more than that - over a gigabyte a second if enough PCI lanes are available.

Yes it's a good point... Bit of a tough decision really - faster SSD vs faster CPU. On balance I think I'm still tempted by the 2012 model simply for the quad-core processor....