Just bought a new 2014 Mac mini. It’s still getting setup but I’m very excited for it. What do you guys recommend putting on it?
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Bought a Mac mini (returning to store tomorrow)
- Thread starter slooksterPSV
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I recommend putting an external SSD on it with High Sierra.
I think chabig was really recommending the drive, and not the system itself.
Does your mini have a spinning hard drive - or an SSD as the built-in system boot drive?
A hard drive will be sluggish, at best. An SSD will be as good as you might hope for, and hopefully that's what you got with the mini.
Does your mini have a spinning hard drive - or an SSD as the built-in system boot drive?
A hard drive will be sluggish, at best. An SSD will be as good as you might hope for, and hopefully that's what you got with the mini.
Yes. Adding an SSD is the single best thing you can do to that computer. I have the same machine, running off of a Samsung T5 external USB SSD. It's night and day different from the spinning hard drive inside the machine. In fact, I use the internal hard drive as a backup disk--a purpose for which it is well suited. Once a week, SuperDuper automatically clones the SSD boot drive to the internal hard disk.
Oh haha forgot to complete my thought. Yeah an SSD would be great. I have one I can rip from my pc. I was just thinking how odd it was it had high Sierra on it. I thought it would have had El Capitan or Sierra. Not high sierra
I put a SSD "in it". Voids the warranty but took all of 10 minutes. Without the SSD it is almost unusable.
If you purchased it new or refurbished, then Apple always puts the current OS on it. It would have had to be sitting on a shelf for a long time to come with an older OS.
I've owned a lot of new Macs over the years. And, even when they used to ship with DVD's, they'd come with the latest software installed if you purchased it from Apple. Even if it was an older model, or a refurbished much older model.
For the ones that had sat in retail boxes at various independent dealers, they offered an update CD at a price that ranged from free to $19.95 depending on factors of the machine versus how long it had been since the update had been available.
???????
I have one and the oem hd works just fine....NOT sluggish...if he puts a SSD in it and has problems with modifying it...will you fix it for him?????
The HDD is fine for now. I yearn for an SSD but the spinning disk is fine. Overall it took 5 hours last night to get it setup.
Visual Studio
Xcode
Netbeans
Angular IDE
Python 3
Microsoft office 365
The speed of the drive and system overall is the largest concern when upgrading from a HDD to a SSD, but honestly the deciding factor for me to switch to a SSD in my Mac mini was noise. I found the stock HDD to be snappy enough (don't get me wrong, a SSD is clearly faster) to not have that be the factor causing an itch for change.
I had a particularly clicky stock HDD (turned out to be an operational noise) and that coupled with the generic whirring just did me in. I have never had too much of a proper desk setup, and I usually have the computer on top of the desk literally 2 feet from me. Now with a SSD, it literally makes NO noise. I was gaming on it lately to test out Metal, and even with such intensive tasks and the fan keeping the CPU cool, it doesn't make noise.
I've never owned a computer that makes no noise, I mean you would think that is was fanless. It's honestly incredible and takes a lot of the paranoia aspects out of the equation as far as sitting here and just using my computer, not feeling the need to look up information trying to diagnose some sound coming from it.
I had a particularly clicky stock HDD (turned out to be an operational noise) and that coupled with the generic whirring just did me in. I have never had too much of a proper desk setup, and I usually have the computer on top of the desk literally 2 feet from me. Now with a SSD, it literally makes NO noise. I was gaming on it lately to test out Metal, and even with such intensive tasks and the fan keeping the CPU cool, it doesn't make noise.
I've never owned a computer that makes no noise, I mean you would think that is was fanless. It's honestly incredible and takes a lot of the paranoia aspects out of the equation as far as sitting here and just using my computer, not feeling the need to look up information trying to diagnose some sound coming from it.
Odd mine doesn’t make any sound. I have to look to see if the light is on on it. It’s still catching up to all the photos I loaded, downloading emails, just various things. Its still amazing . I’m so happy I got it.
. I’m so happy I got it.
I’m putting Norton on. Some of my emails have viruses because of the junk mail. Still loving my experience.
Well that is odd. If I render video the fans on my 2012 Mini are very loud, even though it has a SSD. It's silent with normal use, but not if you stress the CPU.
Regarding antivirus software, see this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/antivirus-on-mac-yes-or-no.2115077/
Thank you for the link. I haven’t had a virus on my PCs for years right? I mainly keep it just in case because I do do a lot with word documents, excel, etc. from sources that are trustworthy but can’t fully confirm. You never know when a teachers system is infected and hands those files to the students.
I don't find mine to be noticeable at all. It doesn't make any noise at all, seemingly. System temps were normal, and the fan was definitely running, plus I could feel heat pouring from the back vent if I placed my hand there.
It's just a singular fan in there. It must have some form of omission but I personally can't hear it, perhaps with the gameplay and such contributing.
Try ripping some video in Handbrake, or rendering in Final Cut Pro.
I did. I think I’m going to augment with my 128GB SSD though. I’ve let it build indexes download email etc for almost a week but it’s not as fast as my 2009 MacBook. Cpu and ram usage are low, a lot lower than I thought they would be so I think the disk in it just isn’t fast enough to keep up with me. I did try resetting the smc safe mode etc. Can I clone my HDD to my ssd?
Whenever I look at activity monitor I see that the cpu is almost idle, ram hovers between 2-3GB and dusk is like spiking randomly up and down. In two hours it read 6+GB and written 1.3GB but beach balls ahoy when opening an app or waiting 5-12 bounces. To be honest I was expecting this to be faster than the MacBook running El Capitan.