Buying a used Mac from OWC?

[ChrisA]

out of curiosity, what can they do being so old?

I bought a 2014 vintage Mini from them and it is working right now as a mini-server. It runs a backup from my NAS to the cloud and also a virtual machine that hosts some Linux-based home automation services.

So for $120 I got a dual CPU Intel i3 with 8GB RAM with a small SSD that can run headless (no keyboard or monitor) and keep all my smart light switches and backups going. Not bad for the price.

I could have wiped the SSD and installed Linux but one of the services needed to run on MacOS.

Maybe I will buy another $70 Mini to run "Klipper" which is the controller for 3D printers. Most people run Klipper in a Raspberry Pi, but it running better on any old Mac. The 10 year old Intel Minis are very reliable and do not need power-bricks and come with a nice case with good cooling.

 

[Boyd01]

So for $120 I got a dual CPU Intel i3 with 8GB RAM with a small SSD

AFAIK, the 2014 Mini only offered 1.4, 2.6 and 2.8ghz i5's and a 3.0ghz i7 dual core CPU's - no i3's. The 2018 Mini line includes i3, i5 and i7 models.

But I agree the prices are attractive and they can be used for a number of things. My 2014 Mini runs iTunes with home sharing under MacOS Mojave. I access it with two AppleTV's, Mac, iPad and iPhone. I see that OWC is currently selling this exact same Mini for $49 today! Only 4gb of non-upgradeable RAM and a slow 500gb hard disk. But that's enough for a server, I don't use the internal hard drive and boot off an old 500gb Samsung T3 external SSD while a second external 4tb SSD holds my media library.

My 2012 quad Mini is a fileserver and time machine destination with 20tb of external disks.

 

[ChrisA]

AFAIK, the 2014 Mini only offered 1.4, 2.6 and 2.8ghz i5's and a 3.0ghz i7 dual core CPU's - no i3's. The 2018 Mini line includes i3, i5 and i7 models.

But I agree the prices are attractive and they can be used for a number of things. My 2014 Mini runs iTunes with home sharing under MacOS Mojave. I access it with two AppleTV's, Mac, iPad and iPhone. I see that OWC is currently selling this exact same Mini for $49 today! Only 4gb of non-upgradeable RAM and a slow 500gb hard disk. But that's enough for a server, I don't use the internal hard drive and boot off an old 500gb Samsung T3 external SSD while a second external 4tb SSD holds my media library.

My 2012 quad Mini is a fileserver and time machine destination with 20tb of external disks.

You are right, I'd forgotten. It is an i5. The specs are more than good enough to run MacOS and a virtual Linux system. The mini sits on top of the Synology NAS and keeps it synced with a cloud backup. Yes, I could run the backup on the Synology system but they charge a lower price to backup a Mac and quite a bit more for a NAS. So I lauder the data through the Mac. While doing this it has no problem running Home Assistant and related services on the Linux VM.

Old Mini's are really handy if you can use them "headless" as low-power servers. As said, I might buy another Mini to use as a 3D printer controller (Klipper) as they are now priced close to the cost of a Raspberry Pi.

Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini7,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 8 GB