Fully Maxed Out Mini?

[HUGE AL]

In the market for a beast of a machine and do not have the luxury of waiting for the updated Studio. Know the sweet spot for the Mini is the base model...and have seen some photos of people daisy chaining them together but not sure how that actually works. Fully get that Apple's pricing is whack when you start upgrading, but they have also handcuffed us into making the decision once for things like RAM and internal storage (yes, saw the videos of soldering). Hoping for some thought leadership and opinions with the assumption that, yes, this is insane for the price -- more than the old Mac Pros.

Appreciate the guidance!

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

What guidance is it that you want, since you seemt to know what is required of you, and you give us no usage parameters to work from?

You can't wait for the Studio, hence you buy the M4 mini and upgrade it to whatever specifications you require. If you need a beefy GPU, then you pick the M2 Studio Max/Ultra instead.

 

[bp1000]

All I will say is the M4 Ultra is going to be nuts. If you need it, wait.

Otherwise get the base m4 and sell when the ultra is here.

If you don't want that hassle, the baseline m4 pro with 12 cores and 24gb ram is phenomenal value and best bang for buck IF you need the extra compute power.

 

[jb310]

A fully maxed out Mini looks like it'd be amazing for anything outside of dealing with the most demanding machine-learning uses. I don't know what your needs or use case would be, but a fully upgraded Mini would work fine for the vast majority of professional use cases.

 

[Wheel_D]

One aspect of the M4 Mini Pro that I haven't noticed get much attention is the option to get four additional GPU cores (20 instead of 16). Supposedly, this "maxed out" configuration would yield a 15-25% increase in GPU performance. Unfortunately, it's also $180 extra. Would it be worth it?

 

[HUGE AL]

All I will say is the M4 Ultra is going to be nuts. If you need it, wait.

Otherwise get the base m4 and sell when the ultra is here.

If you don't want that hassle, the baseline m4 pro with 12 cores and 24gb ram is phenomenal value and best bang for buck IF you need the extra compute power.

Agree. Wish the Studio would release sooner.

A fully maxed out Mini looks like it'd be amazing for anything outside of dealing with the most demanding machine-learning uses. I don't know what your needs or use case would be, but a fully upgraded Mini would work fine for the vast majority of professional use cases.

Use case is music production, video production, very vast photo library and editing, and a bunch of stuff running at all times (this is an ADD thing 😂).

One aspect of the M4 Mini Pro that I haven't noticed get much attention is the option to get four additional GPU cores (20 instead of 16). Supposedly, this "maxed out" configuration would yield a 15-25% increase in GPU performance. Unfortunately, it's also $180 extra. Would it be worth it?

Yup. I like to future proof my stuff. Maxed out two 6,1 Mac Pros and loved the little stress as time went by.


So bumped the insanely priced storage from 8TB down to 2TB figuring one of the new USB4 NVMe Enclosures (looked at HyperDrive and OWC) might suffice. Took the total down $1953.

Since I'm no engineer, looking for validation that I'm on the right track here since Apple's addon pricing is crazy.

 

[chrono1081]

Personally if I were in your case, I would get the baseline mini to tide me over, then get the studio when it's released and sell the mini or use it for something else. A new studio is likely only two-three months away. A lot of stuff utilizes graphics cards these days for computation (Final Cut does if that's your video software) and I feel like for what you're going to use it for you'd take advantage of it.

 

[Wheel_D]

Agree. Wish the Studio would release sooner.

Use case is music production, video production, very vast photo library and editing, and a bunch of stuff running at all times (this is an ADD thing 😂).

Yup. I like to future proof my stuff. Maxed out two 6,1 Mac Pros and loved the little stress as time went by.


So bumped the insanely priced storage from 8TB down to 2TB figuring one of the new USB4 NVMe Enclosures (looked at HyperDrive and OWC) might suffice. Took the total down $1953.

Since I'm no engineer, looking for validation that I'm on the right track here since Apple's addon pricing is crazy.

Agreed.

One potentially important note: Youtuber Quinn Nelson ("Snazzy Labs") is not enthused about the capacitors Apple uses in the Mac Mini's power supply. He claims that they're mediocre and may be prone to failure.

 

[HUGE AL]

Personally if I were in your case, I would get the baseline mini to tide me over, then get the studio when it's released and sell the mini or use it for something else. A new studio is likely only two-three months away. A lot of stuff utilizes graphics cards these days for computation (Final Cut does if that's your video software) and I feel like for what you're going to use it for you'd take advantage of it.

Thought we were looking at late next year -- which would make sense in "Apple Time" :

M4 Mac Studio and Mac Pro Launching in Mid to Late 2025

Mac Studio and Mac Pro machines that are equipped with Apple's next-generation M4 chips will be some of the last Macs to be refreshed with the...

www.macrumors.com

Agreed.

One potentially important note: Youtuber Quinn Nelson ("Snazzy Labs") is not enthused about the capacitors Apple uses in the Mac Mini's power supply. He claims that they're mediocre and may be prone to failure.

Very informative. Appreciate the link. Sadly, there's not much we can do about it aside from paying for AppleCare.

Otherwise, hoping the current config makes more sense. (Still can't get over that storage pricing. )