Help configuring new 2018 Mac Mini

[FrenchPB]

Dear all,

I am considering getting rid of my late-2010 27-inch iMac for a new 2018 Mac Mini for the following uses :

• playing HD videos with VLC : 1080p/ 60 fps or maybe 4K videos in the future, once I'll have the right display
• Plex server : video files are streamed to my other devices (iPad, iPhone)
• Photos app : 20.000 photos stored on the Apple Photos app, minor editing,
• iTunes for music

I don't do games or programming on my computer. The most CPU-heavy task might be video decoding (I don't do encoding since Plex do it on the fly).

Based on those needs, I believe a new 2018 Mac Mini directly connected to my 55-inch Full HD TV might be more than enough for me (I might get a 4K TV in a year or two). I would still use Plex media server to watch video files stored on my computer on my other devices, but I could just run VLC to watch high quality files on my TV without Plex.


As a consequence, I have a couple of questions to pick the right configuration :

• would it make sense to consider the 3.0GHz 6-Core Processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz model instead of the 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ?
  > I don't know whether VLC, Plex or Photos use multi-threading a lot or if that might be needed to decode 4K video files.
  
  
• if RAM is really user-upgradable, how much RAM should I consider putting into this machine for the foreseeable future ? My 2010 iMac has 12 GB RAM installed. I've always bought Crucial memory to upgrade my Macs in the past, not to pay the premium Apple put on those parts
  
  
• how should I define my needs for SSD storage ?
  > My Photos library is 150 GB : would performance suffer if my Photos library was stored on a USB-3 external hard drive ? I was thinking of having two USB-3 external hard drive connected to the Mac Mini, with only system files/ applications on the Mac Mini SSD hard drive. Does that make sense ?

I hope you guys can help me pick the right confguration for my needs.
Regards,

David

 

[ElectronGuru]

A few thoughts

Upgrade from vlc to iina
https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/

Check out the nPlayer family for iOS, it can play most formats directly
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nplayer-lite/id1078835991?mt=8

External ssd+usbc is plenty fast for your files and even 2tb won’t break the bank

Usb3 is still useful for 8tb spinners if you need backup or larger storage

8gb is probably plenty

6 cores will be overkill for a number of years but helpful if you expect to keep it for a decade

Find out what HiDPI is and turn it on

It’s not yet clear how good new mini is with 10 bit 4K video

 

[tubedogg]

Keep in mind that unless you are streaming files that your devices can play natively, Plex is transcoding ("on the fly" encoding) to make your files viewable, which can use a lot of CPU depending on how many streams you have going at once and the resolution of the files.