I will recommend OCZ Vertex 4 until I'm blue in the face
Mine works PERFECTLY, and gives me results better than ones I've seen from Samsung. Yes, it's a very RELIABLE drive. No argument there, but the Vertex 4 in hands down the fastest drive I've ever tested. And yes, there are other drives that perform better in 1 or 2 tests, but I'm talking from an overall average of the tests. Especially when looking at uncompressable data, there's no contest. The Vertex 4 wins hands down every time.
It also comes with a 5 year warranty, and excellent customer service.
Again, no argument that the 830 is a solid SSD. However, the OCZ is way better in my opinion. And at $99 for 128GB on Amazon ($199.99 for 256GB) it's a steal for a drive this fast.
-EDIT-
By the way, to answer your question, Yes, the Mini is a SATA III
Also, if you go to crucial's website the 1600mhz RAM is only $5 more than the 1333. It's a speed boost, regardless if you personally notice it, for only $5 more lol. I'll be getting the 1600 when I order my Mini in September (got like 2.5 weeks left lol)
I assumed that the Adobe list is referring to the HD4000 and newer, since I already knew that the HD3000 was not compatible. I recall reading somewhere a month or two ago that the HD4000 is compatible but I wanted to confirm it first before posting. I figure that the Adobe list is good enough for me unless someone comes up with something more specific.
BTW thekev, thanks for all the good info. I almost always find something worthwhile in your posts. A lot of posts on MacRumors are long on emotion and short on fact and first-hand experience.
Now if Apple would just update the Mac Mini...
]
) as long as the Mac I'm using supports 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM sticks. Crucial will replace them free of charge for life basically. Obviously there's some restrictions blah blah but that's what did it for me. ]
I was planning on going with Patriot RAM as I've read nothing but good things on Newegg and Amazon, and because it's $86 for 16gb as opposed to $103 for Crucial.
Now I'm %100 getting Crucial 1600mhz RAM simply because of the LIFETIME warranty. I will NEVER have to buy ram again (unless I need more than 16GB
Crucial claims 100% compatibility with the 2011 2.7ghz i7 mini. That + lifetime warranty is exactly what I needed to hear to convince me.
) but not everything that you put on it will use that much bandwidth. The 40Gbps TB offers can be enough for a videocard to outdo the Intel HD 4000. That means it would suffice for some. The biggest problem is not bandwidth though, it's the price tag. You're looking at a price tag that goes towards the iMacs price tag (I'm including the TB cable, the PCIe box and the videocard in this price tag)! It just seems more economical to go iMac.
ha, just ran across this. If we even knew back then, how much more ridiculous it would get in 2014... I own 4 mac's (all 2011 and 2012). I would be hard pressed to buy another one where I'm left without any option to upgrade, when and how I see fit.
That's why you should anticipate your future needs and spec it up accordingly. Or, you could just buy what you need for now and when you need more power, sell it off and use the funds to buy a new one. Resale value is pretty stable for Macs.
True, Mac's hold their resale value extremely well for hardware. When buying hardware and were talking a few hundred bucks either way, I'll always spend a bit more when it makes sense (like a massive processor upgrade). I did spend more for the beefier i7 quad-core processors for the 2011 and 2012 because it made sense (I upgraded the ram, SSD myself). They're both fantastic machines, never had a single issue.
Not really. The CPUs have always been soldered. Soldering RAM isn't anything new - it's the trend. Even other PC manufacturers are doing the same.
I mean, the CPUs have been soldered since the 2011 Minis. I know that in regular PCs (and even the 27" iMacs, plus the nMPs), they're not soldered. The trashcan Mac Pros even use LGA2011 sockets.
ha the mysterious windows windows machine. you'll have to let me know when you run across it again.
I have a late-2014 Mini (i7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD) in my office as a test machine. But most of the time, I use my two 12-core trashcan nMPs plus my rMBPs.