Looking to buy first mac mini

[RollingRock1988]

I currently have a black carbon shell macbook running lion.

My windows pc, mostly used for gaming, died last week. I am not upset since I have been wanting a mini for a while.

What does the server version of lion do? Will I be able to sync my macbook with it?

I am looking to do gaming with Steam. Are the current maxed out specs on the mini good enough? The AMD gnu is powerful enough for Valve games?

Can I put more than 8gb of ram in it? I was thinking up to 32gb since other macs can handle it.

 

[Mr.C]

You don't need to get the server version for general use including gaming. The server version is more for a multi computer and multi user network like a small business. If you want to exchange information with your MacBook as long as it's on the same home network as the Mini you can do that.

In my opinion if you're a serious gamer then the Mini is not right for you even the maxed out one. For casual/occasional gaming it's fine. However more and more games are requiring 512MB of VRAM and higher end graphics cards. Even games that do run you will probably have to play at low to medium settings unless they are quite simple or basic. Games like Crysis 2 probably won't even run.

Officially Apple states it can support 8GB of RAM. Some people on these forums have indicated you can install as much as 16GB of RAM. That said for normal use including gaming you shouldn't need 16GB let alone 32GB. Besides I highly doubt the Mini can handle that much.

If you want a Mac for serious and/or regular gaming then you probably need to look at the mid to high end iMacs. That said the selection of games on the Windows platform far out number those on Mac.