The 2012 Mac Mini also is the oldest Mini that supports Metal in OS X El Capitan. http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/which-macs-support-os-x-el-capitans-metal
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Mac Mini late 2012 is a little gem
- Thread starter dorsetdreamer
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Absolutely.
Back in Nov.2012 I bought the standard i5 4GB RAM, and as I was using a VM, eventually I felt the need of a RAM upgrade. At the time the cost per 1GB of 16GB was much less than 8GB, so I went for it and never regretted, the beach ball became very rare. Recently I added a 500GB SSD (boot drive, internal), and it is much faster in every way. However the biggest difference is the boot time (from cold) and launching apps. Less evident is, of course, the benefit on processing time.
The overall performance is extremely good.
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I just subscribed, a thing i would like to do since a lot of time, so first things first, big shouts to everybody, you guys are great.
The mac mini is a gem for portability.
I actually own a Mac mini L2012, but i don't use it because it doesn't have the right amount of power i need. I know it's impossible to upgrade the CPU, since it's soldered to the LB. But, to avoid the "sell and buy another one" thing, theorically, is it possible to swap out the current Logic Board for a new one, ie the i7 LB?
The mac mini is a gem for portability.
I actually own a Mac mini L2012, but i don't use it because it doesn't have the right amount of power i need. I know it's impossible to upgrade the CPU, since it's soldered to the LB. But, to avoid the "sell and buy another one" thing, theorically, is it possible to swap out the current Logic Board for a new one, ie the i7 LB?
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Yes, theoretically it is possible to swap logic boards but it is far from practical. There is too much hassle involved in the swap and those LBs are not cheap. Rather than trying to "avoid" the "sell and buy another one" thing you should choose that route. It should cost less to simply swap computers.
What do you plan to do with this computer?
Lots of Audio Editing, with a high amount of audio tracks, so the Core i5 i know isn't enough. At least the 2.5 dual core. Lots of Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Ableton, stuff like that. And i mess with plugins. The I/O is not a problem to me. With TB i can expand ports as i want with daisy chains, and there's no big need for a Mac Pro. I worked on Xeons, too, and i love them. But the fact that i must get AMD Firepro's when the hardest video thing i need is just plug the screen or at least rotate a pic, always tend me to avoid the product, even if i love the design. I know you'd say, Hackintosh or iMac, but the everything i need, and i know i really need is faster processor, not better PC. I work on my MacBook Pro constantly and i love it, and there maybe i'm justified for a R9 card, just for powerup pixels.
My next buy, to summarize up everything is gonna be a cMP, with the power i need and a old card i'll leave up there 'til the Mac i do really need.
My next buy, to summarize up everything is gonna be a cMP, with the power i need and a old card i'll leave up there 'til the Mac i do really need.
I haven't run a Mini with 8GB RAM and a HDD, but I have run a Mini with 4GB RAM and (1) the original HDD and (2) an SSD. Lots of beachballs and delay with the HDD - eliminated with the SSD.
Welcome to the Macrumors Forums Veezer!
From your requirements, it does seem like the 2012 i7 mini is the machine for you. Have you shopped for logic boards yet? Just now a quick search found this promising "vaporware" used board.
http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Mac-Mini-Unibody-23GHz-Logic-Board-Assembly-Late-2012-p-26504.html
At $450 this LB still makes your "sell and buy" thing look attractive to me. Most of the new LBs that I saw ran between $550 and $750.
If you check the average price difference between the 2012 i5 and the 2012 i7 on Amazon the quad-core costs about $340 more. That is not bad Veezer!
This OWC used 4Gb/1Tb HDD mini falls in that range with a warranty! With a deal like this, you could let OWC pop in an SSD and do the memory yourself to save time, risk, and $.
Right newellj, that is usually the case. When a user installs an SSD the beachballs go away.
But why...
We all know about the huge speed advantage that an SSD has over an HDD. Most of your performance increase must have been due to that SSD speed boost. But here is my question. Was some of your improvement due to the fact that SSD storage is fast enough to mask memory swapping on a RAM poor system?
With the HDD, a memory poor system will swap and thrash causing beachballs and delays. If a similar process occurs with an SSD, it could be tough on the drive even if we don't see a performance hit.
I think we've finally reached the point where the mini is really powerful enough for anybody in the real world. I've got 4 of them , 2 x 2011 models and 2 x 2014 ones , the 2014 ones NEVER get hot !!! the 2011's on the other hand...
The mac pro is lovely don't get me wrong but is it really worth 3-4 x as much a a mini ? ( with less features - no sd slot )
The iMac doesn't do anything for me as I've had 2 over the recent years and they BOTH developed screen faults. No built in screens for me again thx.
The mac pro is lovely don't get me wrong but is it really worth 3-4 x as much a a mini ? ( with less features - no sd slot )
The iMac doesn't do anything for me as I've had 2 over the recent years and they BOTH developed screen faults. No built in screens for me again thx.
I'm looking at 'upgrading' my 10 year-old 20" Cinema Display. I had contemplated buying the current Apple display but that LG does look good.
However, the current Apple Display's resolution is perfectly matched to the Mac Mini at 2560x1600. That compares to the LG's resolution of 3440x1440. On the face of it, there's a miss-match between the Mac Mini's output resolution and that of the LG.
I can see from your posted picture that the Mac Mini appears to have no problem displaying on your LG monitor, but I wonder if you have any issues at all?
However, the current Apple Display's resolution is perfectly matched to the Mac Mini at 2560x1600. That compares to the LG's resolution of 3440x1440. On the face of it, there's a miss-match between the Mac Mini's output resolution and that of the LG.
I can see from your posted picture that the Mac Mini appears to have no problem displaying on your LG monitor, but I wonder if you have any issues at all?
I have a similar setup as the OP: In Jan 2015 I bought a Mac Mini Server (Late 2012) with the 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, LG 34UM95 34-Inch monitor via Thunderbolt, upgraded to 16GB ram, and replaced the second internal 1TB drive with a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, configured as a fusion drive.
I upgraded to Yosemite almost immediately after purchase. What I ended up with was the most unstable mac I have owned! It would freeze or crash every one or two days. It would freeze/crash after wakeup, during backups, while I was browsing, during heavy use, light use, etc, etc. Sometimes it froze with the color-wheel and other times it got a grey screen. I spent hours poring over logs and saw nothing abnormal. I tried reseating the connectors on the main board to no avail. I was ready to give up on this thing!
Then on 6/30 I installed Yosemite 10.10.4, and now 4 days without a freeze/crash knock on wood! Needless to say I'm thrilled! That's a record for this mac.
The are some annoying things about this setup. Like the inability to adjust the volume on the monitor's built-in speakers using the keyboard volume buttons. And the lack of a camera & mic. But it the stability holds up, I can live with this.
I upgraded to Yosemite almost immediately after purchase. What I ended up with was the most unstable mac I have owned! It would freeze or crash every one or two days. It would freeze/crash after wakeup, during backups, while I was browsing, during heavy use, light use, etc, etc. Sometimes it froze with the color-wheel and other times it got a grey screen. I spent hours poring over logs and saw nothing abnormal. I tried reseating the connectors on the main board to no avail. I was ready to give up on this thing!
Then on 6/30 I installed Yosemite 10.10.4, and now 4 days without a freeze/crash knock on wood! Needless to say I'm thrilled! That's a record for this mac.
The are some annoying things about this setup. Like the inability to adjust the volume on the monitor's built-in speakers using the keyboard volume buttons. And the lack of a camera & mic. But it the stability holds up, I can live with this.
I have a late 2012 Mac mini i7, 1TB/10GB RAM and just noticed within a week that it is going into some deep mode sleep and takes forever for it wake up with the progress bar line showing up where it didn't do this before. Anyone experience this and resolved it?
The reason for this behaviour could be the additional SATA cable you (probably) purchased for the SSD.
Cheaper 3rd party cables can lead to all kind of seemingly unexplainable problems, but only with SSD's. They usually operate flawless with spinning drives.
If the second cable was already present (from factory) or purchased directly from Apple or a reputated maker (those usually advertise the full SSD support as feature of their cables), you will see no difference between both slots.
Did you just update to 10.10.4? I've seen this complaint elsewhere. I think 10.10.4 may have enabled hibernation mode if you don't wake from sleep within a certain amount of time.