Mac Mini Late 2012 Whats up with it?

[eljanitor]

Not so sure how I'm liking this Mac Mini. I had a Mac Pro 1.1 and I loved it right until it stared having some issues, possibly power supply issues. So I Got a Late 2013 Mac Mini with the i7 Ivy bridge processor, and bought 16 GB of RAM.

I decided to use migration assistant to move everything over form my Mac Pro and I was happy with this new mini, until I noticed some graphics issues, and what seemed to be a general reduction in speed. So I thought you know I'll install Mavericks. That helped with some of the graphics issues, but it wasn't solving how slow the mini had become in 4 months.

So after trying everything I could to avoid wiping it and rebuilding my OS from scratch I realized I had no choice. My OS was so corrupted that apps would just freeze randomly, the dock would never launch at start up etc etc, and it took about 3- 5 minutes to boot fully. Time to clean reinstall and merge everything manually, thanks Migration assistant.

So far besides being severely disappointed with migration assistant, I also don't like the fact that when I'm playing a steam game for any longer then 20 minutes the fan goes into high until I quit steam and even then it takes about 2 minutes to rev down.

Seriously My Mac pro 1.1 seems to have been a better machine then this i7 Mac mini. Anyone else have issues with this model of Mac Mini?

 

[evangw]

If you don't have a Fusion Drive, that's where the problem is. OS 10.9 is really optimized for SSD and Fusion Drives; I have a late 2009 iMac and it's really much faster when I boot into 10.6.8 than 10.9. The new OS designs are really terrible for HDD Macs, but I'm not sure it's possible to put 10.6.8 on that Mac Mini though, it might have driver incompatibilities or whatever. Best bet to speed it up is probably to get an external SSD and boot from that, I guess, and use the internal just for data.

 

[fa8362]

Never had any issues with Mountain Lion. Never, ever would use any automated migration feature, regardless of how safe it's claimed to be. When I migrate, I take my time and copy files over manually. I reinstall all software from scratch.

Installed the first release of Mavericks on an external drive, but haven't committed to it because there were software and hardware incompatibilities with my system. Haven't tried the latest Mavericks.

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestions:

1. Buy an SSD of your choice. It doesn't have to be overly "large" in storage capacity -- 240gb will do, and they sell for the "sweet spot" in SSD pricing at the moment.

2. Buy either an external USB3 enclosure or a USB3/SATA docking station. MAKE SURE that whatever you buy has "UASP support" (USB attached SCSI protocol). Here's an enclosure that does:
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Ina...933&sr=8-1&keywords=inateck+usb3+uasp+support

3. Put the SSD into the enclosure/dock, initialize it, and install OS 10.8.5 onto it. DO NOT install Mavericks.

4. Migrate your accounts and apps to the SSD, but if you have large amounts of music, movies, pics, etc. -- LEAVE THEM on the internal HDD.

5. Boot and run the Mini from the external SSD with 10.8.5. You -WILL- enjoy the speed and performance this setup gives you. Don't put very much in the way of "junk" onto the SSD -- keep it lean and clean.

 

[Yvan256]

Speed up Mavericks

Disable the "memory compression" feature of Mavericks. My Mac mini has regained most of its speed after I did that.

I'm not sure if it's related to not having a SSD or only having a Core 2 Duo, but that's one Mavericks feature that shouldn't be enabled on older systems.

 

[Hungry&Foolish]

Disable the "memory compression" feature of Mavericks. My Mac mini has regained most of its speed after I did that.

I'm not sure if it's related to not having a SSD or only having a Core 2 Duo, but that's one Mavericks feature that shouldn't be enabled on older systems.

How do you disable the memory compression?

 

[oneMadRssn]

Never, ever would use any automated migration feature, regardless of how safe it's claimed to be. When I migrate, I take my time and copy files over manually. I reinstall all software from scratch.

This is the best advice. I've never had anything but trouble with migration assistants; whether its Microsoft or Apple. It's best to spend the time to do it manually. Plus, it's usually a good opportunity to do some cleaning and reorganizing.

Also, while the suggestions here to upgrade to an SSD aren't wrong; the Mac should run fine without an SSD; at least as good as your previous non-SSD Mac Pro. I don't think you need to spend more money to fix this issue; just spend time re-installing everything.

 

[Yvan256]

How do you disable the memory compression?

Disable compressed memory.

 

[Hungry&Foolish]

Disable compressed memory.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[chrfr]

Disable the "memory compression" feature of Mavericks. My Mac mini has regained most of its speed after I did that.

I'm not sure if it's related to not having a SSD or only having a Core 2 Duo, but that's one Mavericks feature that shouldn't be enabled on older systems.

I strongly disagree with this. Memory compression makes Mavericks far more usable on an Early 2008 Macbook Pro (with an old slow disk) than 10.8.x ever was.

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Seriously My Mac pro 1.1 seems to have been a better machine then this i7 Mac mini. Anyone else have issues with this model of Mac Mini?

The disks in the Mini are slower than pretty much any disk that was in even an early Mac Pro, and this is likely why you're finding it slower.

 

[Schnort]

OS 10.9 is really optimized for SSD and Fusion Drives

That's an interesting spin on 'doesn't do a good job of caching important files and spends a lot of time seeking unless you have an SSD with 0 seek time'

I strongly disagree with this. Memory compression makes Mavericks far more usable on an Early 2008 Macbook Pro (with an old slow disk) than 10.8.x ever was.

He's got 16GB of RAM. If mavericks still needs memory compression to avoid paging, something is horribly broken.

 

[chrfr]

He's got 16GB of RAM. If mavericks still needs memory compression to avoid paging, something is horribly broken.

Good point. In any case, I don't believe that disabling memory compression is a real fix for this issue. What I was trying to communicate is that it's my experience that memory compression is a benefit and is unlikely to be the root cause of the slowdown.

 

[eljanitor]

Wow, I never checked the HD Speed but yes its 5400 RPM, that would make some difference. I think I'll try a SSD drive and see how much difference that makes.

 

[chrfr]

Wow, I never checked the HD Speed but yes its 5400 RPM, that would make some difference. I think I'll try a SSD drive and see how much difference that makes.

It will be huge. Even converting it to a Fusion Drive will make a significant improvement.

 

[Jambalaya]

Your Mac Mini is much faster and more advanced than mine (2009 dual core, now with 8gb RAM) and my machine runs really well under Mavericks. I confess I don't know what the steam game is, I use mine for normal home / home office stuff plus ripping dvd's and encoding video files. What I did do was put a 750GB HDD into it running at 7200rpm (blackmagic speedtest gives 110 read/write). I wanted 500+ storage and SSD was too expensive (did the upgrade a year ago)

 

[eljanitor]

It will be huge. Even converting it to a Fusion Drive will make a significant improvement.

Bought OWC's Data doubler and installed a SSD. Very nice problem solved TY for the advice

 

[brand]

If you don't have a Fusion Drive, that's where the problem is. OS 10.9 is really optimized for SSD and Fusion Drives; I have a late 2009 iMac and it's really much faster when I boot into 10.6.8 than 10.9. The new OS designs are really terrible for HDD Macs,

Do you have any Apple documentation to support those claims?

 

[smithrh]

Do you have any Apple documentation to support those claims?

You've been around long enough to know that the amount of released information from Apple is tiny compared to what they actually know internally.

Now, not saying that the person you're quoting is right (I think they aren't) but you're asking for something that Apple would never document.

 

[Saint.Icon]

If you don't have a Fusion Drive, that's where the problem is. OS 10.9 is really optimized for SSD and Fusion Drives; I have a late 2009 iMac and it's really much faster when I boot into 10.6.8 than 10.9. The new OS designs are really terrible for HDD Macs, but I'm not sure it's possible to put 10.6.8 on that Mac Mini though, it might have driver incompatibilities or whatever. Best bet to speed it up is probably to get an external SSD and boot from that, I guess, and use the internal just for data.

This is straight up BS.

Mavericks has optimization for SSDs, but that doesn't mean that it's less efficient than Mountain Lion with traditional HDDs. You can go see this with benchmarks easily - even with spinning hard drives, Mavericks will score better than ML.

That's like saying that a 4WD vehicle will only work well on dirt roads, and because it has great 4WD capabilities it doesn't work on pavement anymore.

OP's problem is that he used Migration Assistant instead of doing a clean start. That's it. All his old, corrupted junk from years of his old Mac's hard drive got piled onto the new Mac Mini, causing all the issues.

 

[chrfr]

This is straight up BS.

Mavericks has optimization for SSDs, but that doesn't mean that it's less efficient than Mountain Lion with traditional HDDs.

It works perfectly fine for me even on standard disks. It's not slower than Mountain Lion, either.