Hi, I was deciding to build a pc next year however since The Mac mini with M1 came out my mind is kind of 50/50 whether to go for Mac mini (which will save me a lot of money compared to custom-built pc) I mainly do gaming on pc which is why I was deciding to build a new pc. My question is, how good is Mac mini compared to custom-built windows pc when it comes to gaming? I love macOS that’s one of the critical factors stopping me from going for The pc build.
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Mac Mini M1 VS Custom Pc
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Don’t buy a Mac if the primary usage is gaming.
Build your gaming PC or buy a console.
Build your gaming PC or buy a console.
Well, YouTube is back, so you can still have a look at these videos
I think it really depends on what kind of gaming you're doing.
If you're like me (mostly emulation / retrogaming) it can certainly do it. It's still in early stages but ETA Prime (check his YouTube channel) already tried emulation and it game good results. It will only improve with time.
Games coming from Apple Arcade or IOS surely work well.
Other than that, it seems to be a hit or miss situation. Maybe game streaming will be the best choice, up to a certain point.
I think it really depends on what kind of gaming you're doing.
If you're like me (mostly emulation / retrogaming) it can certainly do it. It's still in early stages but ETA Prime (check his YouTube channel) already tried emulation and it game good results. It will only improve with time.
Games coming from Apple Arcade or IOS surely work well.
Other than that, it seems to be a hit or miss situation. Maybe game streaming will be the best choice, up to a certain point.
A lot of the top title games are built for the PC and for the Nvidia cards in mind. I suspect the market for the Apple Silicon Macs are rather limited at first in terms of gaming performance and some games would require you to own an RTX 2000 or 3000 series GPU to experience their fullness. So far, the M1 macs' GPU performance is a bit less than the GTX 1650 card, which is Nvidia's entry level. It's an ok card, but it's no match against the RTX 2060/70/80 and the current RTX 3070/80. Eventually though, the Apple Silicon Macs' GPU performance will catch up to the RTX 2000/3000 series and perhaps surpass them, but how long do you want to wait. Maybe M2 or M3 generation would do? Don't know, but building a custom PC isn't difficult and gives you so many upgradable options. With the M1 mac, once you bought it, you can't change anything because it's an SOC (System On a Chip). So to upgrade, you need to re-buy a new Mac as its current form does not even allow you to add an eGPU. I would wait until the Apple Silicon Mac matures a bit before I sink my teeth in. But that's me.
I'm honestly in the same boat. The convergence of the Apple OS ecosystem makes the Mac Mini a serious option though, something that a custom gaming PC won't be able to truly offer, unless you can figure out a way to install Big Sur on an Intel chip gaming PC. Even then, there's a reason why Apple is moving to SoC. It's a question of efficiency.
Yes, you can install more RAM on a gaming PC, but the M1 can do more computations with less RAM, so, it's a different ballgame altogether. I personally bought my last (and first) Apple computer almost 10 years ago now, and it's still performing rather robustly. Granted I've been able to add RAM to it, and add a secondary SSD.
I think taking a bet with the Mac Mini is a very viable option, especially given the security and privacy concerns that come with Windows OS. There's no other really serious contender in the OS sphere, unless you're a pro Linux/Python coder that can build yourself a system as secure as MacOS. But that's kind of what you're paying for when you get the Mac Mini. It's all the developer ecosystem, future updates, and responses to future security threats.
That's why I'm leaning towards Mac Mini, even though it would be nice to have a powerful gaming PC that I can upgrade every year, and perhaps mine crypto when I sleep. And yeah, maybe you will have to get a new Mac Mini in 5 years time, given how fast technology moves, but imagine being one of the few who has a Mac Mini in 2021. It'd be like being one of the few who had the first iPhone when it came out in 07/08. Automatically at an advantage. Also, this will give an incentive to game developers to include AppleTV OS as a platform for future games. Surely most won't, but some will, and it will be worth the ride.
Yes, you can install more RAM on a gaming PC, but the M1 can do more computations with less RAM, so, it's a different ballgame altogether. I personally bought my last (and first) Apple computer almost 10 years ago now, and it's still performing rather robustly. Granted I've been able to add RAM to it, and add a secondary SSD.
I think taking a bet with the Mac Mini is a very viable option, especially given the security and privacy concerns that come with Windows OS. There's no other really serious contender in the OS sphere, unless you're a pro Linux/Python coder that can build yourself a system as secure as MacOS. But that's kind of what you're paying for when you get the Mac Mini. It's all the developer ecosystem, future updates, and responses to future security threats.
That's why I'm leaning towards Mac Mini, even though it would be nice to have a powerful gaming PC that I can upgrade every year, and perhaps mine crypto when I sleep. And yeah, maybe you will have to get a new Mac Mini in 5 years time, given how fast technology moves, but imagine being one of the few who has a Mac Mini in 2021. It'd be like being one of the few who had the first iPhone when it came out in 07/08. Automatically at an advantage. Also, this will give an incentive to game developers to include AppleTV OS as a platform for future games. Surely most won't, but some will, and it will be worth the ride.
Sorry, your logic escapes me here. I'm not arguing against getting an M1 Mini but I don't understand why it would be an "advantage" in and of itself. I waited for the iPhone 3g and ended up with a much better phone than the early adopters of the original model. And why would purchasing a Mini provide an incentive for game developers to support the AppleTV?
If the M1 Mini fits your needs then you should definitely get one. I just don't see how any of these things support such a decision.
Dang, I didn't expect to get checked this early into my macrumors journey, but I welcome it. I guess it's not so much the Mac Mini, but more so the M1 chip. It just seems like a game changer, in being the first Apple-designed chip to be included in its line of desktop/laptop computers since Apple worked on the G4 chips. The Mac Mini seems like the perfect host for it though, what with not being hampered down by a battery that could fail in a few years, or being designed without a fan at all. You also get to choose your own monitor!
I recon you're probably right in perhaps waiting out the first wave of these for an "iPhone 3g equivalent". It seems inevitable that Apple will release an upgrade for this one in the not so distant future, perhaps in the form of a new iMac, or Mac Pro, however I don't think anyone would be wronged by jumping early.
I do all my gaming on the AppleTV platform, so perhaps I wrote too quickly. I just meant that a lot of big titles aren't available in the App Store, and, so, it would be nice if there was more gaming done on MacOS, tvOS, and iOS, to motivate developers to maintain versions for the Apple OS sphere.
These are some good points.
With that said...
The M1 is impressive and I'm not discouraging a Mac mini but want to remind/point out, an upper-middle or high end graphics card has as much volume (i.e. size) and consumes as much or more power as a Mac mini. And that's just the graphics card, not an entire gaming PC. In other words, if the games you play need the highest performance graphics subsystems, a Mac mini is probably not suitable.
With that said...
The M1 is impressive and I'm not discouraging a Mac mini but want to remind/point out, an upper-middle or high end graphics card has as much volume (i.e. size) and consumes as much or more power as a Mac mini. And that's just the graphics card, not an entire gaming PC. In other words, if the games you play need the highest performance graphics subsystems, a Mac mini is probably not suitable.
You're totally right on that point.
I doubt it will make a huge impact for gamers anytime soon but the M1 is still in its infancy, and technology will evolve. We'll have to wait and see how/where it goes. It's a nice start so far, let's all be fair.
Maybe streaming services will help it gain more momentum someday?
I also assume Apple is also expecting to get IOS gamers to join the bandwagon when apps are more optimized.
Anyway, it's still nice to see the machine perform well for some PC gaming through emulation, or Mac gaming through Rosetta 2. The first retrogaming tests seem to show a good potential too.
We should also keep in mind that the Mini starts at $699 / ¥72,800+VAT.
I don't know about your country but here, in Japan, you don't get anything stellar for that price in the PC world (an i7-10700 with no graphic card, or an i3/i5 with a GTX-1650 or 1660, all in a much bigger footprint).
Heck, building a PC around a Ryzen 4750G and no GPU would cost me about ¥100,000, though I admit I would also gain the possibility to upgrade the system.