Mac Mini Shopping list and a question...

[AlexMaximus]

Hello Dear Mac Mini enthusiasts !

As everybody know in June/July the new mac mini will be released. Now I finally want to join the fun mini club. However there is one question remaining where I need your opinion:

Planing on the cost for the current mini, I will pic the GPU option as well as the faster i7 CPU option in June. I do play that occasional game once in while and do all the standard things, such as web, office, study, photoshop and such. Because I also rip tons of CDs and DVDs, I will need a DVD drive as well. For that one I will go with this solution here:

http://www.newertech.com/products/ministackmax.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by5C34nldTo

I love this package a lot and I can't wait to configure my new mini 12' in June with this. Since I will buy the empty enclosure I want to fill it with a 600 GB Raptor HD with the new 6Gig interface to run off the FW800 port. This HD will be the gaming HD that runs windows 7. The mac mini core itself will be outfitted with an SSD later on.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digit...9T0M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334431849&sr=8-1

Now considering the cost involved with this project, I will easily hit the 1400 $ marker. My problem with this price is that I could easily get a decent used Mac Pro 2009 Tower that most likely has more horse power from the start.

How can I justify this cool mini project against a used Mac Pro 3,1 or even 4,1 ??

What would you do and advice ??

 

[fa8362]

I'd forget about gaming or buy an iMac. I wouldn't want a hot, noisy, power drinking mac pro under any circumstance.

 

[Demosthenes X]

For $1400 you can also get a refurbished 27" iMac. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC813LL/A

 

[paulrbeers]

First off, while we believe an update is coming in June/July, we don't "know" it will. It is all pure speculation. It could be this summer or this fall for all we "know". Just want to be clear.

Second, we don't know what Apple will offer for configurations. There is no guarantee Apple will ever offer another discrete GPU in a mini. That was a first for any Intel based Mac Mini. I hope they do, as I will be buying it, but I wouldn't consider it fact at this point.

Third, assuming Apple sticks to the same enclosure for the next Mac Mini, the MiniStackMax is a nice enclosure.

Fourth, why wouldn't you just partition the SSD with a small Windows Partition for boot camp? 30-40GB should be good enough for Windows 7 and several games and you still get the superfast SSD for boot purposes and that will be considerably faster than a Firewire Mechanical drive (even a Raptor). Frankly, after going SSD, I won't use even Raptor drives for OS and applications anymore. I only use mechanical drives for data storage (music, videos, etc.).

Lastly, a Mac Pro 2009 is a great computer but it will lack Thunderbolt, have no warranty (or very little if the previous owner bought Applecare), already be 3 years old which means it will be that less "life left" in her, and don't forget you wouldn't be getting an SSD as a boot drive so you are left with a slow mechanical. You need to take that cost out of your equation.

 

[Poki]

For the usage you mentioned, even the basic 2,3 GHz Mini with a SSD would be faster than any Mac Pro (without a SSD) out there. You just don't do anything which needs more processing power than any Mini out there offers right now. As for gaming, I'd rather look on the graphics card, which isn't capable of running all modern games right now. Maybe the next Mini will have a better one, but it's unlikely to see a big improvement this year due to the 10 watt power restriction for the graphics card.

You could hope they would give the Mini more graphics power by using MBA-like SSDs to save power and space, so they could built in a bigger power supply as well as a bigger graphics card (after all, a 2,5" HDD fits in the enclosure as well as a optical DVD drive, so there would be plenty of space), but that's pure hoping as Apple is unlikely to give the Mini as much power as possible. It's just the wrong machine for the power hungry users.