I've made no secret of my opinion about the (over)pricing on the new Mac mini in other threads, and my own (personal + consulting company) tally of Mac Pros is now up to 6(1 x 2006, 1 x 2007, 1 x 2008, 2 x 2009 (4,1>5,1), 1 x 2010)...so clearly my thought process is always leaning toward the big, beautiful, incredibly flexible towers. In addition to my own personal uses for video, utility, and serving, I have also deployed nearly a dozen to various clients for server duty as well.
As I started working on a proposal for a client's expansion from single user to new office, I was trying to balance my cMP affection w/ practical considerations, including cost efficiency, expandability, and future OS support. When I was looking at the components I'd like to have, I realized I needed/wanted 5 PCIe slots' worth w/ only 4 available slots:
Oops, 1 too many. NVMe boot is not critical, just nice to have, esp since we can do it officially now! But I'd just have to do w/o that. So then I got to thinking about the opposite end of the spectrum, the new Mac mini. It pales in expandability, right? Except...it needs no slots (or external TB chassis, etc.) to provide:
- NVMe [for boot]
- GPU [GT120 would be fine...just need display occasionally]
- RAID [probably Areca-based internal SAS setup from MaxUpgrades]
- 10Gb Ethernet
- USB3 [for backup drives and other file transfer]
And it's already got NVMe boot. So that just leaves RAID, which could pretty effectively be handled by something like a ThunderBay or Pegasus. Hmmm.
- GPU [and the weakness of that doesn't matter in *this* case]
- USB3
- 10GbE (when optionally configured for $100)
For further background, I'd likely be building up a 2009 cMP with 6-core X5680/90 and 32GB RAM; the Mac mini I'd consider would be the 6-core as well w/ same RAM.
Of course, the main problem w/ the Mac Pro now in 2018 is that we have to "waste" several PCIe slots for modern functionality that's included in current systems. Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic we can still add these technologies 8-9-10 years later, but they unfortunately limit further improvement unless you start looking at a PCIe expansion chassis— which I have done, but would be unnecessarily complex and overkill for this job.
Cost-wise, I can get to roughly equal capability for less money w/ the cMP, but since I'm reselling this to a client and the refurbishment and prep involves my time, I need to include a reasonable markup in the sale. I'll try not to make this long post overly longer, but in a nutshell, I'm comparing these approx. prices to the client:
So, only around $300 apart... Again, the cMP is w/ my refurbishment, cleaning, testing, CPU upgrade, X520 flashing, and some assembly included. Could probably cut some corners and bring that down a little, and if it were for my own uses, my time would be "free", of course. Comparing that way (my cost alone), the cMP would be around 35-40% less.
- cMP + X5680/32GB/250GB 860 EVO/X520 DA2 10GbE/MaxUpgrades Areca RAID/KT-4004/SoftRAID: $2002
- Mac mini 2018 + i7 6cx/32GB/256GB SSD/10GbE + ThunderBay w/ SoftRAID: $2278
Anyway, this has been kinda eye-opening for me, given this use case. I'm still leaning toward the cMP, as it still has more configurability and internal capacity, but the mini will have a better-performing CPU, quicker boot SSD, and longer support from Apple. Not really looking for a definitive answer here, but would love to hear other arguments, counters, and input here. What are your pros/cons for each? How would you adjust the config of either to make it better suit this type of use or to be more cost effective?
Thanks!
Fred
Honestly i would go with the mac mini. The technology in the mac pro is getting old. For around the same price i think the mac mini is the best choice...
