Should I upgrade to a 2012 mini?

[Frengers]

Hi,

I need more power and on a budget, so I am considering to upgrade to a Mac Mini 2012.

I am currently working on a Macbook Pro 2.4 intel core i5(late 2010 i think) with ssd and 8gb ram.

I am a photographer and do a lot of editing in Photoshop with 500mb - 4gb+ files as well as a lot of Lightroom and Capture One. Slowly starting to get into video as well. And my current setup just can't handle it anymore.

So my question is how noticeable it would be to upgrade to a base i7 2.6 mini that i will upgrade myself to 16gb ram and ssd?

I am even considering to put in two ssd's in raid0, how much more beneficial would that be?

Another big plus would be to get thunderbolt and usb3.


All input is appreciated!

 

[benwiggy]

Absolutely. I got a 2.6Ghz Mini with Fusion drive, and it is FAST. I upgraded the RAM to 16Gb myself.
I was fed up of waiting for the iMac, and the mini still has FireWire (and audio in), which the iMac doesn't.
It handle's Photoshop easily. I've no trouble with the GPU, either.

You can check the Geekbench scores against your old MBP, which should give you some indication of how much more powerful the new mini is.

I'm not sure what benefit you'll get from Raid 0 with two SSDs. My advice is to order the Fusion drive.

 

[LaunchpadBS]

Are you going to be using the HDMI port for the monitor with the Mini?

 

[benwiggy]

Are you going to be using the HDMI port for the monitor with the Mini?

I'm using both the HDMI and Thunderbolt ports to power 2 x Apple 20" Cinema Displays. I've heard reports of problems with the HDMI port, but it's absolutely fine here.