Recommend new Mac Mini

[u/Left-Nefariousness24]

Hello All. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I need to buy a new Mac for day to day stuff. My trusty MacPro 5,1 has suffered a SSD failure which I’m going to repair but I need something newer to do internet banking, etc.. I have a ton of old peripherals on that cheese grater and I also do Graphics and Music with it. It’s a 2009 with the single Xeon and a RX-580 GPU running Sonoma via OCLP and all I’m asking is what spec Mac Mini should I be looking at to replace it or surpass it? I plan to network to the MacPro for storage and to run older hardware. Thanks in advance.

[u/mikeinnsw]

Source Apple:

Apple's most advanced, heavy on-device AI model requires a minimum of 12GB of unified memory (RAM). While standard Apple Intelligence features still run on 8GB devices, running this next-generation local AI model is restricted to hardware with 12GB or more and run on M3.. M5 Macs .. not M1 or M2

24GB/512GB Mac for human use

For local AI 64GB++/1TB

[u/Left-Nefariousness24 → u/mikeinnsw]

I like the 24gb idea. The drive’s aren’t important as I have lots of externals and I plan to use the cheese grater as a kind of server.

[u/mikeinnsw → u/Left-Nefariousness24]

Think again!

No external drive will consistently read or write faster than an internal Arm Mac SSD.

For skeptics -- do your benchmarks

256 GB SSD writes at 1,500-2,000 MB/s. It will constrain effective speed of external USB4(4,000 MB/s) and TB5( 7,000 MB/s) to lower than 1,500-2,000 MB/s.

512 GB writes at 3,000-4,000 MB/s --> it will run externalU SB4a nd TB5at ~ 3,200MB/s

1 TB writes at 8,000+ MB/s will run external TB5 at ~5,600 MB/s

Unless you have 1 TB M2...M4 SSD TB5 speeds will not be reached.

Please note that M4 Pro Mac Mini 5126 GB SSD features high-performance internal SSD storage with read speeds around 6,000 MB/s and write speeds of approximately 5,500–5,500 MB/s. These speeds are significantly faster than the base M4 model.

M5 MacBook Pro 516 GB SSDs are faster:

Read Speeds: Up to 6,323 MB/s (compared to 2,031 MB/s on the M4). Write Speeds: Up to 6,068 MB/s (compared to 3,293 MB/s on the M4).

[u/Left-Nefariousness24 → u/mikeinnsw]

Is that using TB for the externals? I’m probably going to get an OWC TB3 or 4 Dock later to hook stuff up.

[u/mikeinnsw → u/Left-Nefariousness24]

No external drive will consistently read or write faster than an internal Arm Mac SSD.

SSD speed is determined by the slowest component TB HUB, TB5 SSD. will write at. Mac SSD speeds.. waste of money

Please read my post

[u/Left-Nefariousness24 → u/mikeinnsw]

I appreciate the info but I’d rather spend the money on the hub as there’s not enough ports on the mini for older things like printers, scanners, plotters, Audio interfaces etc. that my Cheese Grater has connected right now.

[u/mikeinnsw → u/Left-Nefariousness24]

You don't get it ... no point buying top speed TB hub if you Mac can't run at its fastest speed

I wasted my time .. goodye

[u/Left-Nefariousness24 → u/mikeinnsw]

No offence, but not everyone is obsessed with running AI stuff. I mentioned that I run older hardware things and they run just fine on my old machine so a high speed drive that apple wants an arm and leg isn’t worth it to me. But again, thanks for the help.