Thinking of picking up a Mac Mini for xcode, final cut pro

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Hey everyone, was thinking about getting back into the Mac game. Been into building gaming PCs, the past couple of years so have not had a daily type Mac in a while. I am thinking about getting a new Mac, and not really interested in an MBP as I am now done with school and rarely find myself using my gaming laptop as it is. Mostly on the main gaming desktop. My dad has a (Late 2016 maybe?) MBP 15" that I use sometimes, and I find Mac OS a bit clunkier these days from what I remember. Maybe it is just me (mind you I have not used Mac OS regularly since maybe Yosemite) YouTube gets annoying to exit full screen in with the touch bar among some other things I dont really like. I digress, I want to get into some XCode. I could use the MBP, but I would rather kind of do my own thing. That, and I am kind of tired of paying $30 a month for the Adobe creative suite since I mainly just use Premiere for my YouTube channel. I don't think that the ultra base $800 Mac Mini will cut it for 4K editing, as my gaming PC with 16GB of ram chokes rendering 4K and that has an i7 6700k and a GTX 1070 that it uses for CUDA acceleration. Would probably need at least 16-32GB of ram and an i7 to really do what I want it to do. Kind of just looking for opinions on who maybe uses their late 2018 mac mini for Final Cut and Xcode to see how they feel about it. $1600-2000 is kind of a lot for a more suitable mac mini in my opinion, especially since there isnt a dedicated GPU. (At that point I might as well just stick with what I have or invest in a more modern build). Thanks for all input! Looking forward to joining the Mac community again!
 

pigoo3

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$1600-2000 is kind of a lot for a more suitable mac mini in my opinion, especially since there isn't a dedicated GPU.

In the last 12 months or so...Apple has really upped the performance of the computer lineup:

- Mac-Mini's with up to 6 CPU cores.
- iMac's with up to 8 CPU cores.
- MacBook Pro's with up to 8 CPU cores.

Yes I agree...$1600-$2000 is a lot for a Mac-Mini (especially without a dedicated GPU).

I'm usually not a tremendous fan of 21" iMac's (since for just a bit more can usually get a 27"). But I think the "sweet-spot" right now would be a 6-core 21" iMac. It has similar CPU performance to the 6-core Mac-Mini...but also has a dedicated GPU...for basically about the same price. And of course it has a built in display.:)

HTH,

- Nick
 
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Good point on upping the performance. I would consider an iMac, however I already have 3 displays. One is a 4K@60, main is 1440p at 144hz and the other is 1440p at 60. Don’t even know if the Mac mini could run all that now that I think about it.
 

pigoo3

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I would consider an iMac, however I already have 3 displays.

Maybe my main point was missed.:)

If you can get a 21" iMac for about the same price as a similarly configured Mac-Mini...AND...the iMac comes with a dedicated GPU (and basically get the display for free)...the 21" iMac is a much better deal!

You're getting a dedicated GPU and builtin 21" display for basically the same price.:)

- Nick
 
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Ah yes perhaps I did lol. I see now, however even then, it would be tedious for my particular situation as I would probably still use my gaming Pc primarily, and would have to love the iMac when not in use to get back to my 3x setup. First world problems as they say :)
 
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Why are you stuck on a Mac Mini?
From what you said you need, and your experience of what's already been choking, a Mac Pro or high end iMac is the only recommendation I'd make.
The Mac Mini has always been more of a "portable" media center to me.
 
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Why are you stuck on a Mac Mini?
From what you said you need, and your experience of what's already been choking, a Mac Pro or high end iMac is the only recommendation I'd make.
The Mac Mini has always been more of a "portable" media center to me.

True, however I did forget to mention that while using my dads MacBook Pro with imovie and 4K it is a much smoother and less ram intensive experience, making me believe it is much better optimized than premiere. His has a skylake i7 and 16gb of ram. So maybe the Mac mini can do more with less so to speak.
 
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Welp, after some research and price shopping, the best decision for me was to upgrade my gaming/editing pc to 32GB of ram and a Samsung 970 PRO as my scratch disk. This should greatly improve my experience. Maybe I will play around with xcode in a VM or with my dads MBP. Thanks for the tips.
 

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