Honey I Shrunk the Mini

Interesting. Apple have significantly shrunk the mini and chucked an M4 in there…

https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-mini/

Edit: just reading through the specs, they’ve fitted 3 x Thunderbolt 5 ports (and 2 x USBC at the front). 10 GbE is still a £100 option. Power supply is still internal. Oh and they kept the headphone jack 😂

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 30-Oct-24 08:58:54)

Moving two USB ports and the headphone socket to the front is a long-overdue improvement. Not so sure about putting the power button on the bottom That wouldn't fit in with my current setup where I have two stacked Minis and an (even smaller) HP Mini PC stacked on top of them.

Yeah. Front corner at least would have been better, so you don’t have to reach around. I’ve got into the hang of feeling for the power button on my Studio but honestly just putting it on the front would be better.

I’m hoping there will now be more forthcoming third party peripheral updates that will take advantage of Thunderbolt 5’s increased bandwidth and power handling capability over TB 3 and 4. Not that TB3 was / is particularly shabby, but TB5 finally looks like a chunky step forward by Intel that TB4 wasn’t.

Glad that Apple have supported it. Needs more vendors behind it now.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Moving two USB ports and the headphone socket to the front is a long-overdue improvement. Not so sure about putting the power button on the bottom That wouldn't fit in with my current setup where I have two stacked Minis and an (even smaller) HP Mini PC stacked on top of them.

What a strange place to put the power button, maybe they think people will not use it that much.
Saying that, my Mac mini is normally left on, it is only when I take it to my partner place that I turn it off.


A bit small that new Mac mini, I would be worried about it over heating with little room for air to move around.

If anything my experience with Apple Silicon machines both laptop and desktop is that they actually *over*engineer the cooling systems rather than under do it. My Studio is truly ridiculously over engineered in this respect. I wouldn’t be too concerned there. Apple will have done their homework.

In almost (to the millimetre) footprint of the new Mac Mini have a UM790 Pro from minisforum which runs a Ryzen 9 (7940HS). It’s a little toaster in comparison 😂

When it comes to low power consumption, Apple is still miles in front.

Edited by Pheasant (Thu 31-Oct-24 08:08:20)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

When it comes to low power consumption, Apple is still miles in front.

Anything ARM is much lower power consumption. I'm still wanting to play with a Snapdragon Elite X thing; but nobody will buy me one.

That new Mini with M4 looks nice, the cooling will be no issue as its much taller, but the power button will annoy; unless you can power on from the keyboard (wasn't it one of the Power Macs that did that?)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

If anything my experience with Apple Silicon machines both laptop and desktop is that they actually *over*engineer the cooling systems rather than under do it. My Studio is truly ridiculously over engineered in this respect. I wouldn’t be too concerned there. Apple will have done their homework.

In almost (to the millimetre) footprint of the new Mac Mini have a UM790 Pro from minisforum which runs a Ryzen 9 (7940HS). It’s a little toaster in comparison 😂

When it comes to low power consumption, Apple is still miles in front.

x86 chips are toasters
But yes, they do have them in mini computers and if they can cope in those conditions then I suppose the M4 should be ok.

One of the reason I got the Mac mini was because of power consumption, fed up with my PC hitting nearly 100 watts just on idle

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

x86 chips are toasters
But yes, they do have them in mini computers and if they can cope in those conditions then I suppose the M4 should be ok

You may not have looked at the 13th and 14th Gen intel stuff, where they are being made by TSMC fabrication plants. Things are changing fast in Intel world.

One of the reason I got the Mac mini was because of power consumption, fed up with my PC hitting nearly 100 watts just on idle

In many cases that's the assumption of many PC builders to use a huge PSU to support lots of spinning rust and an insane GPU.

The Mac Mini, even the x86 version, is essentially a laptop.

Average consumption of my (ancient) SurfaceBook (Intel CPU) is 36W - that includes the screen. Average consumption of a Mini M1 (ignoring the display) is 39W (50W for an M2 mini).