Mac Mini (M4 Pro) tested: Tiny titan

[Admin]

The Mac Mini is smaller, and more powerful, than ever. But it's the $599 model where you'll find the value.

Mac Mini (M4 Pro) tested: Tiny titan : Read more

 

[abufrejoval]

I got an Orange PI 5+ with 32GB of soldered stacked RAM and 8 ARM CPU cores for €220 early this year.

Paid a few extra Euros for a metal chassis that doesn't have corners rounded as nicely, but the power button is reachable without tilting it over. Another few Euros went into a tiny Noctua fan to make it unnoticeable if not 100% passive.

It came with two 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports and an NVMe v3 x4 slot, which takes 8TB drives without complaining.

It's obviously not the same speed, even if the iGPU quite capable of running animated Google Maps 3D renders at 4k on a 43" screen using Chromium much better than Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 on a hefty dGPU workstation, it shows just how extortionate the Fruity Cult is and how bad a lot of 3D software.

The various Linux variants available for it allow you to choose between a more Fruity UI design, something more Microsoft, or plenty of other varients or just Android if that's what you prefer.

Plenty of choice, very small budget: what a change!

P.S. there is even another M.2 slot for the Wifi of your choice or 5G if that's what fits better.
P.P.S. It also runs Proxmox and a Windows for ARM VM on it.

 

[bit_user]

I got an Orange PI 5+ with 32GB of soldered stacked RAM and 8 ARM CPU cores for €220 early this year.

...

It's obviously not the same speed, ... it shows just how extortionate the Fruity Cult is ...

I love how far the SBC market has come, and give huge credit to Orange Pi for offering the RK3588 in its maximal form. However, there's just no comparison between that little machine and the M4 Pro. In terms of pure CPU performance, it's on par with a Sandybridge i7. Meanwhile, Apple's M4 Pro SoCs are easily holding court with Arrow Lake.

If it's CPU performance you want, you're actually better off with an Alder Lake N305, which is roughly on par with a Skylake i7 (non-K). A good incarnation, like HardKernel's ODROID H4 Ultra costs about the same as your Orange Pi Plus, except that you also need to supply your DDR5 memory. For another $15, you can get a mini-ITX adapter for it and use any (full-height) mini-ITX case of your choosing.

ODROID-H4 ULTRA – ODROID

www.hardkernel.com

 

[abufrejoval]

You may remember I wasn't into the SBC for the compute power, more for the functional experimentation on ARM vs. x86.

I've always regarded the AL Atoms as too cut down and too expensive to attract me.

These days I'm pretty sure you can find i3 U-class Alder-Lakes which also have 8 E-cores, but the full dual channel DRAM bandwidth and expandability as well as 2 P-cores to pep things up for a pittance.

They also would have been too expensive at launch prices, but I can easily imagine them going for next to nothing currently on Aliexpress.

Even older Ryzens are getting really cheap and offer very low idle power, good expansion, and the ability to adjust peak power and thus cooling and energy consumption over a vast range.

It's just that if someone mentions "value" and "Apple" in proximity, I feel I have to jump in and add some perspective.

And the Orange PI is just really competent as a 4k desktop, way beyond what the Raspberry PI 5 can offer, also in terms of expandability. And with 32GB of RAM for such a small premium, it's a genuinely good deal, even if you'll never really need all that RAM. But then, it even runs Proxmox...

It's really just the opposite of Apple, extra RAM so cheap you just won't waste time considering if you should go for 16GB at €20 less. And nobody should pay that Apple tax on NVMe storage capacity, it's plain and simple usury.

Another case in point: when a Lenovo LOQ ARP9 laptop went down to €750 this summer, I just had to pull the trigger on an Ryzen 8-core with 16GB of RAM, 1TB of NVMe and an RTX 4060: it's pretty much an 8GB RTX 4060 for free on a €800 laptop or a free laptop with an €800 GPU!

I swapped out everything that would swap AX200 Wifi, 64GB of DDR5-5600, 4TB of NVMe still keeping the total near €1000. That machine runs rings around any Apple costing four times as much in gaming, while it might be a little slower in some productivity workloads for which I have my workstations.

I was looking at Snapdragon Elite and Strix Point laptops, but they were all twice the money for less than half the performance and wouldn't expand to 64GB no matter what.

So I bought another, a very thin and light Thinkpad X13 G4 with a Phoenix APU, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of NVMe storage for another €850 that is supposed to last an extended workday on battery, and still saved some money while not really being noticeable slower. It even runs games a lot faster than the Snapdragon or most Apples, if I ever found myself far from home and in need.

Apple and value do not mix and everybody else seems bent on duplicating the fruity cult. Be smart, don't go near them!

 

[HideOut]

I understand WiFi 6E on the base models, but the uber ones should have had WiFi7. It might not be needed today but @ >$2000 theres just no excuse.

 

[Silicon Mage]

If the power button being easily accessible is a requirement for you just flip the Mac Mini upside down.

It might even keep the unit a little cooler as the heat can rise straight up.

 

[bit_user]

You may remember I wasn't into the SBC for the compute power, more for the functional experimentation on ARM vs. x86.

I'm currently looking into AWS EC2 instances for this. It turns out that both Sapphire Rapids and Graviton 4 instances are among some of the cheaper ones, as long as you keep the number of vCPUs low. The on-demand price is around $0.16 to $0.18 per hour, for a quad-core instance. Graviton 4 is ARMv9-A with SVE2, which is something you don't get on your little Orange Pi.

I've always regarded the AL Atoms as too cut down and too expensive to attract me.

The baseline ODROID-H4 costs only $99. It has the same specs as the H4 Ultra, except the CPU is a quad-core N97 and it has only 1x 2.5GbE network port. The M.2 connector is full PCIe 3.0 x4, however, which is rare to see on lots of these boards!

These days I'm pretty sure you can find i3 U-class Alder-Lakes which also have 8 E-cores, but the full dual channel DRAM bandwidth and expandability as well as 2 P-cores to pep things up for a pittance.

Says the SBC user with no expandability, soldered DRAM, and who claims not to care about CPU performance.

They also would have been too expensive at launch prices, but I can easily imagine them going for next to nothing currently on Aliexpress.

HardKernel's ODROID boards are better quality than some of those AliExpress boards. They offer pretty good customer support, via their website and forums. They've been around and building SBCs for about 15 years, now. Also, they're based in South Korea, FWIW.

Even older Ryzens are getting really cheap and offer very low idle power, good expansion, and the ability to adjust peak power and thus cooling and energy consumption over a vast range.

Alder Lake-N is all of those things. Gracemont is about as fast as a Zen 1 core.

And the Orange PI is just really competent as a 4k desktop, way beyond what the Raspberry PI 5 can offer,

I haven't tried the Intel Xe iGPU at that res, but the N97 has 24 EU and the N305 has 32 EU. I'm pretty sure it's at least as good as whatever Mali incarnation the RK3588 has, and the open source drivers are first rate.

in terms of expandability. And with 32GB of RAM for such a small premium, it's a genuinely good deal, even if you'll never really need all that RAM. But then, it even runs Proxmox...

I'm almost certain these Alder Lake-N boards will support 64 GB DDR5 DIMMs, once the 32 Gb chips hit the market. They already support 48 GB DIMMs, which means all of the address pins are connected that would be needed for 64 GB.

Plus, the ODROID-H4 series now provides a BIOS option to enable in-band ECC!

I was looking at Snapdragon Elite and Strix Point laptops, but they were all twice the money for less than half the performance and wouldn't expand to 64GB no matter what.

I might grab a Snapdragon-X Elite when they're cheap, used/refurb, and Linux support is nice and mature.

 

[Notton]

The only thing holding me back is the soldered SSD. I don't mind the soldered 16GB RAM because that's in the future proof territory, but the 256GB SSD? What is this? 2020?
There's literally no benefit to soldering down the SSD, it's only done to spite users from upgrading or repairing for cheap and is anti-consumer.

 

[bit_user]

There's literally no benefit to soldering down the SSD, it's only done to spite users from upgrading or repairing for cheap and is anti-consumer.

I'm sure it saves a tiny bit on parts and assembly costs.