*** The official 2023 and 2024 Mac mini thread (it has the M2 chip, the M4 chip and everything!) ***

Just looking for an opinion, I have a M2 Pro Mac Mini at the moment, the base spec one so 16GB and 512 TB storage. I'm looking at something with a bit more memory as I run VMs for work and have a few peripherals plugged in to it, external drives, web cam, mic etc so have been looking at the M4 Pro but also seen I can get the M2 Max Studio for only about £50 more, and wondered what people views were? The M2 Max has 32GB compared to the 24GB of the M4 Pro and also has USB A ports which I need, but could easily add to the M4 Pro using a usb hub. Storage capacity is the same and I run external drives so not overly worried about that.
 
@Feek I dedicate this mod to you :p

I find the dock gets rather warm, and it is only 20c weather at the moment so I thought I give it a helping hand ready for the summer when it gets to 30c. I am even considering placing a 120mm fan on top :D Which would be obscured by the monitor completely anyway.

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Nice, are they just sitting there or are you using thermal pads/tape between them?

At the moment it is just sitting there, only because I didn't plan ahead to get some thermal pad...which has just arrived but got delivered to work so I will put install them on Monday. They match the colour and the right width which was a bonus. They do overhang in the back by about an inch though. Not really a problem as thermal pads aren't exactly permanent.
 
I find the dock gets rather warm, and it is only 20c at the moment so I thought I give it a helping hand ready for the summer. I am even considering placing a 120mm fan on top :D Which would be obscured by the monitor completely anyway.
Nice looking heatsinks, may I ask where you got these please?
 
Hope you're going to put a massive beige Noctua fan on to it @Raymond Lin.

Which one is better? the one? the 7 blade or 9 blade one? Which is the most silent?

edit - the problem is most of these fan have a 4 pin PSU connector, I need one with a 5v USB connector.

edit again - it seems some comes with an adaptor.
 
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edit again - it seems some comes with an adaptor.
Some do, but I wouldn't think you'll need a fan there. Get the thermal pads between the box and the heatsinks and I bet they'll be barely warm to the touch. Are there any temperature sensors in the dock?
 
Some do, but I wouldn't think you'll need a fan there. Get the thermal pads between the box and the heatsinks and I bet they'll be barely warm to the touch. Are there any temperature sensors in the dock?

I just applied it.

There doesn't seem to be any temp sensor (or that i can find on google/reddit). I have a IR laser gun and without the heatsink it gets to about 40-41c if I fire the IR sensor at dead center in the middle where the SD card slot is.

With it just placed on top, it drops to about 35-36c. So it's a good 10%.

I'll check again later to see what it is.
 
I have moved to a Mac mini m4 after being a windows user for years. Really don’t like the experience so going to sell just after one week of owning it. If I sign out of account and erase everything is that it for new owner or will I need to install os again for them, never done this before so haven’t a clue how to prepare for selling.
 
I have moved to a Mac mini m4 after being a windows user for years. Really don’t like the experience so going to sell just after one week of owning it. If I sign out of account and erase everything is that it for new owner or will I need to install os again for them, never done this before so haven’t a clue how to prepare for selling.
I'm curious what problems you have? It might be easy to solve if you let us know.
 
Just the general use of the os, where things are on the drive, can’t remove certain apps that I will never use, just don’t feel comfortable when using it but like I said I’ve been a windows user for lots of years and fancied a change.
 
Just the general use of the os, where things are on the drive, can’t remove certain apps that I will never use, just don’t feel comfortable when using it but like I said I’ve been a windows user for lots of years and fancied a change.
Fair enough. To answer your original question I think you need to do a factory reset.

System Settings -> General -> Transfer or Reset
 
I have moved to a Mac mini m4 after being a windows user for years. Really don’t like the experience so going to sell just after one week of owning it. If I sign out of account and erase everything is that it for new owner or will I need to install os again for them, never done this before so haven’t a clue how to prepare for selling.
Unless you bought it used, you can return it to the retailer within 2 weeks instead of selling it.
 
I'm curious what problems you have? It might be easy to solve if you let us know.
I also recently tried switching to a Mac Mini M4 and I agree with @jazzy68, I'm not liking the experience compared to Windows, and I don't think it's just because I've been using Windows for years.

On Windows when I want to close something I can just instantly snap the mouse to the top right and click, whereas on macOS to close an app you have to go to the dock icon, right click and select quit. The quit button at the top left doesn't actually quit, and it takes longer than Windows to select anyway because it isn't at the very top of the screen.

I dislike the menu bar at the top as you get less vertical space in a web browser, I tried hiding it which was even more irritating because it pops back up when changing tabs which changes the position of the tab. Another irritation is that there's an outline at the side of apps, you can only get rid of it by going into full screen which I don't like.

I'm not happy with the general performance/snappiness of the OS either, benchmarks say it has blazing fast single core speed but it doesn't feel as snappy/responsive as a slower CPU on Windows. For example web browsers can take a couple of seconds to open which is instant on Windows, and there's a noticeable delay entering/exiting full screen in IINA video player during which the image is frozen.
 
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