Worth upgrading to mac mini 2018? About to pull trigger, need your thoughts!

NickK · 27 Jun 2019 at 20:39

Combat squirrel said:
Got the mini yet sir ? how is it ?

Not yet.. according to the tracking it was delayed due to bad weather at HK airport, and the last update was passing customs in Castle Donnington yesterday 6pm.. due delivery by end of tomorrow.

Combat squirrel · 27 Jun 2019 at 20:46

NickK said:
Not yet.. according to the tracking it was delayed due to bad weather at HK airport, and the last update was passing customs in Castle Donnington yesterday 6pm.. due delivery by end of tomorrow.

Keep the thread updated when u get it!

NickK · 28 Jun 2019 at 03:29

Combat squirrel said:
Keep the thread updated when u get it!

Typically there a few more updates and arrival at the distribution hub before going out for delivery - none of those currently so I’m not holding my breath!

Woo: update, it’s left finally Castle Donnington.. but stating due the bad weather they will update the delivery date.
Delivery date is now Monday - it’s amazing how slow UPS is.
Castle Donnington > Stanstead > Stanford le Hope > ? (It’s departed)
If it’s standard UPS then it travels at a snails pace.

NickK · 1 Jul 2019 at 14:44

Mwahaha it arrived

Only issue I have (had) is that the NEC 20WGX2 was blinking like crazy on the USB-C to DVI-D cable. However it appears switching the monitor off and then on again solves it.

It seems zippy compared to my 2011 i7 MBP with a dead memory channel (ie 8GB and 1/2 bus performance) and a 5400rpm Hybrid-SSD HD.

NickK · 1 Jul 2019 at 16:15

Got this problem at the moment came back randomly.

Serious warning - flashing lights.

So at the moment not too impressed.

Feek · 1 Jul 2019 at 17:33

This may or may not be helpful. This also mentions a flickering display. Either way, get it logged with Apple so that they're aware you're having a problem.

Combat squirrel · 1 Jul 2019 at 19:14

That doesn't look good

is that the onboard graphics ? DVI-D is a rarer connection these days I guess

NickK · 1 Jul 2019 at 20:09

Feek said:
This may or may not be helpful. This also mentions a flickering display. Either way, get it logged with Apple so that they're aware you're having a problem.

Sometimes when the machine wakes and the monitor wakes it seems to sync up and everything is fine, last time I was downloading Xcode and it sudden reverted to flickering.

It seems zippy though..

NickK · 1 Jul 2019 at 21:41

Next gotcha, although with Mojave, is that it refuses to mount MSDOS FAT32 drives that High Sierra reads/writes all day long.

Combat squirrel · 1 Jul 2019 at 23:24

NickK said:
Next gotcha, although with Mojave, is that it refuses to mount MSDOS FAT32 drives that High Sierra reads/writes all day long.

That's weird my Mojave still reads fat32 USB ok

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 10:40

Combat squirrel said:
That's weird my Mojave still reads fat32 USB ok

FAT32 no (the 4GB limit FAT)
Ex-FAT yes.

Combat squirrel · 2 Jul 2019 at 11:25

Interesting, so, aside from the screen issues, it feels nippy? You don't by any chance use lightroom or final cut do you ? Whats the spec of your machine you have again ?

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 11:37

Combat squirrel said:
Interesting, so, aside from the screen issues, it feels nippy? You don't by any chance use lightroom or final cut do you ? Whats the spec of your machine you have again ?

Top i7 with 8GB and 256GB SSD.

I don’t but I do program GPUs as part of home projects - I just need to transfer the Xcode from my dead GPU MBP and recode to Metal from openCL.

However it currently runs on CPU (using FFTW multithreaded). So we can see the speed difference of 12 cores on long jobs).

Combat squirrel · 2 Jul 2019 at 14:13

NickK said:
Top i7 with 8GB and 256GB SSD.

I don’t but I do program GPUs as part of home projects - I just need to transfer the Xcode from my dead GPU MBP and recode to Metal from openCL.

However it currently runs on CPU (using FFTW multithreaded). So we can see the speed difference of 12 cores on long jobs).

cool sounds interesting, will you go egpu's as your programming for them ?

Combat squirrel · 2 Jul 2019 at 15:45

Just bagged a refurb Mac Mini i7 2018 8gb ram, 256gb SSD for £1099, usual price is £1249, that'll do me !

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 18:11

make -j 12 ...

Combat squirrel · 2 Jul 2019 at 18:28

NickK said:
make -j 12 ...

Err what? lol

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 19:00

Combat squirrel said:
Err what? lol

It means make (compile) 12 jobs in parallel..

For the deconvolution using CPU only, it seems a little faster, but also will do the same on my old 1 channel MBP

Just trying my deconvolution processing - currently running at 1,100+% CPU

Each band of processing taking 6 seconds on the mini - Vs - mbp i7 (1ch) at 16-17 seconds per band.

All in memory, so it’s 2.83x faster.

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 19:10

Nice and fast.

Will be interesting what the GPU will do.

NickK · 2 Jul 2019 at 19:31

Combat squirrel said:
cool sounds interesting, will you go egpu's as your programming for them ?

That’s the idea in time.