Can it run crysis?

Sweet. I wait for a tear down to see if one can swap the ssd for a bigger one.

>supports up to 32GB of memory.

wow! dude!

/s

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Isn't that what r/Gadgets basically is? Did you complain about the Nova earrings, the Walkman, the Google TV remote, the Razer soundbar, the XGIMI lamp, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, the Intel, or the Galaxy S23 posts? Those are all in the hot 25 posts right now and basically ads.

Things that were not needed: the second part of the sentence.

Highly doubtful

But will civilization still crash every turn?

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I too doubt it, but Apple was good for some surprises lately.

Giving its $499 price tag for education and $599 regular retail, I don’t think they’re gonna be nice.

I own a base model M1 Mini and the first thing I wanted to try and do was upgrade my base storage. It was clear online that it just wasn’t possible. So, best thing I did was buy an external hard drive and plus my stuff goes to the cloud anyways. Only thing that gets in the way are applications

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$1299 for the M2 Pro version. I think (?) that's enough to build out a windows system with a top end i9 and midrange graphics.

Somehow Apple still selling 8GB base model in 2023

Will charge 500$ for the memory upgrade!

A core i9-13900K is going to set you back $600 + tax. A midrange graphics card is about $300. RAM is probably another $75 or so. That leaves us about $300 for Windows, storage, and a tiny motherboard. You know that motherboard is going to eat up more than the remainder. It's an interesting exercise.

Then there's CPU cooler, case and power supply. Hmm, perhaps it's just slightly too much to fit in the $1299 budget.

Perhaps. Lol

Not likely... Maybe i5 or i7 but certainly not a i9, and certainly not in that form factor.

because they can with M chip. The ARM chips are significantly more efficient with memory over Intel chips. Its still stupid, but you would be surprised at how fictional 8 gigs is with a M1 vs 8 gigs with a intel chip.

To be fair with it though, even base model laptops from Dell and HP are still rolling with 8 gigs or even less.

lol yeah... and isn't powerful and capable essentially the same thing?

Yup. So obnoxious

Memory upgrade? Lol. Not sure if I would call it an upgrade if it can only be done from the factory.

>The ARM chips are significantly more efficient with memory over Intel chips.

No. Stop justifying Apple's shit. My phone has 12 GB of ram.

I spent about 1.7k on a 7900x at launch with 64gb 6000mhz cl30-35-35-56 ram and a 1000w Corsair PSU, noctua cooler and rackmount case. It is a bit cheaper now, but you can't go top end for 1299 anymore.

My build is cheaper than 64gb ram from apple though.

Ram usage doesn't really have anything to do with the architecture, just the software you run. The macOS doesn't use as much ram as windows and it is more liberal with suspending background applications than windows.

It also has a fast SSD to page things to, which helps.

But if we work down from your build-

• 16gb ram instead of 64: $225 less
• 650w psu instead of 1000w: $50 less
• normal case instead of rack mount: $50 less?
• dual tower cooler from a cheaper brand: $40 less

Now your build is suddenly around 1.3k rather than 1.7k. also I'm pretty sure you can get a 7950x for close to 7900x's launch price nowadays.

This will be the deciding factor for me, I want to own the machine and be able to upgrade, I'd feel like I was renting it if not...

I don’t know about a 300$ dollar gpu but everything else looks right to me.

I’ve got 32gb in my old Mac mini I’ve converted into a server. Was like $20 and super easy to install

Mine is perfect. Its basically just a home PC, remote server management console, and former Plex (now Jellyfin, just switched) server and its never really missed a beat.

Exactly! This is why I haven’t bought any new macs. This pricing is atrocious! Also the SSDs actually have a lifetime.

And performs worse than apples phone with less ram.

Apple PR team in here posting this shit and downvoting people who call it out

Yes, the phone with an ARM vs the phone with the ARM most definitely performs way worse.

Stop being such a fanboy. Apple isn't some magical company that designs everything perfect.

Fanboy? Lmao. As if you’re been objective buddy. My example proves to you that ram ain’t everything.

No matter how you will want to spin it, your 12gb of ram ain’t shit if it’s not the most powerful

Yay, your "faster" phone is better at browsing facebook and tiktok.

Congrats, fanboy.

Now quick, your tiktok has a new challenge for you!

Not top end, but you can get a very good pc with 1,300, and it can play anything on steams library. You can’t beat windows universality and versatility.

For a home system the low ram usually won’t be noticed. For a work system you won’t know why your app keeps locking up or crashing or choking on the biggest files. When it’s new you won’t notice because you’ll chalk it up to bugs in apps not updated yet but a year in when it’s stable it will choke on you when you are constantly using most of its ram for the apps you use daily. It’s the ram and limited hard drives space. So you are looking at a minimum $500 up charge to have a work capable workhorse. Paying $500 more for a Mac over base price has been almost mandatory (if you let Apple do your upgrades) for decades. It’s their best grift outside of having very low cost production costs for the higher quality materials and production labor they use. Not upgrading ram and drive space on a Mac is really a waste of a computer because they are extremely capable systems when maxed out. Apple is counting on this to make the biggest profits from the cheapest to upgrade components.

Lmao.

You can certainly get a good PC for $1,300 but it won't perform as well. Apple runs Windows better than similarly-priced laptops.

Arm processors are great, but a lot of software isn’t built with that architecture in mind, so I don’t think apple is the best all around. Though they are becoming more intriguing every generation.

It's soldered in, so no.

Just have to try harder

What the hell are you talking about.

I use off the shelf base Macs for intensive 4k,6k,8k editing as is.

IKR! RAM is only going to help with the # of shit you're running, I personally barely use my phone. As far as CPU? You say the iPhone is faster? The tensor holds up pretty well, and new CPUs are coming out almost daily. But really, are you seeing "massive" difference in performance between different phone generations? Oh boy, got me on that 1 millisecond faster load time on some shitty game!

> The tensor holds up pretty well,

No. Stop justifying Google’s shit.

I'd like to see how powerful this thing is graphically. The M1s challenged some of the mid-tier GPUs IIRC.

I have a M1 Pro MacBook with 16GB ram. I am constantly utilizing about ~13 GB using it. So I do think for 13 inch M2 MBP, 8GB is a bit shabby with starting price of 1299.

Tensor is actually pretty weak. Google's priority isn't the speed or power of Tensor. SD 8 Gen 2 is a much better example though it still isn't as powerful as the A16 Bionic.

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It's not that fast tbh, slower than pcie3.0 SSDs on PC.

Most folks do not need 64GB of RAM and most claiming tend to not need to either. RAM has gotten a ton cheaper even DDR5 and most don't need more than 16GB for what they do and won't even use much more. Same for CPU. Can go longer as most people just game as their most intensive task. You don't tend to need 1000W either.

So basically, you can build much cheaper than $1700 and definitely hit a higher quality build. Especially when you're comparing it to apple which typically has just flat out dumb prices for basic spec upgrades. Windows is gonna be cheaper 99% of the time.

Is the memory still user upgradable?

Big difference between cheaper than mac and high end pc though. You can definitely beat a mac in performance for the same price but that isn't what was discussed.

Faster than the built in SSDs you will find in windows laptops with 8gb ram.

I just bought a AM5 mobo with a 7600X, 32GB DDR5 ram (2x16GB), 2x 1TB M.2 drives, all for less than 900 dollars, in Argentina, where this stuff is WAY more expensive than in the US.

Next will be a 6800XT for around 600 bucks, most expensive part by far.

edit: 900 bucks. Not 350. My bad.

>16gb ram instead of 64: $225 less

Actually 400$ less if you go for cheap ram, but fast ram has a big performance impact for my workload. I did try some cheap sticks from a friend but got 40% extra performance with this set.

> 650w psu instead of 1000w: $50 less

Fair, but I got it for 100$ so I am happy with it. Cheapest 650w PSU I can find in local market is 75$.

Normal case could have been as much as 150$ less, but space also has a price. I now have 4 easily accessible machines stacked in one cabinet with cable management built in.

Cheaping out on the cooler was an option, but cheap coolers usually have awkward mounting hardware when changing platforms. Only reason I didn't ziptie on my old cooler was because it wouldn't fit in the case. Most cheap high performance tower coolers are also too tall and this machine runs 24/7, so I went with a good one.

Here is the full budget for my build:

https://i.imgur.com/ZqsAGbK.png

I also have some network cards, nvme risers etc that aren't factored in because I have borrowed them from other stuff.

People have different needs, and this machine is a great fit for mine.

Yeah I'm not arguing with what you did, Im just saying that changing it to be similar to the mac mini would yield a similar price to the mac mini.

Still can’t play games. Plus current PCs support up to 128gb of memory.

You got an excellent deal, enjoy your new setup, and hopefully you don’t have any headaches getting a gpu

IDK about the M2 Mini, but the M1 was not upgradeable. This is Apple's new thing, and I hate it.

Thanks! But I just realized I made a big mistake when doing the currency conversion(I didn't buy the parts in dollars). It would be more like 900 dollars. Sorry about the confusion, seems I can't math today.

On the bright side, there seem to be a few 6800xt available so getting the gpu shouldn't be too much of a problem :)

I would think those who need more than 32GB of ram aren’t buying Mac minis.

I imagine they both won’t be. My Mac mini is well over 10 years old

The 2022 Mac Mini spec page shows "configurable" to 32gb which is the same language as the last one. So nope, much like the Mac Studio, there will be no RAM upgrades moving forward. Also guessing they are using those custom SSDs that can't be swapped with other hard drives, like the Studio.

The Mini has always been a great product, because you can keep beefing it up, but it looks like they want them to have a short life. This is the tradeoff for the $100 price drop, I assume.

Comparing the SSD in a $400 devicea to the SSD in a $1200 device are we?

Bingo the OS is designed to utilize any available ram, and that availability drops depending on what other apps you have running in the background. It also knows to suspend apps that are not using any memory so it can’t pull from the pool.

$600 M2 is great pricing.

I won't lie, that base mini m2 is looking pretty good for the price (especially if you can get a student discount)

The price increase on the macbooks is an ouch though... Especially since they aren't much different than the previous generation (which makes sense but still)

So not supporting Apple but the whole “give us upgradable memory slots” is a little hard with the M series chips. The RAM/SSD/CPU/GPU is all on one chip. The design would make it impossible to allow upgrades.

Now a secondary RAM slot or SSD slot surely is possible. I’d be curious what that would do to the performance. I’m assuming part of your speed and battery life is due to everything being on one chip.

Well yeah it's an SoC. Not really possible to make that upgradeable.

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Also, for fairness maybe you should be trying to make that work in an sff case.

Guess it depends on what you mean by "high end" as people have different use cases for a PC and what one may consider "high end" won't do much for another's use case.

Second, of we're talking most people, you earnestly paid waay more for things that won't benefit them at all. There is simply no benefit to most people having 64GB of RAM period let alone DDR5 that still does not do much at their CL rate to really justify a vast difference in price for most. So paying top end for the same benefits overall is silly in most cases anyhow.

I bring that up to point out a few fallacies in your claim if you're talking about spending more money meaning "high end." I also find it odd that you don't categorize high performance with high end when those are hand and hand. Almost no one's definition of high end is going to include low performance and consider it "high end." That wouldn't even make sense.

You brought up PC which can be customized to meet exactly what you need and want and much cheaper therefore bringing a ton of value period. No one is saying Mac is horrible, but the moment you start bringing price into this and comparing apples to apples spec wise PC can wn out there due to the nature of being able forever upgrade and find plenty if sales in the process. Mac is much more closed off. If you're buying Mac in this case, it tends to be for niche reasons. Bathing wring with it, but just came across as if you were trying to bring price into this and bringing up specs as if you have to spend $1700 to get a very nice PC that is high end still. With the plethora of options out there thst simply isn't true.

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This is a brand new SOC, just curious where you’re “not that fast” commentary is coming from. Im assuming you’ve benchmarked one of these just released systems? Care to share your data?

That’s true but I think that was more for the slimness of machines. The Mac Mini had the upgrade slots until the M series CPUs.

Take a look at RAM upgrades on an HP. I was recently looking at an HP Zbook Fury for work. Their RAM upgrade prices were ridiculous, even more than Apple. The kicker is that the HP had RAM upgrade slots. I think more manufacturers are charging crazy amounts for memory because they can get away with it. The people of Reddit might go ahead and open a laptop and upgrade the RAM but none of my relatives will do it even though it’s possible. They’d pay the manufacturer to do it. Lots of Windows laptops are also losing upgradable RAM slots.

Now the SSD issues including where you can’t retrieve data because of the link between the T2 chip and the SSD, that’s a dick move. Louis Rossman has a video on that. From what I gathered, Apples decision means you can’t in any way retrieve the data from a MacBook that has the T2 chip if the board dies.

This. These complaints come from people who would never need/use more than 8 or 16GB. Big Sur runs great on a 2014 8GB Mini. MacOS is extremely efficient in its use of RAM. The M processors make up for any loss, and if that's not enough, you shouldn't be buying a Mini.

It’s the tradeoff of an SOC. Faster performance but no upgrade path post purchase. I get the argument both ways.

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No, it's even mentioned when you try to pick memory.

>Note: Unified memory is not user accessible. If you think you’ll need additional memory, consider upgrading at the time of purchase.

well, if you want to go down that rabbit hole, the PC also has benefits like being upgradable

Meh

They're talking about the SSD, not the SoC.

The Mac has way better power efficiency.

Yes, since we are comparing the amount of ram apple ships in 1200$ devices with the amount of ram other manufacturers ship in 400$ devices.

macOS is much more efficient than Windows lol

real work involves more than idling the OS

The 64GB ThinkPad X1 Yoga says hello

Keep downvoting apologists but the storage on these SoC's doesn't go over 3000MB/s. Meanwhile PCs have been enjoying 7500 for years with pcie5.0 around the corner.

I don't know what you mean by "real work" but it's a very capable machine with 32gb

Sooo, do you have PCIE 5??

Remember that RAM is combined on these machines. Ofc this was the case for prior Mac Minis but important to remember for anyone used to iMacs with AMD GPUs

As someone who uses a Lenovo thinkpad and an (intel) MacBook Pro on a daily basis, both with 16GB ram, it’s night and day difference.

I can open as many apps as I want on the MacBook and it hardly slows, presumably macOS is very efficient at allocating memory. Meanwhile on the thinkpad it slows down after just a few applications are open.

I wondered why tech forums always obsess over memory because I’ve never found it that big a deal, but when I started using the thinkpad I realised where it came from. And this is comparing with an Intel Mac, apple silicon ones are even better apparently.

Given both RAM/SSD are essentially on the same chip with transfer designed to utilise the SSD under the RAM, and a much faster SSD than what you’ll find in other machines, the broader architecture absolutely affects the performance here.

Obviously they’re confusing Arm with Apple Silicon and this is what they meant

No, I am not. And no, the SSD on apple silicon is not on the SOC, although the SSD controller and RAM is.

Yes, I know that apple chips are more energy efficient than competitors. That does not change how memory works.

No, the SSD isn't much faster than what you will find in other machines either, just other similarly priced machines. It does about 1.4/1.3 GB/s while 130$ SSDs from other brands do 3 - 7GB/s.

I think most Mac Users haven’t been gamers for a while.

16 years later and this still gets a chuckle out of me!

> supports up to 32GB of memory. >

> wow! dude!

For a lot of people who would have bought the Studio for no other reason than because the Mini was limited to 16GB, this will save them $500 or more. I’m glad to see it.

Yes it’s all soldered. No one likes it. The only benefit is faster speeds than removable chipsets.

Answer is nope. No different from any other M series SoC Mac. Everything is within the chip, there is not an SSD or Ram soldered in the traditional sense.

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That’s bullshit. The Pro and Max models will do PCI-E 4.0 speeds so 7.4 GBps.

> Meanwhile PCs have been enjoying 7500 for years

Evidence needed. How many years? List models of PCs from vendors.

Ok, then find me a single benchmark that shows M1 or M2 soc storage going over 3GBps. I don't think you understand what the T2 "security" chip does to performance.

https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:1362x1396/480x492/filters:focal(681x698:682x699):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23845748/291839779_411868900908667_5086083054058057192_n.png

I said the Pro and Max model not the base M1/M2.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qwjbwl/blackmagic_disk_speed_test_results_for_m1_max/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

There is no T2 security chip on Apple Silicon Macs. You don’t seem to know much about these systems.

Sounds great and more reasonable, still a good price too.

> The only benefit is faster speeds than removable chipsets.

That is an unbelievably huge benefit though

It's not for the "slimness of the machine" it's because of a unified memory architecture that's only achievable by combining components with the SoC. So many misinformed users here blasting Apple over something they don't understand at all.

Have to love posts like this that are absolutely clueless. M1 has redefined the benchmark for high performance energy efficient ARM chipsets. M2 progresses further on this. The fact you're comparing it to your shitty phone processor and RAM shows you know zero about this topic.

If you hate Apple, cool. But please educate yourself or refrain from posting your highly objective and misinformed opinion.

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PC users don’t care about the performance difference. Specs matter, except for when they don’t.

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Meh, no need - just trolling.

But yeah, I do hate apple. And I don't care about the M1/M2/M3/M4/M5 whatever comes out. Something better will always come out.

just getgood at soldering

You aren't trolling though, your knowledge is just extremely poor and you think you have a valid point but don't.

Wrong again, there is currently no ARM chip that competes with Apple Silicone. Microsoft recently launched Volta which lacks many of the unique features Apple have implemented.

PCIe 5 is 14GB/s if in not mistaken.

I'm using an M1 Air with 8GB and the only time I've seen it start to bog down was when trying to use Unity. That was the first time I ever had that "it's running slow because I'm running it on a laptop" feeling while using my MacBook

Too bad MacOS sucks.

I'm getting the base M2 Mac Mini.

Do you know of a small form factor PC with more than than? People will complain about anything.

even ultrabook form factor laptops are shipping with 64GB (see Thinkpad X1 Carbon, X1 Yoga), old ass thinkpad's like the T480 could do 2x32GB

the copium from apple fanboys is hilarious

Macbooks ship with 96GB, but this isn't a laptop.

Some Adobe products also used for things much simpler than video editing can choke on systems with low ram. So in your case there are physical chips on the board that make your application faster and the software takes advantage of it. In other industries the software is not optimized so it is heavily dependent on ram size and single core processor speeds. It’s nice you can make your little videos quickly but the same computer gets noticeably underwhelming on a one gigabyte graphics file over a network and not much faster on the internal drive. Not every Mac app is optimized for all the cores and Mac only features the hardware has. The same graphics program runs better on a PC because Adobe spends more resources optimizing it there so it runs more smoothly on slower systems. It’s the same trick Apple used on video apps to make them faster. What I was saying doesn’t apply to you so I wasn’t talking to you. I’m not complaining that my YouTube videos are slow on a stock machine. But it would be nice for a system that can edit 8k video also open and save a graphics file just as smoothly and not need to get one with max ram just to work on the big files. I use my intel Mac with more ram to open those when the M1 doesn’t cut it. I shouldn’t have to if apples minimum ram wasn’t still 8 gigabytes so they can upsell you on ram or planned obsolescence kicks in.

I also work with 85-220mb photo files. Since early 2022 on a base M1 in Lightroom & Photoshop.
I put together 400 page books (3 so far) in Affinity Publisher on it.
Looking forward to picking up an M2 Macbook shortly.

I get your point; of course I could build a mega PC that would probably be faster. But if I'm able to do what I need to do, earn my living and create art on Macs, I see no real need to change.

It's built in to the SoC right? If true, it's definitely not user upgradable, even if you have the ability to desolder and solder RAM.

Yup, and people asking for upgradability in unified memory is like asking upgradability for graphics memory in Nvidia GTX 3080 or any other graphics card.

Right, exactly. And if I remember correctly from my days as an engineering student, there is a huge benefit in speed to having the memory physically close to the CPU, as it is in the M series processors. The same reason L1, L2, and L3 cache exist. The tradeoff is that it isn't user upgradable.

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M2 Pro vs M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14 - ACTUALLY Worse?: https://youtu.be/PgapGwkH9cU

Enjoy. (:

ACTUALLY faster… Enjoy! :-)

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/24/new-macbook-pro-ssd-speeds/

Nothing to do with SOC but number of NAND chips on the board.

>“When Macworld tested with the Blackmagic disk speed app, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro in a 2TB storage configuration achieved a read speed of 5,372 MB/s and a write speed of 6,491 MB/s. The previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip and 1TB of storage scored a slightly higher 5,797 MB/s read speed than the 16-inch M2 Pro; however, it scored a lower write speed of 5,321 MB/s.”

Let’s see PCI-e 4.0 speeds too.

Oh look the Dell and HP laptops are ACTUALLY much SLOWER... So much for PCs have been enjoying faster speeds for years... Oops! You are still utterly clueless!