Comment by asdff
3 months ago
Apple silicon is unfortunately still at a premium. I was shopping around for used M1 mac minis and a 16gb model (minimum acceptable imo) was like $500-600 second hand. You can get an 8th or 9th gen off lease computer for like $100-200 that is close enough to the m1, sometimes with 16gb already in there with the option to add in 128gb, multiple drive bays, pcie, etc.
> I was shopping around for used M1 mac minis and a 16gb model (minimum acceptable imo) was like $500-600 second hand.
That's because a M1 mini with 16gb still has a lot of utility in it that hasn't depreciated significantly in the 2 years since it's been released. My M1 (8gb) is still happily sitting in a media consumption part of my day and is not showing any signs of age. I would be surprised if, for the role that it has, it becomes outdated in another 2 or 3 years... and wouldn't be surprised if it lasts another 2 or 3 beyond that.
If you spent $700 on it in 2020 at release, it is still working as well as it did on the day you bought it.
You may be seeing the premium from when it was bought being attached to the current used price - and there are less expensive ones available now - but the device, for what it was when I got it is still providing value and selling it used would mean I'd need to get a new one... at a similar price as what I'd sell it for.
> sometimes with 16gb already in there with the option to add in 128gb, multiple drive bays, pcie, etc.
I will note that for me, in the spot where it is, the "multiple drive bays, pcie, etc." represents a worse device as it doesn't sit nicely under a monitor on a small desk. Part of the choice of the Mac mini for me for that role was its form factor and quiet running.
There's still lots of utility in 9th gen intel PCs. And it's cheap to get extra utility. The resale value of the Mac mini is down to the brand cache and that there's not a glut of them on the secondhand market from businesses upgrading overtime.
You can also get PCs in a similar form factor to the Mac Mini but they still have RAM slots, M.2 slots and sometimes a 2.5" drive bay. You could get one that's powered off the USB C PD from the monitor requiring only a single cable and could be mounted on the back of the monitor (mount included!).
On a mini pc like a lenovo you can have an m2 ssd, a sata drive, and whatever you hook into the pcie expansion slot. the hp mini pcs actually have 2 m2 slots along with the ssd, so three internal bays and two sodimm slots in a 6.97 x 6.89 x 1.35 box, so its technically smaller than the mac mini.
$500 for a Mac is great! $100 for an Intel is great too. PCs used to cost thousands of dollars! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_AT
9th gen intel? According to geekbench 6[0] the m1 is between 2x-5x faster with better battery life, so depending on your workload, it's quite possibly not close enough.
[0]: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks/
I look at technical specs, not benchmarks.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-vs-intel_...
For example I5 9th gen vs M1 here. 9th gen has 2 fewer cores (although 9700 is the same, and 10th gen doubled the threads) and nearly the same clock speed. Graphically the M1 has more compute units but in the 8gb model the gpu is likely to be starved anyhow as it can only take on 8gb of the system ram. I5 listed here can take on 64gb for its igpu. 9th gen has better encoding abilities. Battery life, sure maybe, but I am talking about the mac mini here compared to an e.g. hp prodesk minipc. The 9th gen chip depending on what you have connected to the rest of the system could idle at like 6w.