Select Costco Wholesale Stores (
link for reference only) [
store locator] offer Costco Members:
Apple Mac Mini Compact Computer w/ Apple M1 Chip (Late 2020 Model, MGNR3LL/A) on closeout for
$399.97 valid for In-Store Purchase Only where stock permits (request item # 1486314).
Thanks to community member
Laotzu3 for finding this deal.
- Note: Inventory availability nay vary by location.
Specs:- Apple M1 Octa-Core Processor (4x high-performance + 4x high-efficiency)
- 8-Core Integrated GPU
- 8GB RAM (onboard)
- 256GB Integrated NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
- 802.11ax WiFi 6 / Bluetooth 5.0
- Ports:
- 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.1 / USB 3.2 Gen 1)
- 2x Thunderbolt 3 USB Type C (supports DisplayPort / HDMI / VGA & Power Delivery)
- 1x HDMI 2.0 (output)
- 1x 3.5 mm Headphone
- 1x Ethernet
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Top Comments
To get disk access on par with M1 you need to pay $200 to upgrade to 512gb ($799 or $699)
https://youtu.be/bF_Lbdqfowo
341 Comments
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I have the M1 MBA with 8 gigs of RAM. I'm a developer, so yes, power-user or whatever, but if you even like to keep tons of tabs open you will eventually notice the box slowing down. (I don't always have tons of dev apps open and still experience sluggishness…)
And if you are a dev or other power user, 8 isn't enough imo. With Xcode plus the iOS emulator it's sluggish. VS Code plus Slack and 10 StackOverflow tabs and you're sluggish. I'm constantly closing apps.
You also lose one of the M1's best features on the mini: great battery life.
This is a great deal, but if you know enough to wonder if you could use more RAM, my guess is the answer is yes. You've been warned, ymmv, etc.
I use 8GB air on the regular with office apps always open, a few chrome browsers and about 5 tabs. I also use VPN always plus a trading macOS app that is native m1 compiled and discord and telegram. It's still night and day faster than my 8 core iMac with 32GB ram on app responsiveness.
If you are a heavy user you wouldn't be asking how much ram you need. You'd know.
8GB is fine for anyone who's not processing photos and videos and development for a living. If you edit video once a month or just write some node in viscode casually… and by casually I meant a thousand lines of nodejs code. You don't need 16GB. Calm down. Lol.
And I would take this machine over any Intel with 32GB of ram in the same price range (meaning 8Gb machine that's $400 and I will let you add 24GB and let you bench) and I still prefer an 8GB m1 machine all day every day.
Hackintosh is using an Intel chip to run MacOS. That market is alive and well, albeit not as much in demand now with Apple's recent price drops (per performance) on the new Macintosh side. But if you already own Intel hardware with AMD graphics, Hackintosh is typically free to implement (except hours of time).
Those who code should look at these numbers as a reasonable starting point for a benchmark.
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https://support.apple.c
The i9-13900k (ie THE very latest Intel CPU) works GREAT in a Hackintosh.
The AMD 6900XTXH (the Second-Latest AMD generation's top performer) works GREAT in a Hackintosh.
MacOS 13.2.1, Apple's latest MacOS, works GREAT on Intel, on the i9-13900k and many others.
If you want to say "The end of the road will happen in a few years, but there's so far no clear plan for end of Intel support' you should write that, but what you wrote above is flat wrong.
No Intel CPU is "supported"; the only CPU MacOS supports is what Apple ships with an Apple logo on it. Just because Apple stopped at 10th gen Intel certainly doesn't mean we need to!
Wow.
Re: performance, the i5-12400 (a cheap chip) is pretty close to the performance of a base Mini ($499) - it's still a bit better. If you already own the Intel chip / setup, or if you have a better Intel setup, with an AMD graphics card, already, the math looks pretty good on the Hackintosh side still. With a decent AMD GPU, your Hackintosh can be faster (graphics, gaming, etc.) than any Mac ever made quite easily.
It's not hard. I've several guides on GitHub myself for the full process.
I was considering people that would cross-shop a base Mini with a Hackintosh. Pretty hard to get together parts (case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, SSD) that also include an AMD discrete graphics card for much less than $499. And you'd still have a much more stable system with the Mini.
Once you go higher-end (32GB or 64GB memory, 2TB SSD, good graphics card) then a Hackintosh route would still be a lot cheaper.
Those who code should look at these numbers as a reasonable starting point for a benchmark.
Indeed, when running with light memory load, the M1 CPUs are great, and even with moderate memory loads, the disk swapping is fast enough to keep up with most tasks. But there is indeed wear on the SSD, which again would be hard to determine to what extend that would be an issue given a workload.
When memory is plenty, disk read and write is cached in empty memory, so even if your normal disk speed isn't high (like the M2 256GB models), it well appear snappier than the numbers suggest. Again a disk copy benchmark will not tell you that. It will also minimize SSD wear because not all writes are immediately written.
I'm well aware of the M1 benefits. But I've determined the drawback of the 8GB machine is too painful. I would even go the extra mile to the 24GB while I'm willing to keep the storage at 256GB and do most of my work on an external SSD. I'm not copying 50GB files every 10 minutes for fun, so I expect the practical speed of the external SSD to be sufficient when compared to the faster internal storage.
Call ahead to double check.
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