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Apple's M6 Mac mini with 24GB RAM and a 512GB SSD is being framed as a strong compact desktop for everyday work, with fast, smooth performance that should handle daily office use for years. It also gets credit as a capable 1080p gaming machine, with 1440p possible through Metal upscaling, though macOS still limits game selection and native support for newer Steam titles. The main hesitation is price, since the same model appears cheaper at Costco with a 2-year warranty, and the value feels less compelling than the older $500 Mac mini era.
Developers running lightweight local coding assistants, because quantized small models can fit for realtime editor suggestions.
24GB RAM can be enough for local coding assistants and realtime editor suggestions, especially with quantized smaller models such as 1.5B and E4B. Heavier local LLM use may still feel limited, and one setup described using 6GB for coding autocomplete plus separate models for chat.
It can handle 1080p gaming well, and 1440p is possible with Metal upscaling. macOS game selection is still limited, so it is better suited to supported titles than to the latest Steam games natively.
Costco lists the same Mac mini M6 for $1149.99 and includes a 2-year warranty, so this Amazon price is not the lowest available. Apple also sells a 32GB/256GB configuration for $1300 before discounts, which shows how quickly pricing rises with more RAM.
Interesting! Why WSL2 instead of the Ollama build for Windows? Issue with drivers?
Auto complete as in the inline suggestion feature (ghost text) or something else? And did you run both Qwen 1.5B and 4 E4B at the same time or have to unload one to run the other? If it's a memory issue, NVidia's Nemotron might be worth a shot. I think the model I tested was Nemotron 3 Nano 4B and it ran much better than I expected for a model under 3GB in size.
Yes, for the "realtime" suggestions in the editor. Both models (E4B and 1.5B) fit assuming quantization, I couldn't fit them both when using qwen 7B for chat. I'm more of a linux guy and the servers run linux, so it's easier than doing two different platforms. I'll be setting up something more substantial with a 5060 Ti 16GB that will be on linux, and our existing virtual machine doing CPU inference is on linux, so it just keeps things similar.
M6 has several YouTube videos of people playing red dead, rocket league, Minecraft, GTA V. A guy even played cyberpunk on high res while DaVinci was running in the background with no charger or fan noise. And that was on an M5 macbook pro. https://youtube.com/shorts/As4xHh...cSctDj7ZPR
Those are all old games. I think it's fair to point out Mac is generally compromised when it comes to games selection. Unless that has changed and it can play the latest steam games natively (not emulation)?
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Apple's M6 Mac mini with 24GB RAM and a 512GB SSD is being framed as a strong compact desktop for everyday work, with fast, smooth performance that should handle daily office use for years. It also gets credit as a capable 1080p gaming machine, with 1440p possible through Metal upscaling, though macOS still limits game selection and native support for newer Steam titles. The main hesitation is price, since the same model appears cheaper at Costco with a 2-year warranty, and the value feels less compelling than the older $500 Mac mini era.
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Auto complete as in the inline suggestion feature (ghost text) or something else? And did you run both Qwen 1.5B and 4 E4B at the same time or have to unload one to run the other? If it's a memory issue, NVidia's Nemotron might be worth a shot. I think the model I tested was Nemotron 3 Nano 4B and it ran much better than I expected for a model under 3GB in size.
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