M2 Pro MacMini

Got word today my 2018 mac mini needs logic board replacement. 2 yrs after buying new and never purchased the additional apple care coverage...I honestly never thought it'd happen on mac...and certainly not after 2 yrs. So, decision time. Invest $6-700 on parts/labour on an already 5 yr old tech or use that $$ towards new. frig. 99% not going to repair ..i feel probs best to cut losses and just invest in the new tech and i'll get that stupid coverage this time around.
 
Chewie5150 said:
Got word today my 2018 mac mini needs logic board replacement. 2 yrs after buying new and never purchased the additional apple care coverage...I honestly never thought it'd happen on mac...and certainly not after 2 yrs. So, decision time. Invest $6-700 on parts/labour on an already 5 yr old tech or use that $$ towards new. frig. 99% not going to repair ..i feel probs best to cut losses and just invest in the new tech and i'll get that stupid coverage this time around.
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That’s bullshit. Where did you take it for the diagnostic?
 
Jambi said:
That’s bullshit. Where did you take it for the diagnostic?
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apple store. They reseated heatsink/thermal paste and diagnostics for cooling keep failing despite. Explains what was happening to me for weeks. Thermal throttling, kernel panics , computer shutting down on its own. So this is fast tracking my upgrade path. Ordered the m2pro and opted for apple coverage this time.358382EA-970C-4E3E-BC31-194C5A7DD99B.jpeg
 
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Chewie5150 said:
apple store. They reseated heatsink/thermal paste and diagnostics for cooling keep failing despite. Explains what was happening to me for weeks. Thermal throttling, kernel panics , computer shutting down on its own. So this is fast tracking my upgrade path. Ordered the m2pro and opted for apple coverage this time.View attachment 118964
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Bummer man, I’ve heard of them replacing older devices with the current iteration every now and then.

Good luck getting Apple Silicon to get hot

IMG_2799.jpeg
 
Jambi said:
That’s bullshit. Where did you take it for the diagnostic?
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No, it's pretty normal IME.

I had a lot of logic boards replaced before I gave up on Apple. If I go back (which I am considering), I'll expect to have to replace a logic board every few years. It's just one of those things. Maybe they've gotten better. Hopefully it was all just heat-related faults and the lower heat from Apple Silicon will solve the issue moving forward.

FWIW, my wife's experiences are totally different....she's gone through 2 MBPs years later but in the same amount of time that I went through like 6 or 7, mostly warranty replacements.
 
marsonic said:
No, it's pretty normal IME.

I had a lot of logic boards replaced before I gave up on Apple. If I go back (which I am considering), I'll expect to have to replace a logic board every few years. It's just one of those things. Maybe they've gotten better. Hopefully it was all just heat-related faults and the lower heat from Apple Silicon will solve the issue moving forward.

FWIW, my wife's experiences are totally different....she's gone through 2 MBPs years later but in the same amount of time that I went through like 6 or 7, mostly warranty replacements.
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I was tempted to build a powerful PC but I've been so out of the loop from PC's for nearly 15 yrs now I just didnt know where to start
 
iaresee said:
Fuck it. Ordering one. Y'all are a bunch of enablers. :D

My only gripe is $600 for 2TB internal is ridiculous.
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the upgrades really gouge you don't they. I opted for 2TB. That hurt. I've always used 1TB in the past but always struggling with space so just blew my load this time. I have external SSD's but just wanted more headroom internally
 
Chewie5150 said:
I was tempted to build a powerful PC but I've been so out of the loop from PC's for nearly 15 yrs now I just didnt know where to start
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Neither did I.

My first one was an exact copy of a TonyMacX86 golden build for a hackintosh, which I ran OS X on for a long time with zero issues. Eventually, I started following a couple of PC/tech enthusiast channels on YT that did "real testing" (Linus Tech Tips, gamers nexus, and jayztwocents were the good ones) and kind of absorbed what I needed and didn't need, considering that I don't game.

Maybe I've been lucky, but it worked out well.

Now....the pendulum seems to have swung again. I still think Apple's hardware is worse (if you're comparing to building a decently high end PC desktop, not a bargain laptop)...but Windows 11 might be enough worse that it's worth dealing with Apple's "probably better than it was for a while" hardware again. And I'll have a backup for non-music things when I install Linux on this PC and, based on my experience with other PCs I've built, keep using it over SSH & remote desktop for a long time.

FWIW, my oldest running PC is an early-2012 i7 3770 build now running ESXi for some low-use VMs. It's fine. My last Apple, a 2011 MBP, got recycled years ago when it completely died and needed another logic board. IDK....I only ever owned Apple laptops. Maybe it's laptops that have the problems. I had a 2011 Thinkpad as well, and it finally just about died a couple months ago. It's been held together with tape for years, and the battery finally started overheating and expanding, and I don't think they make replacements anymore. So, it works plugged in but isn't really worth using like that....mostly because I've got slightly newer desktops that are in better shape.

I'm not going to lie...part of the reason that the M2 Pro Mini appeals to me...is that it's cheaper than a comparable PC for how I intend to use it. And I don't have to deal with Win11...which might be fine in practice but has a lot of things about it that I really don't like.
 
iaresee said:
Fuck it. Ordering one. Y'all are a bunch of enablers. :D

My only gripe is $600 for 2TB internal is ridiculous.
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I have an OWC 4 disc RAID array attached to my M1 Mini via Thunderbolt. I run huge Logic Pro X projects directly from that array without issue. It's like having 16 TB right inside the Mini, except (1) it's RAID 1 so I have a mirror in case of drive failure, and (2) that array and its drives cost me just a little more than $700. I can even hot-swap drives out of the mirror and it'll auto-rebuild the new drive - even if the new drive is a larger size - so if I need more storage, I can just replace the drives one at a time. I've had zero issues with it in the past four years.
 
Sleestak said:
I have an OWC 4 disc RAID array attached to my M1 Mini via Thunderbolt. I run huge Logic Pro X projects directly from that array without issue. It's like having 16 TB right inside the Mini, except (1) it's RAID 1 so I have a mirror in case of drive failure, and (2) that array and its drives cost me just a little more than $700. I can even hot-swap drives out of the mirror and it'll auto-rebuild the new drive - even if the new drive is a larger size - so if I need more storage, I can just replace the drives one at a time. I've had zero issues with it in the past four years.
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Which enclosure do you use? At that size, sounds like hard drives rather than SSDs, right?
 
marsonic said:
Which enclosure do you use? At that size, sounds like hard drives rather than SSDs, right?
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I have a Thunderbay 4. I bought it as an empty enclosure, and then added my own drives. Yes, they're NAS-rated hard drives spinning at 7200 RPM. They're RAID 1, so there are 2 pairs of master+mirror drives. All four of my drives are 8TB. I started with two drives, as I didn't need more than 8TB to start. When my needs grew, I added another 2 8TB drives, but in doing so I made the original drives the masters for each pair, and the new drives the mirror. Like all hard drives, the older drives will likely fail first, as they've just had more cycles on them. So I mitigated that risk by added a new drive to each pair.
I could (and perhaps will someday) switch to SSD for this kind of storage, but I gotta say, I have been able to run Logic Pro X projects with 100+ tracks directly from the RAID array, so I haven't discovered a need for faster read / write speeds. SSD will be less failure prone over the long run, so when my drives eventually start to bow out, I'll consider options.
 
Sleestak said:
Like all hard drives, the older drives will likely fail first, as they've just had more cycles on them.
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Weeelll… hopefully. I’ve had new drives fail within days. MTBF averages the lifespan of failed old and new drives. I learned to take it with a grain of salt, and throw some salt over my shoulder.

SSD are tempting, and for storing projects they should work well; I have about 1 TB of images from when I did professional photography on an SSD because it rarely changes. I’d hesitate to use one for a busy database though.
 
marsonic said:
Maybe it's gotten better, but I've had more Time Machine backups fail than every other backup system I've used combined. I honestly think it's just a waste of disc space...
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Similar issues here with my Airport Time Capsule, until I learned how to override the backup failures!

Although it doesn't cure the failures, it buys you extra time:

Simply unplug your Airport Time Capsule from your UPS, wait 30 seconds, then plug it back it. Then, wait for the Time capsule to reboot, and open Time Capsule from your toolbar. Select 'Backup Now,' and that should solve your problem.

Previous times, I thought I'd need to delete/reinstall my Time Capsule from my Utilities folder with Disk Utilities using previous data. A full reinstall takes over 8 hours if you forget to select "previous data," so don't do what I did!

AppleCare and I have been over this a couple times (and although they no longer support Time Capsule), the best way to solve a backup failure is to simply unplug/plug/reboot.
 
If anyone considering the M2 vs M2pro this is a pretty good straightforward comparison vid. My M2pro has been ordered due to arrive by Apr 19th. Very curious to see the performance improvement in these new silicon chips. There are rumors / 'leaks' of possible new M2 max/Ultra Studio coming out by June or Fall. I much prefer the form factor of the studio but I"m sure the M2pro will be plenty to handle for some time
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
Weeelll… hopefully. I’ve had new drives fail within days. MTBF averages the lifespan of failed old and new drives. I learned to take it with a grain of salt, and throw some salt over my shoulder.

SSD are tempting, and for storing projects they should work well; I have about 1 TB of images from when I did professional photography on an SSD because it rarely changes. I’d hesitate to use one for a busy database though.
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This isn't 2005....modern SSDs can do petabytes worth of writes before they hit their endurance limits.

My day job involves quite a few reasonably active databases (millions of writes/updates every day) and they're all on SSD RAID 1s or RAID 10s. Hard drives aren't fast enough. We're actually about to upgrade another of them from SAS SSDs to NVMe because for that one, they're not fast enough either.

bleujazz3 said:
Similar issues here with my Airport Time Capsule, until I learned how to override the backup failures!

Although it doesn't cure the failures, it buys you extra time:

Simply unplug your Airport Time Capsule from your UPS, wait 30 seconds, then plug it back it. Then, wait for the Time capsule to reboot, and open Time Capsule from your toolbar. Select 'Backup Now,' and that should solve your problem.

Previous times, I thought I'd need to delete/reinstall my Time Capsule from my Utilities folder with Disk Utilities using previous data. A full reinstall takes over 8 hours if you forget to select "previous data," so don't do what I did!

AppleCare and I have been over this a couple times (and although they no longer support Time Capsule), the best way to solve a backup failure is to simply unplug/plug/reboot.
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I'll just use something that actually works. That's also not how they failed. They failed to restore backups after the computer/drive had either failed or been replaced.

Backups need to be automatic, period. Otherwise you're going to screw up eventually.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Weeelll… hopefully. I’ve had new drives fail within days. MTBF averages the lifespan of failed old and new drives. I learned to take it with a grain of salt, and throw some salt over my shoulder.

SSD are tempting, and for storing projects they should work well; I have about 1 TB of images from when I did professional photography on an SSD because it rarely changes. I’d hesitate to use one for a busy database though.
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It's been years since I've heard of anybody using a hard drive for music production projects. Streaming audio samples is generally more i/o intensive than a busy database, but you will see only SSD's used for music projects these days, so there's no need to be reluctant to use an SSD for music projects in 2023 :).
 
marsonic said:
Not by a long shot.
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Database applications that require real-time, repeated access patterns like streaming are relatively rare. Considering the context implied by the musical application forum we're posting on, that's a particularly relevant generalization.
 
GlennO said:
It's been years since I've heard of anybody using a hard drive for music production projects. Streaming audio samples is generally more i/o intensive than a busy database, but you will see only SSD's used for music projects these days, so there's no need to be reluctant to use an SSD for music projects in 2023 :).
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GlennO said:
Database applications that require real-time, repeated access patterns like streaming are relatively rare. Considering the context implied by the musical application forum we're posting on, that's a particularly relevant generalization.
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I got jarred from bed this morning and haven't woken up yet, so I'll try to make sense…

I used to work at GoDaddy, which has a huge server farm for their hosting and cloud services using SSD for parts of their servers, namely the boot disks, but not the data disks. Their SSD use might have grown since then but the issues probably remain the same; I quit caring after I retired. :) Back then though, I designed and wrote the code for database-backed systems that accessed file-based data so I had to pay attention to both types of I/O and technologies. For instance, one dealt with multiple TB of log files daily from the routers.

It's not large files being written or repeated access to a file that causes an SSD problems. An audio track being read repeatedly makes an SSD "happy", just as reading data from a database. It's repeatedly allocating, writing, and deleting small files, or making small changes to big files that causes problems, such as changing a data value in a database field. Sector allocation is different on SSD because their media has a hard limit on how often an area can be written to, so the algorithm forces it to write to different areas across the disk and fill all empty space before it begins reusing deleted blocks, and to reuse the oldest available empty or deleted areas first to spread the writes evenly.

Regular hard drives don't suffer from that problem. Because they're physically spinning medial, they want to position file segments as close together as possible to avoid head movement so their block allocation looks for the next closest available block to fill. Large jumps across the disk are slower because of the seek time compared to the SSD seek which is linear across the entire disk; SSD rock at random access anywhere on the disk.

It's been almost 5 years since I dug into that stuff so I'm sure there have been improvements, but I suspect the underlying principles are the same.

More information is at:
https://hyunyoung2.github.io/img/Im...VM/brief_ssd_effect_data_placement_writes.pdf
https://www.micron.com/-/media/clie...per/5210_ssd_vs_hdd_endurance_white_paper.pdf
 
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