The Mac Mini is using full desktop components, not NUC laptop components. That's why it supports 4 times as much RAM, Thunderbolt 3, and a 65 watt CPU compared to the 25 watt NUCs.
"But the striking thing to me is just how much smaller the Intel NUC is."
Add the volume of the NUC's hideous and ungainly power supply brick. Then make your judgement on size.
If you've taken a mini apart, you'd see that the easiest way volume could be significantly reduced is by replacing the space for two 3.5" drives with space for one modern NVME gum stick - a trick which the already NUC does thanks to its being developed more recently.
The mini has Thunderbolt and and digital audio in/out. The NUC has neither of these.
If you compare the interior of the mini and the NUC, the NUC does not stand out as an marvel of engineering or miniaturization.
My NUC11Pro has 64GB of RAM and 2x SSD, and is way smaller than Mac Mini. Not sure why Apple thinks they need to dumb down smallest form factor for market segmentation reasons.
The Mac Mini (standard configs) are pretty comparable to the latest Intel NUC, compared to something like this https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits... (and folks can debate whether the Mini's 6-cores and no dGPU is better/worse than the NUC's 4-cores with a Radeon GPU).
What's neat is that the Mini now runs a full desktop CPU (60W TDP?). So while the default configs of the Mac Mini are roughly equivalent to a NUC , the Mini has higher max upgrade headroom and a fully-tricked-out Mini will significantly surpass a NUC in speed/memory/networking.
it's underpowered compared to NUC's (and similar) in it's price range, even after adding hdd's and ram to the NUC kit if you don't buy it pre-made.
the top $1k model still is only a dual core cpu.
it comes with a slow 5400 rpm drive instead of a ssd. even the pro $1k model has a slow 5400 rpm mechanical drive unless you pay extra for the upgrade.
not to mention thunderbolt ports have not really caught on outside the apple-peripheral community, would have liked to see more USB3's than thunderbolts.
(also not sure about their claim of "lowest power computer in the world", guess it depends what your definition of a computer is, because RPi takes 700mW. None-the-less, some of the NUC kits sip only 8W or less, while the new Mini is rated at 83W)
What's impressive about it? That's a mobile CPU, ~20% slower than the Mini base model. Slower RAM (2400 vs 2666). Two USB3.1 ports vs four in the mini, no Thunderbolt (10gbps vs 40gbps). Weaker GPU, can't output 4K. To top it off, it doesn't come with RAM (+€80 8gb) or an SSD (+€50 128GB).
Total cost €680 vs €899 for the Mac Mini - it actually makes the mini look like an incredible deal.
I started reading article hoping for something interesting from Apple, but then I compare Mac Mini specs to the mini-itx system I've built back in February.
- AMD Ryzen 2400g (4cores 8 threads)
- 16 GB DDR4 Ram
- 256GB M.2 Nvme
- 1TB 2.5" HDD
- I can add more memory, internal storage, and still have a spare 16xPCI slot.
This runs linux and cost less than $800 Canadian dollars all in. Not impressed.
Everything is upgradable and in a case that 3 times as big as mac one.
As much as I love using MacOS, the Intel NUCs offer upgradability for SSD and RAM which makes it harder to go with the Mac Mini if you need larger storage or memory.
But this is exactly my point. Apple is optimizing the wrong things (for me) because it's trying to build Cool New Things rather than things that are actually useful. My NUC looks perfectly fine, and it sits under my desk so no one ever sees it anyway. It is superior to a Mac Mini in every conceivable way. It's smaller and it costs less for the same tech specs. The only thing that a NUC doesn't do that a Mini does is run MacOS legally.
The Mac Minis are a great value compared to the rest of Apple's lineups. The NUC is overpriced, like why would I get that instead of a generic laptop? It was just a poor value for what it offered.
Mac Mini is not a really powerful desktop. It's has mediocre CPU with terrible cooling (not allowing it to reach even full potential), built-in GPU and non-standard soldered SSD.
I want 16 core CPU (probably Threadripper, as Intel is unable to produce anything competitive recently) with Nvidia 2080 Ti or better GPU, and 32GB ECC memory for $2k.
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