Is the 2012 Mac Mini still a viable option in 2022?

[Ritchie333]

I finally retired my trusty Mac Pro 3,1 last year (it's had a good innings) and swapped it for a Quad Core I7 2012 Mac Mini. It does everything I need it to do, which is basically general casual computing and music production. I'm aware the GPU is not particularly good, but I can (and have) upgraded it to 16GB RAM and 3TB of storage. You can't even do that amount of internal storage on the latest Mac Minis.

Meanwhile, my main work machine is now an M1 Mac Mini, and I've just spent upwards of an hour pruning out files because I've run out of disk space. On just about any other machine, I'd pop another disk in, and not have to think about this. I know I can buy a dock or add an external drive, but I take exception to spending my own cash on my employer's tools.

Does anyone else share this view? It seems increasingly there's a rose-tinted view towards the 2012, as being the last great Mac Mini before Apple started soldering things down and making it worse.

 

[trs96]

It seems increasingly there's a rose-tinted view towards the 2012

I still use a 2012 mini. I've got 16GB, Core i5 and the dual drive setup, one SSD and one HDD, both internal. It's so cramped that the drives do run quite hot, there's no airflow. It's still very usable today.

 

[trs96]

my main work machine is now an M1 Mac Mini, and I've just spent upwards of an hour pruning out files because I've run out of disk space.

The best hackintosh to outperform the 2012 quad core i7 mini, yet cost around the same price is this:

Dell Optiplex 7020/9020 SFF Desktops at Amazon

Introduction About seven years ago in 2015, I decided to research what the very best value and performance hackintosh would be. I wanted it to be fully macOS compatible, have a low price tag and be available most anywhere in the world. If it met those criteria, it would make it possible for...

www.tonymacx86.com

You can boot from an SSD and put a 8-16 TB 3.5" HDD inside it with no problems. Ram can go up to 32GB, double the Mac mini 2012. It also works great with Big Sur or Monterey. You can also install an AMD Radeon Pro WX4100 for really good graphics performance in macOS.

AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100 Specs

AMD Baffin, 1201 MHz, 1024 Cores, 64 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 4096 MB GDDR5, 1500 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Ritchie333]

Yeah, I like Dell Optiplexes, they're built like tanks and last forever. The main Hackintosh project I've been working on is taking an old Optiplex I was going to throw in the trash, which is now doing a very good impression of a 2010 Mac mini. And there's a Optiplex 9020 sitting here on my office desk that I've got my eye on for that very purpose.

However, for all the fun I've had learning about how to get it up and running, I wouldn't want to use a Hackintosh as a main production machine, because you never know when a software update is going to break things.

The other nice thing about the Mac mini, is, well, it's tiny and tucks underneath my monitors in a nice and neat way that a Dell desktop just can't. The Optiplex 3050 Mini gets sort of close, but it's still not something I can stick in a rucksack and take it with me - and given just about everybody choses to work from home at least some days of the week, that's actually a plus point.