[dansky]

The Mac mini M4 performance is around 4-5x in DaVinci Resolve for me - compared to my HP laptop (i5-1135G7).

Rendering HDR video was around 12fps there on the i5 - the same project in the Mac mini gets 60fps.

The M4 10 core GPU seems on par or better with a mobile RTX3060(65W) for video tests (NR / Deflicker) so I'm also impressed about the M4's efficiency. A lot of power per Watt.

It's becoming a dedicated video rendering machine for me where all the SMB auto mounting issues with macOS seem solvable. Pretty happy so far with the base model price even in the EU. The power button placement is an annoyance for me, though.

[mamp]

When do you turn it off? I have a Mac M1 Studio and I just let it sleep. If things get weird I reboot. I think I recall using the power button about a year ago after returning from vacation after I had shut it down.

[dansky]

Right now I mount up to 7 HDDs to the Mac via SMB, have some Streamdeck / Pedal and the necessary external SSDs for fast storage connected. I will see if the SMB mounts come back OK after sleep (my laptop acts as server) but the Streamdeck and HDDs wake up randomly so overall it's easier to switch everything on and off depending on usage.

[jbverschoor]

Stop underwear off complaining about the mini, you should complain at streamdeck

[cchance]

Like seriously WTF are people turning it off its 3 watts at idle lol, most power supplies have that much phantom drain lol

[llm_nerd]

Everyone keeps citing idle, which is when the device is on and active but not particularly doing anything.

The standby power draw is 1W or less. I've used Mac Minis for years -- just replaced my M1 with an M4, though the M1 left me wanting for nothing -- and the number of times I've interacted with the power button is so negligible I imagine I've gone over a year without touching it. When I haven't touched it in a while it goes to standby, waking instantly when I engage it again.

[sjoerger]

Not everyone lives the same way. I am seriously considering a Mac Mini as my next upgrade yet I live in a RV and move frequently. Are there ways that I can keep the Mac mini powered while traveling.. sure, but why would/should I?

[CrumpetDiagonal]

Are you not turning off entire circuits to reduce power draw when mobile? I’m actually thinking about one of these for my truck camper and its power draw seems fine, but the stumbling point for me is the additional power draw from the monitor it would require. I think I’m leaning toward an M4 MBP with nano textured screen for maximum power efficiency and ability to work outside when it’s nice, though I have not yet put much effort into researching efficient monitors

[n_ary]

My EU mind is blown by these claims. Let’s take the lowest(1W) at sleep mode. With a thousand mac minis at sleep mode, that is already 1kW! In my country, a single person household’s yearly electricity package comes at 1400kW(+100 depending on provider) per year.

Note: intentionally keeping it simple, please don’t nitpick.

[mkl]

No household uses 1400kW, and kW/year doesn't make sense. Do you mean 1400kWh/year? That seems pretty low (NZ is 7000kWh/year), but if so, you're comparing power to energy, which doesn't mean much. 1W 24/7 < 9kWh/year, which is pretty small.

[czottmann]

Personal guess from a fellow European citizen: I think they meant to say 1700 kWh/year. According to most German power utilities, the average 2-person household consumes about 2400 kWh/year.

[kortilla]

It’s not clear what your point is because you’ve made a strong argument for it being negligible.

[rwalle]

i5-1135G7 is from about 4 years ago. If you look at the latest offerings from Intel/AMD the gap should be fairly small.

[baq]

> The power button placement is an annoyance for me, though.

Keep the thing upside down.

Not joking.

[nielsbot]

Feel like that risks overheating...

[Retr0id]

Not really. Unlike previous mac mini models, the grille on the underside is both the air intake and exhaust. If anything it ought to be better upside-down, since convection now helps the heated air rise out.

Edit: any downvoters care to elaborate?

[trashtester]

It would make it fill up with dust, even while idle. Also, and fluid spill would be much more likely to cause damage.

The normal orientation is fine for most people who want things to be as simple as possible (ie, most Mac users). There is very little reason to ever turn it off. If you still do that frequently for some reason, just leave it in a locatino where the button is still easy to access.

[_2d30]

The case is also going to radiate heat and turning it upside down will make that less efficient. The base won't radiate heat in the same due to being plastic and due to it already being used to pass air through.

[Retr0id]

The case isn't thermally connected to the SoC in any direct way, so while I'm sure it does radiate some heat, I think it's pretty negligible. The PSU sits at the "top" (in regular orientation), and I don't think it runs much of a risk of overheating.

[justinclift]

> Keep the thing upside down.

Or maybe on its side? :)

[GeekyBear]

Someone has already released a design you can 3d print that mounts the Mini on its side and makes it resemble the cheese grater Mac Pro.

> 3D-printed Mac Mini enclosure makes the tiny PC look like the world's cutest Mac Pro

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/3d-printed-mac-mini-en...

[m4button]

Well, you could try this solution, designed for people who’d like the flexibility of an on/off choice! https://m4button.com/

[va1a]

Yeah it seems like this would also increase airflow. Is there any possible issue with just having it upside down all the time?

[znpy]

> Is there any possible issue with just having it upside down all the time?

You might scratch the top, maybe? Nothing that a small piece of cloth wouldn't prevent, anyway.

[Izikiel43]

Isn't the case the heat sink? It might dissipate heat worst when lying upside down, as the table would get hot.

[ideashower]

Have you tried 8K video? How does each machine handle that?

[dansky]

I just arranged a selection of 4K H.264/H.265 clips in a 2x2 grid on a 8K timeline in DaVinci Resolve.

Playback works well - up to 60fps. However, export to H.265 creates a lot of Swap. Rendering went with 15-18fps. All videos on a SMB network drive but the GPU was the bottleneck for rendering.

Swap was even around 24GB with 5 videos which I tested first. Using 4x4K it went 9 GB before stabilizing at around 2GB. No effects or grading whatsoever - plain 4K60 SDR videos.

One single SDR 4K clip renders to 8K at 25fps. Using Superscale 2x makes that 0.5-1fps.

For 8K rendering you may be better off with 32GB RAM minimum or trying the M4 Pro model maybe with 24GB. For 4K/6K editing the base 16/256 M4 Mac mini seems sufficient when all video storage will be on external drives or network.

Edit: added single 4k->8K rendering performance

[ideashower]

thanks for checking! I think I'll get the M4 Pro and max out the RAM. I don't have the budget for whatever the future M4 Studio would look like, so this seems like a nice sweet spot.

[dansky]

I had a few OFX plugins and maybe had the browser running which may have impacted RAM. Depending on how much RAM you can keep free and the amount of grading on that 8K video you may be OK with the 24GB of the M4 Pro base model but yeah - more is always better though with Apple it's painful to add more of anything .. on a budget.

[leptons]

>The Mac mini M4 performance is around 4-5x in DaVinci Resolve for me - compared to my HP laptop (i5-1135G7).

You could pick a variety of non Apple CPUs that easily deliver 4-5x the performance of an 11th gen i5. Maybe don't be disingenous and compare the M4 to a more recent CPU like i5-14600K, which is also 4x the performance. I'm not comparing on power efficiency, since that was not mentioned at all as part of your comment.

[matthew-wegner]

Is it 4x the performance?

Passmark shows 38,951 / 4,282 versus 24,724 / 4,555:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-14600...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+10+Core&id...

So i5-14600K is 1.57x on multi-core, slightly worse on single-core. $235 for the CPU versus $599 for a whole system. Could maybe match the total price, but Intel won't be able to come anywhere close on the power efficiency.

[dansky]

The 120GB/s memory bandwidth of the unified memory helps especially with video, I guess. The M4 CPU isn't really stressed out most of the time. Only multicam and HLG conversations it maxes out.

Once I patched my old Dell T1650 BIOS for ReBAR support yet the iGPU of the i5 1135-g7 had similar GPU performance for video as the Intel Arc A380 in the desktop PC. The old PCIe3 speed limited its performance. I heard others reported a smoother replay experience with Apple silicon compared to even a RTX4090.

I get some delays when fast scrubbing through a 9 multicam 720p timeline and just 360p proxies. Still impressed compared to what I was used to. Video editors may be surprised about the performance for the price.

[ciupicri]

How did you patch the Dell T1650 BIOS for ReBAR support?

[dansky]

There is a Github project [1] which has detailed instructions. The ancient i5-3570 only allowed 2GB ReBAR, BTW. GPU-Z says ReBAR / 4G is activated and working, Intel Arc Driver does not see it but seems to use it. Some part of the BIOS had to be manually fixed, AFAIR.

The PC was given for free, the CPU €11 yet overall I wouldn't recommend the process just for the result. It's only little benefit, if at all, though fun. On that occasion I also added some NVMe driver which works well, demonstrated for the similar Dell Optiplex [2][3]..

[1] https://github.com/xcuri0/rebaruefi

[2] https://www.tachytelic.net/2021/12/dell-optiplex-7010-pcie-n...

[3] https://github.com/jrdoughty/Dell-7010-rebar-guide

Edit: some wording

[Rohansi]

4x vs. the old i5, not the M4. They are trying to say that comparing to a CPU released four years ago is pointless because the newer CPU is obviously much better.

[nl]

It's not disingenuous to do a real-world comparison to a system you already own when stating the specs. It's actually much more useful to hear these real world anecdotes than to look at geekbench numbers.

[dansky]

Thank you!

I expected a fast M4 package but still was mind blown to see the video editing performance. After all these video renders run for many hours.

My 2 year old i5 laptop - even with 64GB RAM and 2x2TB SSDs upgrades - was around the same price like the base M4 Mac mini / uses similar Power. The PC surely is way more versatile with these specs and expandability.

Staying mostly in X86-land due to affordable RAM & storage, nothing I currently have comes close to the M4 performance per Watt - and now even performance per $/€ - in my video-editing use case.

[leptons]

It's comparing apples to oranges. If you want to compare computers, compare a macbook with an old i5 to your laptop with an old i5. Comparing an M4 to an old i5 is just silly. Of course it's going to be faster.

[dansky]

It's a comparison of two CPU/iGPU combos I have on my desk with similar power draw. Those iGPUs are most power efficient for video editing as I like QuickSync from Intel.

The i5-1135G7 (17W TDP) has 2 Media Engines which I use for proxy generation in parallel for example and pretty versatile so I use it daily (64GB RAM..).

Still, I think it's a notable achievement to get 4x performance with the M4 for video at similar wattage of the i5. I don't have an M4 MacBook but I guess the M4 would perform similar to the one in the Mac mini.