as young PC Builders you will be tempted by Sleek shiny options but you mustn't
take the easy path is that the magc mini awesome Elijah you didn't even try to
resist it it's a $600 computer nothing
even compares to this and while thousands took to the
online streets to rip into Apple's outrageous storage pricing it doesn't
change the fact that for the base model M4 Mac Mini he's right if all you want
to do is email and video conferencing some light professional work even some
casual gaming $600 seems like an outright steel for this new machine I
mean heck i' probably recommend it to a friend who just needed a decent computer
at a fair price so has Apple built the
best system for the 99% to find out
we're going to drag race it against both a $600 Mini PC and Tower desktop PC
while also discussing some of the pros and cons that you might gloss over if
you take these devices at face value But be sure not to gloss over our sponsor
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for your business learn more about ODU today by clicking the link in the video
description let's meet our three computers for malice standing at a
height of 2 in and featuring 10 CPU and
10 GPU cords the Mac Mini will it be
held back by its lack of storage or will its unified memory deliver a knockout
blow for team PC standing at 2 in tall
the minoram Venus and towering over the
rest at 15 in the cbble together desktop
Tower this machine sure takes up a lot of room but it's dedicated card means
that when it comes to gaming it means
business there is of course a lot more to know about each system so here it is
but those are just details for now what matters is that at the time of ordering
each of these machines came in under $600 before taxes and shipping which
brings us then without further Ado to Benchmark number one cinebench in both
single and multicore flavors and go here
we go
oh God this is not going to be close dude
wow wait it might be a little close oh this is spinning
up oh it is starting to slow down but
it's still it's not slowing down much wait wow this pass it wait what
that's very surprising I I am also
surprised what's in here huh that's not
even current gen ryzen if you remember as well this is normally $150 over our
$600 budget but it was on sale I like
sales so it's kind of you know being a
little bit of a cheater here by joining the lower weight class anyway while
these run let's talk about Apple's new M4 silicon compared to last year's M3
Apple's added two more efficiency cores they have more than doubled the number
of operations that their neural engine can complete per second and they have
increased the memory bandwidth of their already f F unified memory by 20%
perhaps most importantly though compared to their most recent Mac Mini which had
an M2 processor and even compared to their other M3 devices Apple has doubled
the memory capacity of the base configuration from just 8 GB to 16 now I
have no doubt that the most tab hungry of you could easily make use of more but
we've at least reached the point where I'm not uncomfortable recommending a
base configuration so good job app
and good job on the processor itself we'll talk about performance in a second
but first I want to talk about Energy Efficiency look at this thing here's all
three machines running the same load except the M4 is using a fraction of the
power of the other two for a desktop obviously this level of efficiency
matters less than it does in a phone or a thin and light laptop but less power
consumption means less heat output and quieter operation you can see even even
when it's running a test does it even have a
fan oh yeah it does wow is it ever quiet
though and enough fawning though let's take a look at the performance and wow
the desktop and the Mac Mini are shockingly close in multicore but what's
really surprising to me is how far out ahead that mini Forum pulls two extra
performance cores goes a long way for the multi-core but does that hold up for
single core let's see three two
one and now we wait a
while I mean technically we don't have the final result but we have enough of
it where the M4 really excels is
single-threaded performance which is one of the things that contributes to Apple
silicon machines feeling so responsive and snappy even the first generation
ones which seems to have become a bit of a drag on Apple sales you talk to an M1
Mac owner and they're like upgrade why who needs to upgrade wait
there's one right now I have two M1 Mac
Air M1 and Max studio M1 Max what's the
reason for oper let's move on to our next test here we're going to Target the
GPU using blender to render the classroom test scene and go go okay what
are we expecting oh dedicated GPU turns
out having one of those that's a thing
but an outstanding integrated GPU it's
doing much better than this one that's a thing too uh yeah he was
invited oh wait is that Frozen uh oh no
there it goes a minute yeah okay that's about 12 seconds slower than our Tower
PC but a lot faster than this is this
even done yet uh no it has quite a ways to go good Lord now In fairness 3050 not
exactly the most impressive GPU to be
almost on par with but when we consider that this is on board it's pretty darn
impressive however custom form factor machines like this are giving up a lot
in terms of upgradeability in the long term which makes them a pretty
questionable value if GPU performance is a priority not just today but in the
future because this 3050 we can get rid of it throw something
else in there and we're going to be even faster all right movie Magic cut final
score just under four minutes wow the
Mac Mini is just a quarter the time and
you've got to give it credit it's just so cute which like it or not is a
significant factor for some people when they're choosing a computer now before
we get to gaming let's take a look at a large language model specifically llama
how about we have them each write 10 high cus about our Tech bro vest now
available on LTT Store.com I was the medium labeled Elijah no offense but I
don't think so bro what you're taller than me and wider I don't think I'm an
XL though I give you an XL yeah wow you
really do look like budget s bman freed now screw
off ready go this is the same test we
used back in our 50 versus $50,000 computer video and while I don't expect
as big of a difference on these three machines today it is an opportunity for
us to talk about one of Apple's biggest advantages if there happens to be an AI
workload that utilizes GPU memory the typical wisdom has been sure no problem
just slap some high-capacity gpus like a Quadro into your system but with Apple's
unified memory the sfc is able to dynamically adjust how much RAM each
section has access to whether it's the CPU the GPU or in this case Apple's
neural Eng Faded Glory worn my love for Tech still
shines through all vest is my heart Tech bro flare that won't be beat are you
rolling on this this is freaking ridiculous look the quality is not what
we're using to evaluate them here because they're all using the same model
so theoretically they should be about the same what we're interested in is the
speed and if you guys were looking over my shoulder you'll have seen that the M4
absolutely destroyed the others so
unless you're a Data Center and you need need the absolute best in AI performance
and you're willing to spend millions of dollars to get it one of these with a
little RAM upgrade might be the better choice for you although RAM upgrades on
this are a pretty big room elephant yes
my friends we saw the Reddit post that you could buy two base model Mac minis
for the price of one that has twice as much RAM and storage in it apple is
still pricing their storage at the literal weight of gold old which is an
awful value another sore spot for some is the power button which is not only
now on the bottom of the machine but at the back of the bottom with those two
things aside though there's no denying that the machine we're reviewing which
is the base model absolutely kicks but
for the price but does it hold up in gaming while Apple silicon has the raw
grunt to put up decent gaming performance numbers compatibility
continues to be a struggle now of course most Mac users aren't going to expect to
play the latest tripa game so we're just using shadow of the Tomb Raider as a
tool to measure the performance of the GPU in a different way and also to enjoy
the onboard speaker that actually sounds
a lot better than not having a speaker at all it's not a fair okay that's fair I
guess what it what it is yeah oh wow
what's also not fair is having a dedicated GPU apparently dude this poor thing
yeah even this one though it's it started before let it let Tim
Cook hey
huh of course the Mac couldn't hold a candle to our mid Tower PC but In
fairness to it it held up quite well against a last generation AMD onboard
GPU and I know some of you are going to say well AMD has newer ones and like
that's nice but we're looking at Price comparables here
not generation comparables so what's our conclusion
then mid Tower PC wins I don't think it's that simple no
it really isn't is it I mean on the one hand uh good job with the high FPS there
buddy but on the other hand there's a lot more to life than gaming and our M4
mini excels in areas that our custom PC Falls flat in now if you're the average
LTT viewer the size relatively High
noise and power consumption and the inconvenience of digging through PC part
picker for the best deals and then assembling everything that's all part of
the fun rather than a burden and totally worth it for the upgradeability and
customizability of a machine like this but if your mom phones you up and she
wants help troubleshooting this thing wouldn't you rather just send her to Tim
Apple's house for help and I didn't even mention it has a headphone jack and
Thunderbolt this thing is sick now the upgraded configs suck and apple really
needs to give their Collective heads a shake but this base model for $600 is
every bit as good as it seems on paper if someone you know wants a computer on
a budget ask them what it's for and if you don't hear gaming I think that the
mini PCS take the Victory and if that user happens to already own an ie device
the Mac Mini gets a pretty big boost the workflow of like airdropping and using
iCloud between devices really is kind of magic sometimes
just like this magic spell to take you
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watching if you guys liked this video why don't you check out the $10,000 Mac
Pro killer that we made almost a year ago Apple definitely doesn't perform as
well when you start going up into the higher price range