Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “2018 Mac mini vs Mini PC/Hackintosh”.
Hey what’s up folks how’s it going! This is watch hope you guys are all doing. Well now i’ve been working on this video for quite some time now, and what i want to address over here is the new 2018 mac mini a couple of weeks back. We reviewed it and i think it’s a fairly versatile pc, as we discussed in that video and coupled with a nice, monitor, egpu and some peripherals, you can make a pretty capable little system out of it. But what we’re going to do in this article is compare it that kind of setup directly against a custom built mini hackintosh using brand new hardware, in fact we’re using the new intel 9700k processor, coupled with a z390 motherboard. Now there was some huge complications with this hardware setup which we’ll talk about uh later on.
But let’s go over kind of the major differences between the two and also go over the rationale behind making your own custom hackintosh in the year 2018 going into 2019 and seeing if that’s worth it over getting something natively from apple itself. So, if you’re interested, let’s get right into it now, firstly, i just want to break down the parts we use to build our mini hackintosh. First and foremost, you can see that we’re using a super compact case. This is the dan case.
A4 sfx. This right now is one of the smallest cases that you can get for a custom built pc that supports itx, motherboards and a full size graphics card. It’S only about 11 centimeters in terms of width and 20 centimeters in terms of height, and it’s about 31 centimeters. In depth, so it barely takes any more space than a traditional mac mini would now, even though the mac mini itself is smaller than our custom built pc.
We do have to keep in mind to get the same performance level. We need a egpu solution, so the one that we have from blackmagic in combination with the mac mini is going to actually take a little bit more desktop space than our custom built hackintosh. That has everything integrated inside a compact shell. Now here’s the parts list that we use to make our hackintosh we’re using the intel core: i7 9700k processor.
It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It has eight threads and eight cores and it can turbo up to 4.9 gigahertz. It’S an unlocked multiplier. So we can easily go way beyond five gigahertz if we so desire.
Now the cpus also has integrated 630 uhd graphics from intel, but we’re going to use a discrete graphics card solution from gigabyte the rtx 2070 windforce edition for the motherboard we’re using an itx gigabyte. Z390 aeros pro wifi and we have 32 gigabytes of ram, as well as a 500 gigabyte, 2.5 inch ssd drive and a 450 watt sfx power supply from silverstone, which fits nicely into our compact dan case. Now we have the six core version of the 2018 mac mini. That’S specifically the core: i7 8700b processor.
That’S a six core cpu with 12 threads, since that has hyper threading enabled the turbo frequency is about 4.6 gigahertz and it does have a built-in uhd, 630 graphics. But we’re going to be pairing this up with the blackmagic egpu that has a vega 56 graphics card built inside additionally, since it’s much cheaper to upgrade the ram on the mac mini yourself than to pay apple to do it. For you, i just added another 16 gigabytes of ddr4 memory in conjunction with the four gigabyte that was already in the other slot. So now we have 20 gigs of ram on the mac mini right now, which is a lot better than the 8 gigabyte version that we had to begin with, and if we were to tally up the price for the mac mini setup that we have right now. First thing: i would not recommend getting the blackmagic egpu with the vega 56, because it costs 1200 or more. It’S much cheaper to actually buy a vega 56 by itself, which can be had for the low 400 mark and just get the sonnet e gfx breakaway box, which is a thunderbolt, enabled external graphics card housing for around 200 and with a separate configuration you’re going to Be spending half as much compared to what you’re going to get with blackmagic and if we tally up our 1099 six core mac mini with the egpu solution and the 125 dollars extra that we spent to get that 16 gigabytes of extra ram.
We’Re looking about 18 34 as our grand total for the mac mini setup and our hackintosh setup is around 1732, so you’re, looking at around a hundred dollars a price difference coming from the custom solution, uh to what we have with the mac mini now. Firstly, i just want to show you the performance differences between the two systems and taking a look at the cpu performance score specifically and keep in mind. We didn’t overclock our a hackintosh, so it’s running on the stock frequencies you’re looking at a pretty significant difference over here, both in terms of the single core performance and the multi-core performance on geekbench on the mac mini the single core performance is about 5600 points and The multi-core performance is about 23 000 on our hackintosh. We’Re looking at 6 300 points just for the single core and about 31 000 points for the multi-core performance and keep in mind. Even though the 8700b processor on the mac mini has 12 threads compared to the eight threads on our hackintosh, the 9700k processor is still significantly faster, even with more threads, because it does have physically more cores as well.
And if we take a look at the cinebench r15 benchmark again, those results are being mirrored over here. We’Re getting over uh 1400 points on our hackintosh and around 1187 points on our six core mac mini and keep in mind that we did uh run the benchmarks in high sierra with our hackintosh, and i did replicate the benchmarks in windows 10 and the difference was Actually, fairly marginal between the two os’s, which is awesome uh, since, if you’re going to be running mac, os 10, most of the time on your custom build pc you’re, not really sacrificing too much cpu performance. Now, in terms of the graphic side of things, our rtx 2070 is definitely a superior gpu than the vega 56 in pretty much all measures. And if you take a look at our valley, benchmark with a resolution of 3440 by 1440 high detail, settings on our ultra wide display, we’re getting around 90 average frames per second on our rtx 2070 versus around 46.7 average frames per second on our vega, 56 egpu And keep in mind that we’re running the valley benchmark on our hackintosh in os10, if we were to run it in windows with directx 11., we’ll get even better performance results since uh driver support is a lot better on windows, as you would imagine, and we’re kind Of running an unauthorized graphics card that was never ever designed to run with mac os x. Now, if your workflow involves any kind of media creation, video editing photo editing 3d, rendering things like that.
I wanted to just demonstrate the differences between the two i use premiere. Pro specifically, and some of my video footage is raw and it takes a lot of processing power to export and the render output times for the same premiere. Pro project took around 8 minutes 14 seconds on our hackintosh versus 13 minutes with our egpu and the mac mini. Furthermore, i also do a lot of audio productions using logic, which is one of my favorite dolls out there, and one of the reasons why i run mac os 10 in the first place, and the same four and a half minute song took about 48 seconds to Export on our hackintosh versus 56 seconds on our mac mini not a major difference, but a difference.
Nonetheless. Now, to sum up everything i just want to list off the pros and cons of running a mac mini versus a custom built hackintosh. Firstly, uh with the mac mini itself: it’s super compact as a standalone pc. You really can’t replicate that kind of size unless you go to china at foxconn and build your own custom-built logic board, which is definitely not going to happen.
Secondly, it’s a super easy plug-and-play setup, although it’s super easy to build a custom pc these days. It’S definitely not as easy as apple makes it with just opening the box and plugging in the mac mini to a monitor and some peripherals now. Another benefit is the fact that it’s natively, supported by apple, the hardware and software, is fully integrated and you’re always going to have support backing your hardware, which is not to be said on the hack and toss side. Of course. Furthermore, if you’re going to be running applications that just need a cpu and don’t have any inherent benefit of running a gpu alongside your system, stuff, like logic or any kind of audio production, i think the mac mini is a fantastic compact solution. That’S going to be more than capable of running like a little production studio for audio or music production.
Another pro has to be the fact that you do have 10 gigabit ethernet support as an add-on option, which is definitely a plus side. If you’re going to be networking multiple of these mac, minis together or if you’re, on a network that utilizes 10 gigabit ethernet, which is a pretty big difference from the gigabit ethernet, that we have integrated on the hackintosh and there’s no real room for a separate 10 Gigabit uh pci express card on our dan case, since this is a compact case in the beginning. Lastly, uh, in my opinion, i think the mac mini is probably the most versatile and most value-added pc that you can get from apple right now. It’S certainly more powerful than the standard uh imacs and almost up there with the imac pros in some cases, and certainly a better deal than the standalone mac pros, which have outdated hardware. The cooling design wasn’t great to begin with and uh. Certainly it’s the more competitively priced dedicated pc, available natively from apple now, let’s talk about the cons of the mac mini.
Firstly, if you’re going to get an egp, which you really need, if you’re going to do any kind of gaming or video editing, you are going to sacrifice the whole size aspect of it. It’S not going to be as compact. It’S essentially going to be the size of a regular pc which kind of defeats the purpose of the mac mini to begin with now. Secondly, i want to talk about value when it comes to building a custom pc with the exact same or similar specifications. As our current uh six core mac mini, you can probably build something for under 750, which is a pretty big price difference compared to the 1099 base model configuration that we have right over here now. The last concern that i have is related to more of a long-term issue: uh when i first got the mac mini.
I did a lot of testing with the cpu and the temperatures were fairly normal, but after a month of now owning it and testing it out. I do find that it gets a little bit hotter than it did in the first week of our initial testing. So i’m just concerned that later down the road it overheats and has major malfunctions.
Obviously apple is pretty good in terms of warranty and service history. But that’s a concern i have nonetheless, especially due to the fact that it has a very small fan: cooling, the entire system. Now, let’s talk about the benefits of the hackintosh system that we have over here.
Firstly, when you’re building a custom-built pc, you have the entire freedom to do whatever you want with your hardware and software to some extent, in terms of hardware selection, you can completely cater and configure your ideal system. We went for a more compact solution, but you can go the entire opposite route as well. The freedom is all up to you.
This notion is actually the complete opposite of what apple wants to do, where they want complete entire control over the hardware and software and your entire computing experience. Nonetheless, another benefit is the fact that you can configure a dual boot system where one hard drive is running ls10. Another one is running windows that way you have the best of both worlds. Granted. You can also do that with the mac mini, but with the hardware capabilities we have on a custom built pc with windows, you have a much more capable gaming system and if you want to run mac os 10 for logic or any specific application like i do, You have that freedom as well and plus it’s sometimes fun to run another operating system like linux or mac os 10 from time to time.
Lastly, as we mentioned earlier in terms of a price to performance ratio, you’re always going to get more from a custom built pc than any pre-configured one, especially when that pre-configured system is coming from a company like apple which overcharges on all their products that they sell. Now, lastly, let’s talk about the downsides of running a hackintosh, specifically because i don’t think that there’s any major downsides to running a windows based pc, as most of you guys, would agree with me there and when it comes to running mac, os 10 on an unauthorized Machine, if apple had a button that would immediately destroy all these third-party machines running their operating system. They would press that button in a heartbeat without any hesitation. So that’s always going to be a major concern from a legal standpoint and from a practicality standpoint, of course.
Secondly, i definitely have to say that the installation process is a little bit tricky at times, especially if you don’t have the right hardware. I was using the z390 motherboards and that was really tricky to get to work with mojave. It wouldn’t boot into the bootloader, and i had to do a lot of different workarounds to finally get into the installer. Once i installed it, the graphics card didn’t work properly and i had to revert eventually back to high sierra. It took me over a week to get all the kinks out and still to this date, it’s not working perfectly. I don’t have the wi-fi working bluetooth things like that and if i had to do it again, i would definitely recommend for somebody to use an older chipset such as like the z170, which a lot of people have used, worked out the kinks, and it should be A little bit more of a smoother process and just running the most modern hardware is not going to guarantee work with the most modern operating system from mac os 10.
Since again, nothing is natively supported and it’s an unauthorized process. Nonetheless, a lot of things you can eventually get to work, but it’s going to take some time and effort on your part, which is definitely kind of a pain in the neck, but really on that guys, that’s really it. Hopefully that gave you some sort of understanding of the problems of running a hackintosh pc. I think it’s still kind of impractical for most people, it’s cool if you get things to run, but, generally speaking, i want to rely on it as a machine that you’re going to use reliably a hundred percent. Of course, if you’re gon na run windows, there’s definitely no problems there and from a hardware performance side of things, you’re definitely going to get a lot more for your money than anything from you’re going to get from apple. Of course.
That being said, i still think that the mac mini is probably still the best deal that you’re going to get from a standalone pc coming directly from apple. It’S definitely the most versatile and a better solution. Nonetheless, compared to a standalone imac at this stage of the game, and certainly unless they come with a new mac pro which isn’t going to happen, i think, for a couple of years, it’s still going to be the best standalone pc, which is upsetting compared to what You can get on the custom pc side as we demonstrated in this article, but that’s just the reality of the situation that we have right now. If you have any specific questions, let me know check out our review of the mac mini.
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