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Going from PC to Apple Mac Mini

algrove

Well-known member
Louis
It is best to future proof your purchase now with everything that you cannot change or add on as said above (like external SSD). I would get the fastest offered since it seems programs are taking more and more RAM and if like me you might have PS, LR and C1 running simultaneously (and in the futile Phocus with 100GB files) then it might help to contemplate getting a 64RAM and even the Max chipset. Have you ever gone into MacRumors website as they might indicate what is coming later this year?
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
It has been my policy for many years to avoid trying to "future proof" computing equipment. I recommend buying what is needed for your present work plus about a year's worth of possible updates. Once a system is two to three years old, if it's all still working as needed, just keep going with it until something comes up that needs a newer system's capabilities. The old system by then is usually still quite useable for those with lesser requirements, or for your less demanding work.

Trying to future proof things and extend life time is a game of diminishing returns. Spending $300 to $600 more upfront at the beginning rarely adds enough years or enough additional residual value to recover through sale five years later. It's better to accept that computing hardware has a lifetime and just use the heck out of it to extract the value of what you paid to the greatest extent possible, then move on to the next upgrade generation when appropriate.

On average, my personal Apple macOS systems have lasted between 5 and 7 years running current OS and application versions. My 2012 Mac mini is still capable of doing quite a lot of work, although I've artificially constrained it to run the last version of macOS Maverick in order to remain compatible with the last version of Lumen for my Light L16 camera. My 2018-2019 Mac mini is still quite capable of running current macOS and all current application versions, albeit it a hefty deficit in performance compared to the 2024 Mac mini M4. I run various large image processing apps simultaneously quite frequently (LrC, etc) and they all run happily in 32G RAM and with 1 and 2 T internal storage, and I process 40 and 50 Mpixel raw files from Leica M10-R, M10-M and Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c easily. I suspect there's more than enough processing power and data space to handle CRV 100c files as well, although I doubt I'll get one of those anyway. 40-50 Mpixel seems to be a very comfortable place to stay for quite a while, for me, just as 24 Mpixel was before it.

G
 

biglouis

Well-known member
Godfrey, one test I would be interested in is how long it takes for a RAW file to go through Denoise. I tend to end up with may 30-50 raw files out of 2,000 photos taken on a typical trip out to photograph birds/wildlife. On my current i7 PC with I think only 4 cores and a 6GB gpu card that would take about 30-50 minutes on average to denoise a batch of raw files. So, as long as a Mac mini can achieve and outperform that it would be fine to replace my current PC. Do you have any experience using the denoise function in LrC?

LouisB
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I have only rarely used the Denoise function in LrC because in 90+ percent of my photographs, there is no noise to remove of any consequence. However, I have tested the Denoise function a couple of times on a couple of super high ISO (3200) photos I made with my ancient Olympus E-1 (5 Mpixel) and found it worked well.

For you, I picked an ISO 6400 photo made with the Olympus E-M1 (16 Mpixel) that was about a half stop underexposed and had significant noise-graininess as a result. LrC's Denoise took 26 seconds to produce a new, much cleaner raw file from it. And just to see what the test would show with a Leica M10-R file (40 Mpixel), I made a similarly underexposed test shot at ISO 30000 which showed enough noise-graininess to be interesting and ran the Denoise on it. Took 53 seconds and created a much cleaner image file.

On my 2018 Mac mini (Intel cpu), such a single image test would take over 8 minutes on a single image... !!

G
 

biglouis

Well-known member
I have only rarely used the Denoise function in LrC because in 90+ percent of my photographs, there is no noise to remove of any consequence. However, I have tested the Denoise function a couple of times on a couple of super high ISO (3200) photos I made with my ancient Olympus E-1 (5 Mpixel) and found it worked well.

For you, I picked an ISO 6400 photo made with the Olympus E-M1 (16 Mpixel) that was about a half stop underexposed and had significant noise-graininess as a result. LrC's Denoise took 26 seconds to produce a new, much cleaner raw file from it. And just to see what the test would show with a Leica M10-R file (40 Mpixel), I made a similarly underexposed test shot at ISO 30000 which showed enough noise-graininess to be interesting and ran the Denoise on it. Took 53 seconds and created a much cleaner image file.

On my 2018 Mac mini (Intel cpu), such a single image test would take over 8 minutes on a single image... !!

G
Thanks, Godfrey. Those metrics are very helpful. 26 secs is at least 50-60% faster than my current PC.

LouisB
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
For silly benchmarking comparison, a maxed out M4 Max (40 GPU cores, all of which LR NR uses) processes 2.8 MP/sec

Matt
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Sorry, just can't get through that. Five minutes of nothing so far ... and he talks for 40 minutes!

G
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Sorry, just can't get through that. Five minutes of nothing so far ... and he talks for 40 minutes!

G
I'll summarize (I kept hitting the +10 sec button to get to the data): Does your app use CPU cores? Get more. Does it use memory? Get more. Does it use ... etc. You can check by running Activity Monitor. Good data, but not two long episode's worth (the second was adding the M4 Max to the mix.)
 

algrove

Well-known member
He also added the Mini M4 after it was released.

I very much like his C1 analysis and PS comments at the end of course. All right to the point of the OP's questions on this thread.
 

algrove

Well-known member
On further thought I just might replace my M1 Macs once the M5 comes out and it would probably be the M5 mini which packs A LOT into a small package.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I'll summarize (I kept hitting the +10 sec button to get to the data): Does your app use CPU cores? Get more. Does it use memory? Get more. Does it use ... etc. You can check by running Activity Monitor. Good data, but not two long episode's worth (the second was adding the M4 Max to the mix.)
The question is, then, "when is a computing solution good enough?" BigLouis's query seems in the context of 24Mpixel images. I've done tests with 5, 16, 24, 40 and 50 Mpixel images and found the Mac mini M4 with 32G RAM and 2T Storage quite sufficient/satisfactory, and there is plenty of overhead left for 100Mpixel image files. Where I see the limits coming up are when I pull in a big video project with high resolution video files ... then the mini M4 Pro version would be useful for greater efficiency and speed. But I personally do such projects so infrequently I'm willing to suffer the small inefficiencies and slower speed.

Eh. In the computing world, there's always something better 'coming soon.' Meanwhile, there is a lot of really good stuff available already with which we can get a lot of very good work done... It's our burden to make the decisions as to what does the number for us now, when we need it. :D

G
 
I have a Mac mini M2 pro, replaced a last gen intel Mini, which replaced a Mac pro cheese grater (5,1 that I had put the fastest processor in 32GB ram, NVMe SSD) that had died. The Intel mini didn't quite thrash the cheesegrater but it was faster except for the GPU which was abysmal. I had a RX 580 GPU in the MP 5,1. The M2 pro flogs the intel Mini, especially on GPU performance. What I noticed most going from the MP 5,1 to the intel mini was how slow exports from C1 were. Going to the M2 pro I was back to where I was with the MP 5,1, but for a lot less money, power consumption and size. The M2 pro copes with 50 and 60 MP files (GFX and Leaf Credo) like nothing. Once I got to 150 MP files things slowed down somewhat but its still perfectly usable, just much slower to export (to jpeg or into PS) and doesn't cope well with having multi layer TIFFS open in PS and C1 open at the same time. I have 32GB of ram and that's where extra would be most welcome. I'll be replacing it with a M4 Mini — Pro so I can 64GB ram — soon, unless a Studio comes out that is very compelling performance and price wise in the near future.

TLDR, even my M2 Pro mini with 32GB ram would probably work well for you with the relatively small files you have. I always just get 1 TB of internal storage and then have a large array for HDDs and thunderbolt NVMe enclosures, currently with 4TB SSDs.
 
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