I’ve been running a full tower Windows server with a dozen drives for a decade and decided to downsize. This ministack does everything I need at a fraction of the power, noise, and heat.
I use it primarily for Plex but also host a few games servers for buddies. It fits perfectly in my entertainment center.
Spent around $200 on the Mac Mini plus $600 on the drives and enclosures. I’m using SoftRAID for RAID1.
Most Macs are overpriced, but the $599 M2 Mac Mini is an absolute STEAL compared to the rest of their lineup. And its existence drives the price of used Mac Minis down, which is also great.
It’s a pity that also the RAM and SSD are a steal.
250€ to add 8gb RAM and another 250€ to add 250gb SSD. Prices that even ten years ago didn’t make sense…
I wish they sold the M2 motherboard with standard DDR 5 and m.2 slots. I’d pay 1000€ for that and i wouldn’t even want the fancy aluminum case
Can’t you just add it yourself or are they soldered in?
No, unfortunately it’s all soldered https://www.macworld.com/article/1677460/mac-mini-upgrade-hub-storage-ethernet-sd-card-ports.html
So when the single flash chip degrades, the whole unit automatically becomes e-waste instead of a simple $25 fix
Classic apple
In this case they have some justification for the RAM at least. They use a SoC, not a more typical CPU. And the RAM is available for both graphics and system memory, so for some uses, you could do things on a higher end Mac that is not possible on a typical consumer PC.
Still sucks for people like me though. I really want to switch to a mac Mini for my NAS/home server but I can’t justify the upgrade cost to get a useful amount of RAM.
uhh no it’s not. Every base lineup has slower hardware than the rest and it’s only 8gb of ram, which limits the use of the Mac Mini at the price point of $600.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/24/entry-level-m2-mac-mini-2023-macbook-pro-have-slower-ssd-than-predecessors
It’s only limiting if you’re doing things that need more RAM and faster drive speeds (most people are not). Of course, if you need more, don’t buy this thing? I didn’t say it was great for EVERYBODY.