So the new Ivy Bridge Mac Minis are out now..anyone considering moving to one?? I've got a 21.5" core i3 imac currently, it's decently fast...i've been thinking about moving to a quad i7 mbp, but the cost is still high, and i dont NEED the portability... The new minis come in a 2.3 quad i7, or 2.6 i7 for 799 and 899 respectively...i figured out i could buy a 2.6, buy my own 16gb of ram for it, apple care, external optical drive, AND another Dell ultrasharp display for less than a 2.3 quad i7 mbp...my current machine benchmarks like a 6400, the new machines are between 11k and 13k, with a 2.3 i7 mbp at about 10k...the ONLY thing i dont like is the built in intel 4000 graphics...wondering if that'll hurt that much...
My hackintosh benches @ 16700 wouldn't even consider the real thing. For photoshop and lightroom the 4000 is more than enough not sure about aperture as it uses the gpu a bit more by i'm guessing the intel is no problem there either.
The minis use low power laptop cpus clock for clock they run slower than full power chips your better off with a Imac if speed is a concern.
I've considered building a hackintosh, i've just heard there are too many little issues that can arise basically out of nowhere...like you'll get EVERYTHING working, then you'll up the ram, and it'll just stop working...as one guy i spoke to put it "a hackintosh is great to have fun with and play around, but as a main computer, and for business purposes, just get a real one..."
Running Mac OS on a Hackintosh is a violation of the user agreement. Appears to be ok for hobbyists, since Apple has tolerated it for years. But running a Hackintosh for a commercial entity is just asking for trouble.
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H with I7 3770K chip overclocked to 4.5 ghz, 16 gig of 1600 ram built-in Intel hd4000 and a gtx9800 running 3 monitors. SSD + 3tb seagate for drives. 2 of the 10 usb3 ports only do usb3 and not usb2 so I don't use them. Otherwise everything works just fine. Mountain Lion 10.8.2 if you pick your parts carefully its easier everyday to roll your own mac. With today's chips most things are built into the chipset and are exactly the same on mac and pc extras like sound and Ethernet being the exceptions.
With today's systems if you change the ram the only thing that would change is the about this mac.
