Kevin C. Wong

Mac mini (Late 2014) [+]

Mac mini (Late 2014) is one that stayed in the lineup for 4 years getting kind of old until the 2018 refresh which still used Intel chips. I actually bought mine Feb 2018 a few months before the refresh but I don't regret it. I set it up and it's been working for three years just fine.

CPU: 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
RAM: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel Iris
Storage: Fusion Drive: 128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD

I run macOS 10.13.6 + macOS Server 5.6.1. It's the last version of Server before Apple stripped out most of the software and the last version of macOS that runs that version of Server.

I run it headless which, after setup with static IP, works surprisingly well. After a reboot I can connect with Apple Remote Desktop at 1280 x 1024 full color and on a local network it almost as fast as being there.

The machine is in my bedroom and runs very quiet I guess because I'm barely using the storage space so most everything is on the SSD. The only time I notice it is when it starts a Time Machine backup because the Time Capsule HDD spins up.

The only problem I've seen is that it sometimes gets short on RAM. A lot of build_hd_index processes using up most of the RAM and from what I saw this is associated with Apple Remote Desktop usage. So might be a bug if I connect often.

Other than that my Mac mini has not given me any problems and it's a good compact headless machine and I expect the M1 version has continued that trend.