by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 09/30/2017 at 20:03
by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 09/30/2017 at 20:03
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Two primary options to replace the trusty but aging late 2009 mini, both around $200.
1) Late 2012 2.5 GHz i5 Mac mini for $200 - at a local pawn shop. This seems like an absolute steal since this model still seems to be selling on the used market for $450-550.
2) HP Elite 8300 3.4 GHz i7 - make a Hackintosh out of this as it seems relatively easy to do. Plus I can dual boot it and use it as a decent Windows machine.
There is a third option, and that would be to buy the mini in option 1, flip it for several hundred more than I paid and then build up something newer/better/faster. I could probably build a decent Hackintosh with later model parts than that 2013-vintage HP I’m considering in option 2.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
09/30/2017 at 20:11, STARS: 0
the elite, easily
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/30/2017 at 20:15, STARS: 0
Any particular reasons?
"Nibby" (nibby68)
09/30/2017 at 20:17, STARS: 0
easier to work with, expandability, better hardware and much easier to upgrade
"Steve in Manhattan" (blogenfreude01)
09/30/2017 at 20:26, STARS: 0
Mac mini (Late 2012), Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
This is what I have - has lasted longer than previous Macs. Somewhere online I believe it says the processor is one of the better ones (quad core?). You can probably pick one up for a few hundred. And I’ll put mine up here when we replace it at some point.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/30/2017 at 20:28, STARS: 0
Pretty much what I was thinking. Throw in something like a GTX 1050 Ti (decent Mac compatibility and reasonably affordable) and it should be a decent gaming machine as well. I figured that the i7 3770 and 16GB should keep me happy for years. Hell, my main PC is still running an i7 2600 and a GTX 670 and it’s great for most things I do. I’m not a hard-core gamer, but I like my flight and train sims to have as high a FPS count as possible, but I’m not going to drop a grand for a couple of extra FPS.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
09/30/2017 at 20:29, STARS: 0
yeah you can’t do those things on a mac mini :)
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/30/2017 at 20:43, STARS: 0
I wish I could find an i7 mini on the cheap, but sadly, the owners seem to know what they have and price them accordingly. I just checked on eBay and a few used Mac dealers, and even this dual-core i5 is selling for more than double what the pawn shop is asking.
I’ve had this current mini since new, with 2/3 of the cost paid for by Microsoft (part of a class-action lawsuit). Other than doubling the memory again, to 16GB, there really isn’t much more I can do to it. I put in an SSD last month, but that’ll probably get yanked for the new machine. It won’t be going anywhere, and will probably serve as a media server, although having recently acquired that cheap 4th gen Apple TV, the need for such a device is somewhat minimized. I do have TBs of downloaded video that I haven’t watched, and using a computer for this will probably be easier than trying to figure out how to get it to play via a media streaming box (I’ve got a collection of these things, from Roku, Western Digital, RCA, Logitech, Google, etc., most purchased used).
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/30/2017 at 20:51, STARS: 0
Surprisingly, the $5 2008 MacBook Pro, when running Windows 7, actually made a pretty decent Flight Simulation computer for the class I was teaching. But yeah, like the mini, not a lot of options for upgrading.
My only concern with the Elite is that there’s not a lot of upgrade possibilities with the model I’m looking at. Expansion, yes, but few upgrades. I doubt that there are many CPUs better than the 3770 that I could pop in there, and I suspect that the cost of going from 16 to 32GB will not be worth the expense. The only thing that could reasonably be upgraded would be the video card, and I can’t see myself buying anything much faster than the 1050, at least not in the short term.
"Steve in Manhattan" (blogenfreude01)
09/30/2017 at 21:05, STARS: 0
Snazzy Labs on youtube built a Hackintosh for less than 100 bucks. He also built a nicer one for more, but maybe you can get parts and make something that outperforms mine. And stay in touch - if I get rid of it (and it lasts) it’s yours for $250. steve.reiness@gmail.com
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/30/2017 at 21:31, STARS: 0
Thanks for that offer. I’ll definitely keep in touch, knowing even years from now that will probably still be a good price and a usable machine into the next decade.
I have watched some of those cheap Hackintosh videos, as well as discussing the subject with a retired guy near me that has built a few. The HP workstations, even though they’re a few years old now, seem quite well built in comparison to the average desktop machine, and the expansion options (in the tower models) seem quite good. Although I could go cheap, I think I can build a hell of a machine for $350-400. This will involve scrounging parts from other machines (RAM, SSD and some expansion cards), but I think it will be worth it.
There were days when I would (or could) drop $1K or more on a computer, but those days are gone. I probably still have some receipts for computers bought in the ‘90s, including $1,830 for a 386/33 in 1991, $2,250 for a Power Mac G4/450 in 1999 and I think $1,400 in 1996 for a used Power Macintosh 7600/120 like I used at work at Hughes Aircraft. The 7600 lives on, sort of, with the top case from that on a 1st gen G3 desktop that’s sitting on a shelf. The G4 got upgraded to a Digital Audio model (I just swapped RAM, drives and cards into a barebones system and fired it back up); I haven’t used it in years, but I still have it, complete with a massive dual 1.8 GHz CPU upgrade and flashed PC video card. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I have a hard time parting with it...
"Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition" (realasabass)
09/30/2017 at 21:59, STARS: 1
I would look into used Xeon workstations from Dell and HP. They make really great Hackintosh Pro’s. All the other surrounding hardware really make robust machines. Something like this.