Mac mini Late 2012 with i5, 16GB RAM worth it for $100? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AssassinSK2 · 2023-10-04 19:15 Hi guys. So I'm slowly getting into Selfhosting. Just last month I got a Raspberry Pi 4, however in that timespan I also learned about Docker and I already run a few on my Pi. My plan is to run multiple containers (for various of things but I want to be flexible enough to run at least 100 containers). My question is; Would a Mac mini with i5, 16GB RAM be an upgrade over my Pi 4 with 8GB RAM? I plan to use Home Assistant as well and my friend said that the Pi's don't have a good reputation for Home Assistant apparently (At least while running it alongside other containers). And also is $100 worth it for the Mac mini? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BasherDvaDva · 2023-10-04 19:23 Yes. At that price, buy as many as you can find and you can resell them to me. 😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AssassinSK2 · 2023-10-04 19:25 I'm afraid the person who's selling it only has one 😅. I'm still not sure if I should get it though if there's better hardware at the same price range lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MaxHedrome · 2023-10-04 19:26 same ---------------------------------------------------------------------- haqbar · 2023-10-04 19:40 I have e of them, both the i5 and i7 version. They are rock solid, small and really reliable as far as my experience goes. I really like that they have the psu built in so no big power brick on the side (as with nucs for instance). The design is also still really sleek and they are well built, just make sure it’s in a well ventilated area. The only thing is that they are now 11 years old and stuff might start to break, especially the psu that again is not an easy replacement (upside of external power brick). So keep that in mind, also as far as power go, they idle at around 20w I think but a modern cpu would give you a lot more horsepower for that wattage. Lovely little machines and for 100 it’s a good deal, especially if you are starting out. Slap a good ssd (or two) in there and see what you can do. Don’t read to much on this sub from the people telling you it’s necessary to have a full 42u rack to just run a small private Plex server :P ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sallysaunderses · 2023-10-04 20:01 I really like Mac minis but I actually think that is a bit overpriced. If it’s a friend sure go for it. Otherwise in the last year I have bought 2012’s and 2014’s for half that on eBay including shipping. Just put in some offers or be patient. If $100 is fair to you then go for it. Things to keep in mind, if you get a mini with a replaceable HD, you should expect to replace it, an SSD makes a huge difference on one’s that don’t have them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8fingerlouie · 2023-10-04 20:01 According to [Apple](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201897) they idle around 11W, which is roughly twice that of a Raspberry Pi 4. If I remember correctly, some of them even supported installing two hard drives, but only if you got the Server model. I replaced mine with a Mac Mini M1 as it idles at 4.5W, and has loads of power, and most importantly, is supported by the latest macOS version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BikePathToSomewhere · 2023-10-04 20:21 kind of pricey for a 2012 machine but not out of line for the power you get ​ You might want to compare it to a Lenovo Thinkcentre m910p or similar in that form factor. ​ Either way, the 2012 is long out of MacOS support, I'd install a modern supported version of Linux on it. There are no GPIO pins on the Mac mini, do you need them for your home assistant use? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tledakis · 2023-10-04 20:25 I have one and it has been running non stop for 3+ years as a host for many critical VMs in my lab. Never had a problem. For $100 it is a great price. Also if you buy it, remember to set it to power up when electricity comes back. From my research you can only do it on macos, so change the setting before wiping it with linux ---------------------------------------------------------------------- j_stanley · 2023-10-04 20:54 I have one, and run Arch on it, headless (SSH only). It works great! As others have said, $100 is maybe a tad high. I think I saw them for $75 regularly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CrispyBegs · 2023-10-04 21:12 really great machines, but relatively awful at trying to run docker. i have two 2014 units sitting in a closet waiting to have macOS wiped and replaced with ubuntu or something. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reasonable-Ladder300 · 2023-10-04 21:20 I use colina to rub docker on mac works a charm, moved after numerous docker desktop issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Floedekartofler · 2023-10-04 21:29 It's not a bad price. If you need MacOS it's a nobrainer. I would consider looking into newer mini-PC's as well. I found a miniPC with 8GB RAM (upgradable) and an N9095 CPU for $120 on Amazon. That one will be much faster and have better hardware video encoding support, but it depends on your needs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- apbt-dad · 2023-10-04 21:38 Yeah concur. I have seen $75 to $90 "ebay refurbished" but possibly less RAM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- joobino · 2023-10-04 21:57 Take a look at [OpenCore](https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy- Patcher) if you want to install the latest OS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- haqbar · 2023-10-04 22:06 Ah yes, 11 watts sounds about right, not a huge amount of power, but more than the pi or new macs for sure. The i7 versions (server) natively support 2 drives and I think you can get kits to add two for the i5 as well. New Mac minis are great, but depends if you want to run macOS or something else on them, personally I run Linux on mine, not sure how Linux support is now a days for the new m1/2 macs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AssassinSK2 · 2023-10-04 22:12 Oh I run a dualboot Hackintosh on my PC so it's more for the hosting side of things.. And a bit aesthetics tbh lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BasherDvaDva · 2023-10-04 22:32 I threw Deb12 on mine and it works like a champ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fyijesuisunchat · 2023-10-04 22:35 The 2012 model at least works great with Ubuntu Server and has all hardware support out of the box. MacOS is just too heavy nowadays. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AssassinSK2 · 2023-10-04 22:43 Ah I've only come across in the $100-120 range. I'll have to research further, but this guy is quite close to me so idk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Asyx · 2023-10-04 22:47 All I get when I google Colina is diarrhea medication so I'm not sure what you did but if that machine is running macOS then it's running docker in a VM which is just wasteful. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LBarouf · 2023-10-05 00:10 I had 12 at one point. Mix of 2014 and 2012. I currently have one last one, a 2012 with two SSDs running macOS that I remote into. I have a small 4 pi4 cluster or swarm running k8s in cluster. I also have 4 pi in a rack running esxi running mainly dockers as api gateways and functions. Serverless stuff. My macs had raid configs, I think it was rocky Linux maybe Ubuntu. Dual ssd in raid, it booted really fast and read/writes were good. If you need performance it is not a good platform in q4 ‘23. It’s easy to modify them for dual disk if you need storage. The optical drive has a sata3, so if you place a ssd, performance cap is low. Raid for speed also mean no redundancy as a compromise. Using macOS with a hdmi plug, you can enable higher resolution remote sessions, making them quite useful in my book. If I were you, and you only care for containers, consider kubernetes. Linux with kvms, k8s and podman or openshift are good approaches. Depending on how much processing you need, go for the cheaper cost per cores. That’s the reason why I run those on raspberry pi. Low power consumption and cost per core is low. Maybe the new pi 5? I was fitting two Mac minis in a 1u tray for server racks. Worked very well, and silent and almost no power usage. Hope this helps and provides food for thoughts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SicnarfRaxifras · 2023-10-05 03:24 There’s some info on Colima in this [tutorial](https://tutorials.tinkink.net/en/mac/how-to-use-docker- on-m1-mac.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chicknfly · 2023-10-05 03:51 Not sure if this is helpful, but Raspberry Pi 5 releases this month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ismaelgokufox · 2023-10-05 05:41 I use one of these with an i7. Upgraded the 4GB of RAM to 16GB and has been running nonstop for years using unraid. I also have a more recent one, but only with the 4GB RAM it came with as it is soldered. But it runs Proxmox perfectly! My router is virtualized on that one (OpenWRT VM). These machines are great for a homelab. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- indykoning · 2023-10-05 22:02 Power for price, not bad at all. Got my late 2011 I5 with 16GB RAM (easily replaceable laptop sized) running \~30 docker containers and a separate Home Assistant OS VM And the thing is not breaking a sweat. Just know what you're getting into, Apple does not like making it easy to run anything other than OSX. I installed Proxmox and to get full access to the hardware (like GPU for display) the main disk had to be MBR and the first partition needed to be FAT32 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kmisterk · 2023-10-06 17:36 ## Post Removed Hey, AssassinSK2! Thanks for your submission on selfhosted. Your post has been removed due to a violation of the purpose of the subreddit: **Self Hosting** ## Not Self-Hosted When it comes to posts regarding applications in this subreddit, they must feature a self-hosted tool, or a tool that *can be* self-hosted, or some kind of related information, help request, or otherwise related to a tool that is something that one can self-host. If you believe this post *is in fact* relevant to /r/selfhosted, feel free to [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to= /r/selfhosted&subject=Removed For Not Being Self- Hosted&message=[Removed Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/16zvwqv/-/\)) with your concerns.