Building the Ultimate Mac Mini #Helpful Post

ey guys this is Austin a lot of things

have changed around here my facial hair

has changed the vines have changed but

what will never change is our ideas of

making really really dumb things

slightly less dumb so this is a 2018 six

core Mac Mini now that part is actually

pretty solid but the rest of the

components leave a little bit to be

desired thankfully though this is one of

the only Mac computers you can buy today

that's actually somewhat upgradable that

is where this comes in so with the Mac

Mini thankfully you still do have so

Demme's but the only issue is that when

you go order it straight from Apple as

always it's very expensive but can we do

it ourselves it's only gonna cost about

two hundred going downside is they have

to open this up and I don't think it's

as easy as some previous Mac minis so

I've never done this before

I know previously you would just rotate

this little guy oh that's are already

not I have no idea I'm doing but I know

the old Magnus this would just roti

oh you just lift it that's much easier

okay oh yeah before this is pretty much

all you had to do so we have the antenna

cover out of the way now we can see the

very small fan and he think but what I

don't see is is Ram all right there is

our fan so we're getting closer

I see our CPU socket and what looks to

be our heatsink and this looks like the

power supply over here so now comes the

part where actually remove the

motherboard so if I just press it oh

that's a bed so that is pretty much

everything we need to do wait where's

the memory oh it's underneath here I was

about to say come on so you pull out the

old 8 gigs of memory we can put in a

full 32 and this should be a decent way

along the Mac Mini ultimate front

alright so we now have 32 gigs of ram

and our Mac Mini so with that out of the

way now it's time to upgrade our display

game so this is the giant LG 34 inch

ultra wide now we took a brief look at

this at CES what's cool about it is it's

actually a 5k by 2160 monitor so things

like ultra wide 4k the best part of this

guy is that does take advantage of

Thunderbolt 3 although I think we've got

some slightly more ambitious plans in

mind drop on the stand here we've got a

massive display now

poorly in addition to Thunderbolt three

it also does support HDMI as well as

DisplayPort I am excited to give this a

try

Thunderbolt action hey alright so there

we go we got a 5k display up but is that

enough for the ultimate Mac Mini come on

unfortunately I can't actually login yet

because they don't have my keyboard the

Logitech crafts I had that upside down

so this is actually sort of an

interesting keyboard and it has a little

what do they call is dial the creative

input dial it's kind of like the but

that what are the surface dial except uh

it works on Mac okay we have the

keyboard up and running this is a super

nice keyboard I've actually never seen

one of these in person not does it

charge via USB see but you've got the

backlighting I'm curious what the hell

did dial oh it just works as a volume by

default but we need a mouse which is

where which is where this comes in so

this is the bin cue Zowie EC 1a so now

that we're into Mac OS if I pull up

about this Mac we can see that we have

our 32 gigs showing up we can see it is

the core i7 version but the next issue

is storage because if somebody has what

512 gigs something like that I think

they do have a 2 terabyte option but

it's like $1000 so instead we have this

so this is the Pegasus r4 and if you

guys have been watching the channel for

a while you know that we actually bought

this for a project oh three years ago or

something so this is actually so old

it's still using Thunderbolt 2 with an

adapter we can get an additional fast 9

terabytes of storage into our Mac Mini

so we plug this into our second

Thunderbolt port it should light up yes

it is

I'll give it a little less slack on that

cable so something I forgot to mention

earlier is that this Mac Mini does have

not as a core i7 inside it also

importantly has the 10 gig Ethernet

update so we've actually switched a lot

of our editing pcs over to these Mac

minis and one of the main reasons we can

do that is because we're working on a 10

K curve so this is actually one of the

main reasons why we have such a small

and tiny computer running things because

way cheaper than stuff like iMac pros or

building some giant 10 gig box when we

can use this guy so we're looking pretty

good at this point but we still have a

couple of fender bolt port

slapped which means that it's time to

upgrade to actually want to like

personal favorite accessories the Cal

digit Thunderbolt dock so what I like

about this guy is that with a single

Thunderbolt cable I can do stuff like

for example if I have a thunderbolt

powered laptop power it with up to 85

watts of USB power delivery there's a

ton of USB a porch if you get SD cards

you've got a thunderbolt out so you go

to say a 5k display like this and you

also get Ethernet built in you've got

DisplayPort this thing is absolutely

killer if you have a fundable enabled

computer so this is actually looking

pretty good but the problem is is that

we're still running on an internal GPU

right I mean nothing against Intel UHD

620 graphics but well that's not gonna

quite cut it

so what if we take advantage of our last

Thunderbolt port to install a GPU that

is where this comes in so this is the

gigabyte rx 580 gaming box so you've

actually done a couple of videos on this

so we're the nice things is is that

especially when you're dealing with Macs

this is one of the best GPUs to go with

but on top of that you should give us a

lot of extra power with our Mac Mini I

can find my cable here Oh what well that

was easy

so now we have our 5k display running

off of our RX 5 a go to about this Mac

we now see that we have the Radeon rx

580 showing up this this is looking

promising

I like how our resolution is so high we

try to scale up to 4k it gives us a low

resolution warning so we fire up Unigine

here okay we're getting 33 34 FPS that's

certainly nothing crazy when you

consider that typically you're running

Unigine on a PC is a full gaming setup

right now running on a Mac Mini with an

external Thunderbolt GPU and that's

actually one of my favorite parts about

something like the Mac Mini with all

these Thunderbolt ports you actually do

have a lot of potential to expand but

what if what if my friends we took

expansion to a whole new level

our friends at gigabyte mm-hmm are fans

of the ultimate series okay and they

thought it'd be really cool if we

plugged in four of these external GPUs

so we look at the back of these gaming

boxes they do have three USB C or USB a

ports as well as one quick charge but

okay let's let's cut this in first

second and see if we can get them to

spin because we've got one 580 it works

fine it's pegged so let's see if we plug

in a couple more if it actually is able

to see there Oh GPU spinning spinning

spinning all the lights are on that is a

massively good sign okay yes they're all

flashing green now if we get our minor

up oh that that's interesting but okay

well we're just gonna ignore that yes

okay minor leave me alone I mean they're

all spinning when it shows up when Hey

look at that

for our x5 80s right in the box perfect

yeah nothing really takes advantage of

four GPUs even though they all come up

although we found one program that did

okay so it sees our core i7 8700 it sees

the 630 inside but we also see rx 581 rx

582 number three as well as number four

so this is a bad idea I'll just be real

with you right now this is a bad idea

because the thing is yes you do have all

these Thunderbolt ports but they're all

sharing bandwidth so inside the Mac Mini

I believe there's two Thunderbolt

controllers right yeah it's one in three

two and four yes so in no scenario is

all four of these getting the proper

amount of bandwidth I will say well this

benchmark is running the GPUs are

getting a little toasty let's say the

Mac Mini itself is also very warm yeah

so maybe we don't do this this is a

little danger what we got here

that's four laptops then all good old

laptop charger chiller yeah that's up

chilly what'd I say

charger charger yeah that's the cable so

what one of the biggest problems with

this is not the cost associated with it

the ridiculousness the bandwidth it's

that in order for external GPUs to work

they need super short cables and this is

pretty much as far away we can get 50

4201 that I don't know bolt for record

yaki what's like that 28 he can give you

I bet this is not as good as a 28 I

don't know what a 20 80 I can tell you

what it did without the GPU

okay sure with the internal GPO if you

only it was 1982 whatever whatever unit

of measure synthesis twenty-five times

better by adding four GPUs yes

so in conclusion should you build the

ultimate Mac Mini probably not but I

will say one thing this Mac Mini is a

lot better than a lot of people give it

credit for and if you go maybe a little

bit less extreme than what we did here

you guys should get some pretty solid

performance yeah I was I was looking

away weird