How much faster is a 2014 Mac Mini over a 2011 model?

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Level 1

8 points

How much faster is a 2014 Mac Mini over a 2011 model?

I am in a quandry. I have a 2011 2.3 GHz i5 Mac Mini. It needs a new hard drive. I am using Photoshop for work. I am thinking of placing the cost of the hard drive toward a 2014 2.6 GHz i7 Mac Mini. This unit comes with a 1 TB hard drive, while I have the 500 GB drive in my current computer. How much faster and more responsive will the 2014 Mac Mini be compared to my 2011 model? Is it worth the extra money? I am thinking of purchasing a refurbished unit from Apple for $589.

Thanks!

Bob

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 2, 2016 6:47 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

kahjot

Level 4

2,462 points

May 2, 2016 7:36 PM in response to Tucson01

You could put a fast solid state drive in your current machine, and it would make a big difference in performance. You can also upgrade the RAM, unless you have maxed it out already. The $589 model only has 8GB of RAM and the RAM cannot be upgraded, ever. It is soldered in place. Even a fast 7200 rpm spinning drive would improve the performance of your current Mini. The stock 5400 rpm drive is a bottleneck.

Photoshop likes lots of free space. A big, fast external drive would probably help also.

If you have an auhtorized Apple service provider in your area, you could buy whatever drive you want and pay them to install it for you, if you are not comfortable with doing that yourself.

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac_mini2011_hd/

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Answer 2

Leopardus

Level 4

1,303 points

May 3, 2016 12:02 AM in response to kahjot

The Apple stock HD with 5400rpm gave you a throughput of roughly 45 - 60 MB/s if you do a benchmark test, depending on the year and therefore drive cache. As can be seen in the screenshot, your Mini will take SATA III, which means capable of 6Gb/s throughput which means really fast SSD's can could be used.

Further to this, you could expand your memory to 16GB, and you should too:

In addition, a second internal HD could be added as well, besides the fact that you have expandability via Thunderbolt and USB. The high end model would even have the feature of two Thunderbolt ports.

If you need even more speed, it is possible to have two SSD's of 1or 2TB's each in a RAID configuration to do video, but it would not be necessary for your present requirements.

Because of the expandability, I would upgrade it if it was mine! https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Mini_Mid_2011 gives full instructions.

HTH

Have fun with your Mac

Leo

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Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

May 3, 2016 12:31 AM in response to Tucson01

You can compare the two models here:

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

Note that the link may not work because of a temporary problem with this forum

Except for the baseline 1.4 GHz 2014 Mini, your will be faster. I myself would change to an SSD and increase memory since PhotoShop likes a lot of memory as well as a fast disk

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