What is the best ethernet cord to use for my 2014 Mac Mini? (Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 7)

As others have stated in one form or another, your network speed

will be limited more by the source of the data than will be affected

by the cable being used.

A few examples:

-Internet speed will be limited by what your provider can deliver.

If you only have 25 Megabit or even 200 Megabit from your internet

provider, that is the speed you will have. Nothing in the world will

make it any faster.

-Intranet file transfer will be limited by how fast a connected machine will

push bits out of its ethernet port or how fast it can get data of the device

it has the data stored on. For a whole variety of reasons, it will never

achieve a gigabit data throughput rate.

Bottom line, don't worry about something that is not an issue. If sometime in the

future when computers and internet service providers put 10 gigabit ports on equipment

as a standard, then worry about cables.

Mostly immeasurable in speed, the difference is the longer the distance the more chance for error & packets needing to be resent, cat7 will run the greatest distance & support higher speeds...

• Cat5 ethernet cable is typically too slow for business networks, allowing the user to get up to 100 Mb/second speed at 100 Mhz
• Cat5e ethernet cable allows up to 1 Gb/s internet speed with 100 Mhz
• Cat6 ethernet cable allows up to 1 Gb/s, but cable lengths up to 55 meters can get internet speeds of 10 Gb/s at 250 Mhz
• Cat6a ethernet cable can get speeds up to 10 Gb/s, even at 100 meters of cable length, operating at 500 Mhz
• Cat7 ethernet cable is the newest cable category, operating at speeds of 10 Gb/s at 100 meters of cable and transmitting frequencies up to 600 Mhz.

https://www.firefold.com/blog/cat7-ethernet-cable-worth-extra-cost/

With a distance of only 3 feet Cat 5 will work just fine and

give you gigabit capability, assuming what you are connecting

to is gigabit capable.

Actually, 1000BASE-T which is the Macs interface, is required

by design to work up to 100 meters. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet)

under the 1000BASE_T topic:

"Each 1000BASE-T network segment can be a maximum length of 100 meters (330 feet),

and must use Category 5 cable or better (including Cat 5eand Cat 6)."

Save your money and go with Cat5

if what the cable connects to is say 1GB/sec (1000BASE-T) then no cable will make it faster then the slowest of the 2 devices in each end. and few people have 1GB/sec or faster Internet speed so having an internal LAN (local area network) with a super high speed will not fasten your internet

Cat 7, & the longer the distance, the more important it is.

At 3 feet there's likely to be no difference beyond 5e, but if money is no object, futureproof it with 7.

You stated; "You are only as fast as your slowest cable"

I think a better way to state it is "You are only as fast as your slowest cable or port".

A faster cable will never speed up a slow port.