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Comment by aczerepinski | Hacker News Reader

I really wish I could buy a headless Mac with similar performance (including a real video card) and price. The mini doesn't quite meet my needs and the pro at $3k+ is way too expensive. These specs look good (although I would greatly prefer SSD) but I really don't want an extra monitor on my desk.

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The Mac Pro is also unchanged since 2013 (they're selling a six year old computer at full price).

The mini + eGPU seems like it would be a candidate then?

I suppose so. I don't know much about eGPUs. I see the cheapest one available on the Apple store is $700 which includes a Radeon Pro 580 (appears to be the same card offered on the top of line iMac from today?). With SSDs on the Mini being as expensive as they are ($800 to upgrade to 1TB), I'd probably want an external HD as well, so minimum 3 boxes on my desk and more chords to deal with.

It would meet my needs and I might reluctantly get one.

I'm curious: why would you want a headless machine with a real video card?

If, as I'm guessing, you want to connect an external monitor, what would be your monitor choice (and how would you connect it) to get 5K?

From my research, the iMac (or iMac Pro) was pretty much the only way to get a working non-crappy 5K setup.

I have a 27" LG 4k monitor that I connect to my work MacBook pro during the day. Then I'd like to flip a switch (or swap one plug) to use my personal computer with the same monitor. Currently that personal computer is a 2013 iMac sitting right next to my LG monitor but I'd love to get rid of it and free up the desk space.

Ok, thanks. That's a similar setup to mine, but I'm very tired of plugging, re-plugging, and using the stupid OSD menus in monitors. Plus, I really think that for 27" a 5K resolution is required.

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