Mac mini is now configurable with 10 Gigabit Ethernet | Hacker News Reader

Mac mini is now configurable with 10 Gigabit Ethernet

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42 pointsfomine337 comments

I've absolutely loved my M1 Mac mini since I got it ($1,199 I think? with 16 gigs of memory and 1TB). I never hear the fan, it hardly ever gets slow, and I drive two 4k monitors with it at 60Hz (1 with DisplayPort, the other with HDMI 2.0).

Most apps I use already support Apple Silicon. Most that don't, work well under Rosetta 2. And whenever I've needed Windows, I've been RDP'ing into my local NAS machine so I don't miss VMware.

It feels great to use a desktop again.

Meanwhile, on my MacBook Pro that I spent nearly $3,500 for (i9, 32GB memory, 1TB hard drive, AppleCare, etc), the asinine butterfly keyboard causes me to have typos in about 30% of words I type. And the fan comes on no matter what I do.

I can't wait to trade it in.

I use one monitor. I am not sure which M1 to buy (mini, air, pro).

Do you think there would be much difference in CPU performance between the mini and the air?

I have heard the mac-air will throttle after a while to keep cool, but the mini throttles the least out of all 3?

I’m not 100% sure but both the pro and mini have fans. I’ve never heard my mini’s fan in 3 months. I’m sure it might have run at times because I do compile elixir all day. But I’ve never noticed any slowdown.

Just wondering, what monitors do you use?

A dell 27” (P2715Q) and an LG 27” (don’t know the model number at the moment)

More specifically, it's new for the Mac Mini with M1 chip. This has been a build-to-order on the Intel Mac Mini for a while.

Personally I'd be more excited if Apple could help mainstream 2.5Gbps Ethernet as the base option. The consumer market has been stuck at 1Gbps for far too long.

1Gbps has to be more than enough for 99% of home use cases. Gig speed internet is only now becoming mainstream; are you running home-brew ML?

It's certainly plenty for anything involving the Internet. But for local connections it's quite tired. Now that we have SSDs everywhere I just want my local backups to run a bit faster.

Port speed was always mostly about satisfying home network rather than being simply bigger than your net bandwith. NAS, sync or streaming between local devices, etc.

I mean WiFi 6 or WiFi 6E will have faster Wireless Speed in read world than wired Gigabit Ethernet. Surely we dont want Wired to be the bottleneck.

Are there any decent 10Gb switches suitable for home use yet. I looked some time ago and there was basically nothing.

Everyone probably already knows this, but it was news to me at the time that I could direct-connect to one other 10GbE device without a switch. My desktop is happily connected to my NAS, while using Wi-Fi for everything else.

This works for any ethernet afaik. Since a lot they are even auto sensing and you don’t need a cross cable.

Auto sensing only became mandatory with 1GbE - before that, you still needed a crossover patch cable. :)

Well, 1Gbit ports are quite common since... ten years? Maybe more? And there are a lot of 100mbit devices which are autosensing BTW.

Probably longer, for 1GbE. Time flies. :)

I've never encountered an autosensing 100mbit device, though.

Wikipedia seems to agree with you. It's entirely possible that my memory is wrong. Or that I think that I'm younger than I actually am :-)

I have a MikroTik 10G switch. Only 4 ports, but it was under $200.

Specifically the CRS305-1G-4S+IN, a great little switch and can run either RouterOS or SwOS. Pair with some decent copper DAC twinax from fs.com and you're all set, the only problem is reliable access to < $200 NIC cards that doesn't require eBay.

The selection of 10GB cards has really improved relatively recently. Search Amazon for "10gb network card" and you'll see lots of choices for around $100 USD.

There's also 8-port version (CRS309-1G-8S+IN) now.

There’s a lot of not-so-home use switches available on eBay at great prices depending on your region. I bought a US-48-750w for like 200-300usd a few months ago, which has two 10g ports and 48 1g POE ports.

You can get some multi gig switches with 1 or 2 10g ports brand new from net gear for about 250USD. Things like the MS510TX.

Not that I'm aware of, but there are reasonably affordable 2.5Gbps options starting to become available.

I wonder how that’s all connected internally - are the ports hanging off a internal thunderbolt bus or directly on PCI?

On my Intel Mac mini with 10GbE, it's an AQC107-AFW Ethernet controller directly on the PCI bus.

Yeah, but the intel has more PCI lanes available, the M1 is more restricted.

I know folks have pre-supposed that, but I haven't seen any evidence. Any references would be appreciated!

Good to see faster Ethernet becoming more common.

If Apple would just give the Mini 32GB of RAM it could be a serious contender.

Presumably this will come when Apple releases an M-series chip for high end MacBooks, iMacs and the Mac mini. Right now the M1 is exclusively replacing base models across the range.

Optical or? I thought the wire version of 10G Ethernet was universally shunned for the enormous power consumption.

The power consumption is a problem mainly for high-density switches and SFP+ transceivers. Individual ports on a desktop motherboard aren't a problem, and switches with low port counts and no PoE can be fanless.

It is still ineffective; nbase-t port requires more power than dac or optical, on desktops it is just not dense, so it doesn't show up to the same extent.

Switches with no poe can also have not enough juice to power rj45 transceivers in every port; it is quite possible to be able to juice up only every fourth port or so.

Nbase-T is also higher latency than the others.

Now they just need to make it available with more RAM and I’m a buyer.

And 16G of RAM. Why bother?

About memory use: macOS has had quite a lot of optimizations. Transparant memory compression, swapping and given the fact a lot of apps are coded in objective C/Swift and running native code without VM's, garbage collectors etc they don't seem to require as much memory. Of course, if you insist on running Java, Electron or other wasteful frameworks you will have a worse time, but even then 16Gb can be enough. For the 'standard office' user running Safari, Mail and Office 16 (or even 8) Gb is more than enough.

intel's latest mobile chip has 2x thunderbolt 4 ports which are each good for 40Gbit system to system connectivity. this expensive addon is way way behind where the times should be.

dual 25Gbe cards are $200. i realize that's not in high demand in the home right now. but the whole connectivity situation makes me feel very uneasy.

it feels like 2.5Gbe and 5Gbe are basically being invented to make 10Gbe feel amazing & wonderful & great, to justify it's high price, even though 10Gbe has been around & fairly within reach for a long long long time. 25Gbe is nipping at it's heels in practice, but there's these huge market forces working overtime to keep charging loads of money for 10Gbe. we've concocted half (& quarter) measures to justify something that was semi-bordering obsolete.

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