New Mac Mini will the 6 core i3 support Pro Tools?

[BGMusic]

The new Mac Mini looks great. One question with 4 core i3 or 6 core i5 or i7 available, and with the thought of trying to keep costs down, will the i3 support Pro Tools?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by BGMusic

The new Mac Mini looks great. One question with 4 core i3 or 6 core i5 or i7 available, and with the thought of trying to keep costs down, will the i3 support Pro Tools?

It might support PT but you'll be a lot better off with the i7. The problem is more will the OSX that comes on it work with PT? You'll probably be stuck with Mojave which right now isn't considered compatible with PT by Avid.

[junkgear]

It really depends on what you do with PT and how big your sessions are, but in general, the i3 is on the light side of processing power for working with audio.

The i5 with 16GB of RAM would be a better pick as long as your sessions aren't crazy big.

[Southsidemusic]

Didn't know anyone even made an i3 cpu anylonger hehe

I have a 7 yo PC Laptop demolished in the closet which had an i3 and it was horrifyingly slow and crappy as expected hehe

Doesn't the new Apple comps come with i9 these days and if not then nothing less than i7 for sure.

[TOM@METRO]

I wouldn't run less than an i7.

[StratoBobster]

Does anyone have an opinion on how the Mac Mini 6-Core I7 at 3.2 Ghz might compare to the iMac 4-Core at 4.2 Ghz. I've been considering the new Mac Mini as a replacement for my iMac.

[albee1952]

Re the i3 vs i7 question...i3 is a "budget" cpu and a Pro Tools rig needs "power"

[Darryl Ramm]

It all depends on what you want to do.

You can run a few track Pro Tools session with no plugins on just about anything.

My thought process here would be these are not cheap boxes once configured, and the CPU is not upgradeable (soldered to the motherboard) so I'd tend to invest in the CPU to give this computer a long useful life. RAM SO-DIMMs can be upgraded, PCIe/NVMe SSD can be expanded outside the box via Thunderbolt 3, so CPU is the thing that Apple has you by the short and curlies with there.

BUT...

Thermals/cooling are important especially in such a tight packaged box. How well different processors will work in these new Macs will be interesting.

The i-3, i-5, i-7 Core series names are marketing, the details matter. Be careful assuming say an i3 is some lame-ass processor just because they may have been in the past. Current x4 core i3 don't have hyperhtreading, but that may not be that important. They have smaller caches than i7, but how much effect will that have... with fewer cores?? And the four-core i3 clocks at 3.6 GHz and the six-core i7 clocks at up to 3.2 GHz (those thermal constraints). So... oh who really knows.

Still I'd be looking to max out the configs.

[tonepad]

I have a MAc Mini Server from back a few years that is awesome with its i7. I also have a DIY built i7 PC, again a few years old. My MacPro is a dual Xeon (which is i7 on steriods) OH and my good old MBPro with an i7. ALL of these veteran rigs are running PT 12 vanilla and Ultimate without breaking a sweat. This is a good example of future proofing. Spend some money now and you won't have to later. I have many years left on all of these i7 configs.

[K Roche]

I would tend to agree with Darryl get the fastest CPU you can afford
with the minimum RAM you can then get Crucial Memory for considerably less than what Apple charges.

For example 32 GB from Apple is $600 and from Crucial is $285