As some of you may know from a previous post I currently run a Hackintosh and while it has served me well it also has caused its fair amount of headaches most likely from equipment that is not 100% Hackintosh approved and user error.

So instead of trying to keep messing around and creating more headaches then needed I am upgrading to a new computer an official Mac. Everything I used will be listed at the bottom of the post let’s do this!

Here are just a few issues I have experienced

• Stuck on Snow leopard 10.6.7 if I wanted a stable machine.
• Could not update most of my software due to it needing to be on 10.6.8
• When upgrading to 10.6.8 loose USB storage and cannot mount dmg files making it impossible to attempt to upgrade to a Lion or Mountain lion
• Can not book computer into OSX without Iboot which could take anywhere from 3 min to 20 depending on the day

  Yup this happen to me while I attempted to upgrade my Hackintosh .

• Could not upgrade Pro Tools Past 10.1.3 without it crashing and creating many issues
• No Trim support in 10.6.7 for my solid state hardrive
• Many Days/nights trying to figure out what happen when the computer crashed when it did not boot up

Those are just a few things that I can recall. I know there have been plenty of people that have had little or no issues but for me I have had issues and many of them over time, Between selling music gear and a few gigs I picked up I was able to save enough money.

Here are some reasons I wanted to get an official Mac

• I wanted to be done with trying to fix things and wonder ” will the next update break my machine”.
• I wanted to be able to spend more time working on getting new clients to record and working

  This is how I wanted to feel when I booted my Mac.

  on the blog.

• I wanted a machine that I knew would be stable and fast for years to come and future proof in case I wanted to upgrade to a Pro Tools HD system in the future.
• I do not plan to play many games I will reserve that for my Xbox 360
• Bigger studios run on Macs with Pro Tools. To stay current and with the industry I will too.
• To be able to run Pro Tools 11 if I want to
• Any Mac would be smaller than my current computer and produce less noise while recording.

Why I decided on the Mac Mini and not an iMac or Mac Pro.

I wanted to get the biggest bang for my buck in the Mac world which is hard. I also wanted to be able to upgrade parts in the future mainly the hard drive and the ram.

From a previous post about music production computers I outlined a few hardware specs to look for including the following.

• At least an I5 processor or equivalent
• 4 gigs of ram but more would be ideal
• I also suggested a SSD as performance increases are HUGE!
• Enough storage to back up your data!

The kicker I only have $900 to do all of this! So I either saved up more money and got an iMac or I looked at the Mac Mini and use my current monitor mouse and keyboard.

I did look around at the option of an iMac but aside from price I found out that I would also be limited in upgrading the newer IMacs as they are very hard to upgrade. I fix it rated the new Imacs 3/10 for the ability to repair/upgrade. I knew I wanted to max out my machine in the future.

So either I upgrade everything through Apple and spend ALOT more or I go with the Mac Mini. I also knew that the Mac mini should work well as my buddy was running one with Pro tools without much of an issue which made tipped me over.

The quest for a Mac Mini

After doing some looking around I found two versions of the Mac Mini that would work as a starting point either the I5 version or the I7 version. They both had 4 gigs of ram and plenty of storage. For the price to performance difference I elected to go for the I7 version. I also wanted my computer to last as long as possible.

Processor Choice

I was able to find a Mac Mini with an I7 processor for around $712 on amazon (it is sightly used which I was fine with). If you wanted a new Mac Mini they currently run $770 or so which is still pretty inexpensive if you have a monitor mouse and keyboard.

Ram

I was able to find 16 gigs of ram for the Mac Mini for about $120 on amazon as well. I’m sure this is an overkill but I really do not want to upgrade again for 4-5 years. That and with more ram the on board graphics card will take advantage of some of that ram. Not to mention with Mountain Lion I can utilize all 16 gigs as it is a 64 bit operating system.

 

 

SSD Baby!

Lastly I had an SSD the Intel 520 120 gigabyte version in my current Hackintosh and wanted to install that into the Mac Mini. I looked around I found out it is not something that is easy like the ram to upgrade, however it is possible to do I was able to find a kit that would allow me to do all of this and still have the original terabyte drive installed as well.

Total Cost

All said and done I spent under $900 for everything which should be a beast of a machine for my music production needs along with way more than enough for my daily computing needs. This should also work well with Pro Tools 11.

 

Links to Everything I am using

• Mac Mini 2012 version I7
• 16 gigs of ram used
• Intel 520 SSD
• OWC Data Doubler Kit to install the hard drive

I will be detailing everything I do with this machine including

• Performance reviews (before upgrading and after)
• Stress tests
• How I set up the machine to run everything as smooth as possible.
• NovaBench for benchmark testing.
• Boot up times once upgraded