Need help from Computer people- Which system would you buy?

Justiceiro

Hey Ya'all,

Here's the situation. I got myself a brand new 26 MP camera (the X-t3) and I intend not only to take and edit stills with it, but to move into video editing. Not anything special effects intense, mind you, just normal stuff, but it will require the use of a video editing suite. I will probably shoot omst of my stuff in 1080, but who knows. Maybe 4K is in the future.

I'm currently using an IMac from 2011, and a macbook air from 2015, and with the new RAW files these machines craaaaaaawl. I haven't even done any video editing, and I'm sure if I tried they would literally catch on fire.

So I'm going to need a new machine, but I can't splash out for a new Mac Pro.

Here's my options:

Option 1: New Mac mini Standard

3,6 GHz Quad‑Core Intel Core i3 Prozessor der 8. Generation
8 GB 2666 MHz DDR4
Intel UHD Graphics 630
128 GB SSD Speicher
Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000BASE‑T Gigabit Ethernet mit RJ‑45 Anschluss)

Price: 899.00 Euros

Option 2: New Mac Mini with more bells and whistles

3,6 GHz Quad‑Core Intel Core i3 Prozessor der 8. Generation
32 GB 2666 MHz DDR4
Intel UHD Graphics 630
256 GB SSD Hard Drive
Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000BASE‑T Gigabit Ethernet with RJ‑45 Connection)

Price: 1859.00 Euro

so the question with these two is, is the 32G and bigger hard drive worth 1000 Euros

But the waters are muddied by option 3, and oldie but goldie

Option 3: 2013 Model Mac Pro (the cylinder)

MacPro6,1
Processor: 3,0 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5 CPU E5-1680 v2
RAM: 64 GB ( 4 x 16 GB ) DDR3 ECC 1866 MHz
Hard Drive: 256 GB SSD Apple SSD SM0256F
Graphic Card: ( 2 x ) AMD FirePro D300 ( 2 GB ) VRAM mit HDMI und Thunderbolt Videoausgang
OS: macOS Mojave 10.14

Price: 2000.00 Euros

So this one is old, but looks, on paper at least, even better than the loaded Mac Mini.

I's used, but it comes with a 12 month warranty, from a dealer (via eBay, but it's a dealer ) Here's the link:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Apple-Mac-Pro-2013-3-GHz-8-Core-64-GB-RAM-256-GB-SSD-D300-Top-Zustand-142/143381570296?hash=item21623522f8:g:Fd8AAOSw-DZde1Y9&LH_BIN=1

So which one would you buy?

kdog

I'm not a Mac person, so I'm answering from my generic background in the computer industry.

Option 2 is probably your best bet. 32GB RAM and 256 SSD is perfect for photo and video processing.

8 GB RAM in option 1 is a killer, as is 128GB SSD. 1000 Euros seems like a lot of money for that upgrade though. Maybe you can upgrade option 1 yourself with extra RAM and SSD for less money? Having 2 SSDs is better than one as you can usually speed things up by splitting critical data across separate SSDs. On my system I have a 2nd SSD dedicated to my LR catalog and RAW and video cache files which really rips.

Option 3 is interesting and is configured well. However, note that the RAM is slower than in option 1. I wonder if other internal buses are likewise slower in this machine that's 7 years old already. Plus you have to worry about the age factor, will it last as long before something breaks? Who knows.

RalphMoon

@Justiceiro,

I can't speak to Option 3, but I suspect that you'll be happy with Option 2. I do a lot of my photo editing (using 64-bit Lightroom on ~25 Mb raw files) on a laptop equipped with a 1.8 Mhz processor, 16 Gb RAM, and SSD storage. I've never found response times to be a problem, and your Option 2 has a much faster CPU and double the memory. Enjoy!

--Ralph
Smugmug: https://ralphmoon.com