DreamQuest Mini Plus n95, 12g, 512g mini-PC
- Thread starter Greg_E
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"powder" consumption?
Okay, so should I assume that you have experience dealing with them? Because I have a UGreen dock for my base M4 Mini, and has a typical USB 3.1 (10Gbit) connection, which is what most of those 20-30 dollar will do (the UGreen's 50 bucks during a sale). And guess what?
They almost never give you more than 1GB/sec. Because it's a 10Gbit USB3.1 connection, and that's what's determining throughput.
Hell, I have a Teamgroup MP33 512GB NVMe drive inside the UGreen dock's NVMe drive bay, and that's a drive that can only do around 1500MB/sec (it's cheap, doesn't have a DRAM cache but doesn't require a heatsink), and even then it's limited by USB3.1 + overhead (so between 800-1000GB/sec).
Even though I have faster drives (HP ex950, Samsung 980/990 Pro) I chose not to use it since there's no internal ventilation, I don't see a thermal pad within, and it'll still be constrained by USB3.1 anyways.
And what does the "slow" internal SSD do on my M4 MacMini with the 2TB storage module (replacing the 256GB module on the original)?
Oh? it hit ~3GB/sec. Which is roughly about the same as the Macbook Air M4/16/512 in my office.
Once again - whether the NVMe drive in the mini dock will even hit 1GB/sec...will depend on whether it has anything else plugged in (other power using peripherals like an iPhone or iPad, Logitech Brio 4K webcam, etc), each of which will pull down more power from the Thunderbolt 4 port on the base M4 mini. if the other devices are pulling power while the NVMe drive is being used (once again, depends on the drive), it'll cause brownouts and disconnects, either based on power delivery or thermal issues. I've seen that happen on the UGreen with a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (which runs too hot and is pretty much overkill). Technically the UGreen can do a 5V/3A external power-in via USB-PD, so it's not dependent on the MacMini itself, but I am still not planning to cook a perfectly good NVMe drive.
Can you do 3GB/sec on a dock meant for a Mini?
Sure. Buy a USB3.2/TB4 dock like the Acasis (which is limited by the TB4 on the M4 Mini) or the Beelink Mate Mini (up to TB5 on the M4 Pro). Either one will be at least 130 USD+. Not quite 20-30 on AliExpress.
... I specifically say thunderbolt. You go trough all of the trouble of comparing a shit tier usb 3 one because ? orico, phixeroetc all have actual TB enclosures for around 30 (search for "40gbs nvme enclosure" ... Also comparing a 2TB module to the 256gb one actually available in the 300 Mac minis I was actually referring to make no sense.
Also a typo how will I survive. Do you have some kind of disability or something?
Hey! Don't be hating on Teamgroup. I have a bunch of their drives in use, MP44 are pretty decent considering I'm only pushing them at PCIe 3.0. But yes I do recognize that they are not top tier, kind of in the middle or towards the bottom of the middle. I also have some generic bottom tier stuff, those are the "use them until they fail, then replace" tier.
Well, if you mention it up until 3 months ago I would agree - the new Panther lake with Intel A18 node fab isn't that bad, and its iGPU is pretty good. As for efficiency, well, Apple has been doing this for years thanks to the A-series iPhone processors, so it's not like it's a major surprise. Besides, if you want to see stagnation, look at AMD - after the gains from Strix Point(Zen5), Gorgon point (Zen5+) barely had any improvements over the previous generation, and the same goes for its iGPU. This was surprising considering that there were some measurable improvements/refinements for AMD going from Raven Ridge (Zen) to Raven2 (Zen+), Barcelo (Zen3) to Rembrandt (Zen3+), or Phoenix (Zen4) to Hawk Point (Zen4+).
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I did mention that I have a hub for an Mac mini M4, right? On the M4 you pretty much NEED a hub if you use USB-A devices, since that machine only has USB-C ports (3 TB4/5 out back, 2 USB3.1 at the front), and I hardly consider the UGreen dock for the M4 to be "shit tier". It has its own power input (not always a feature on the USB 3.1 docks), it has a good mix of 5 and 10Gbps USB ports, and it's fairly well constructed. if the objective was to toss some cheap power efficient NVMe DRAM-less SSD (like a 2TB Teamgroup MP33, which was 120 USD up until Q2 '25) into an enclosure and use it as slow-but-large storage, it works just fine. Yeah, you can totally use a USB4 or TB3/TB4 external enclosure, and there are ones with metallic chassis and active cooling. The really good ones even have its own power input. But that exposes another issue using the Mac Mini as a server. On the MacMini M1 and M2 (the base model) you only have 2 thunderbolt 3 ports + 2 USB-A ports in the back (the M1 pro models have 4 Thunderbolt and 2 USB-A ports at the back) and no USB port up front. if you want 10Gbit networking that's pretty much a build-to-order option (rare on the base model), or you'll need to use up one more of your 3 other ports for a USB based one (or use one of the TB3 port to host a dock). At some point the cable management behind the Mac Mini turns into a bigger hassle. For 400 USD with only an M1, 8GB RAM/256GB storage, you'll still need to spend money on external storage (enclosure + media),. You might as well wait for the MacMini M5 announcement at WWDC'26 (early June) and see if the mid-level M1 or base level M4 Minis get dropped onto the used market at a more reasonable price.
So why did I compare that 2TB module on my M4 to the 256GB soldered SSD on the Mac Mini M1? Because they are roughly the same performance-wise. On the 2020 M1s Apple made all storage about the same perf-wise (about 3-4 GB/sec) while on the M2s and M4s, the 256GB base model had roughly 1/2 to 2/3 the performance of the pricier 512GB+ models - the ones with the pro SoC is supposed to be 150-200% of that. The storage module is supposed to fix that performance shortfall while avoiding the "apple tax" (I spent 260 instead of the 600+ if it was a factory upgrade back in Q2 '25. It's more like 800+ now).
drive prices = no more kidneys to sell I'm on low tier for everything now and even then it is a must be needed purchase. I figured that the drives in these mini-pc were worth at least half and hopefully most of the cost. They of course lied and only provided sata, and lowest tier at that, so USA retail price is about half the cost was the drive. Still not sure if I'm going to wipe the included drives or stay on the 256gb that I had from another build.