Real Life Experience - Mac Mini Late 2012 i5 or i7?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Hello, first post on the forums.
Thanks for having me.

Basically brand new to Plex - Installed PMS on a MacBook Pro to test it worked for my needs, and it did. Actually better than I expected. So now Im looking at a dedicated machine to run PMS.

Am trying to decide between the Mac Mini Late 2012 i5 or i7.
The i7 generally run about $200 more than i5 on eBay.

Have searched and read some older posts, eg:

Mac mini performance - mid 2011, late 2012

i7 or i5 mac mini for dedicated Plex Media Server

I am very eager to hear from anyone currently using either the 2012 i5 or i7 as a dedicated PMS, who cares to share their experiences: good, bad, whatever? Do you think my anticipated use (below) can be met with an i5 or should I pay extra for the i7?

Mac Mini will be on a rack shelf in media closet, hardwired to CAT6 network, which is connected to a roaming (multiple access points) home wifi network. At home we have 2 1080p TVs and 2 4k UHD TVs. The 4k UHD TVs each have built-in Plex player; the 1080p TVs use the DLNA player on Sony BluRay DVD machines; all of these are CAT6 hardwired.

Also in the home are a 2 laptops, 2 tablets and 4 iPhones; they all use the wifi network.

PMS would be serving all those devices in the home, but rarely would it serve more than 4 devices at a time.

I travel with a MacBook 12 and iPad, and would regularly call on PMS to remotely serve one of those at a time.

Rarely use subtitles.
Current content is mkv or mp4 1080p.
But I understand remote service to my devices requires PMS to transcode, as does serving iPads and iPhones in the home. (But Im new and could easily be wrong on that). Plus, as I acquire more 4k content, that will need to be transcoded to serve the 1080p TVs as well.

So…what do you suggest - i5 or i7?
Thank you very much!

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I’ve had the 2011 mac mini with the i5, which was relatively similar to the 2012 i5. Good Little machine, but I got tired of hearing the fans spin everytime I was transcoding anything.

The 4cores i7 is FAR more powerful, but given the current state of hardware acceleration and the old hardware in mac minis, if it were me, I’d buy a recent NUC that has hardware acceleration for HEVC transcoding.

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Thanks @KarlDag.

Mac Mini PMS will sit on server rack shelf in media closet so I wouldn’t hear fans.
But given the transcoding you describe, sounds like the i7 is the better choice.

Lucky for me ebay has a sale today, 15% off everything.

I am wholly ignorant when it comes to running anything other than Macs and building networks. For PMS I want something that is easy for me to setup and hopefully wont have to mess with once it is setup. For those reasons a NUC does not appeal to me.

But please, feel free to educate me about NUC bc I like to learn and maybe I’m being too closed-minded when i plan on using a 6 year old computer…thanks again!

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The intel NUC is a line of small form factor computers that has much more recent CPUs vs the mac minis, so you would get better performance. Because the CPUs are more recent, the integrated GPUs are also much more powerful and would allow you to transcode HEVC high bitrate files, which the mac mini won’t.

That said, I recommend you stick with the OS you’re comfortable with if you don’t know windows well enough. Just keep your files in a widely accepted formal like h264 with aac 2.0 and ac3 5.1 audio and the mac mini will be good enough… Just requires more work ahead of time to fix your media and more storage space… And forget 4K.

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wow. that is very informative about the NUC.
so i will search the plex forums to learn more.
maybe i change my mind about mac mini.
thanks again!

i dont have any 4K content currently, is all ripped from BluRay.
but in the future…?
did not know the mac mini cant do 4k.

anyone with a mac mini PMS want to share their experience?

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Well, to be more complete, it can/could do 4K as long as your device can direct play the file. It is transcoding that would kill it.

So if all your clients were ShieldTVs or Android devices or 4K Roku devices you could do it, but with iPads and iPhones you’d probably run into issues as they don’t support many formats.

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I love 4K movies on my AppleTV :heart_eyes:

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so if/when i begin to acquire 4k content, the mac mini PMS wouldn’t be able to transcode that down to a format suitable to serve iPhone/iPad/non-4k devices?

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For a sync job, yes, but on the fly most likely not. Not more than one stream at once that’s for sure.

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thanks Karl.

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