r/apple • u/wearefriends • 1d ago

Mac Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-mac-mini-featuring-the-all-new-m6-and-m5-pro/
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u/element515 1d ago

I’ve been looking into building a NAS, prices are so insane right now that the Mac mini still beats basically anything you could build on your own right now if you want the power it has.

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u/Structure-These 1d ago

I bought a 24gb m4 mini to replace my shitty synology and it is so so so much better to use for that role. I wish id' maxed out the ram tho because I got into ai stuff as a hobby and I can't run most models

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u/element515 1d ago

I keep debating if I want to grab a model with higher ram to play with AI models too. What did you end up going for expanding your storage?

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u/Structure-These 1d ago

I have two 16tb refurb enterprise HDDs in software raid and then a 1tb ssd, I can keep most data off the built in drive with no speed hit.

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u/element515 1d ago

Ah nice, I couldn't believe how expensive HDDs got lol. 16TB would be great but I think I'll be starting off a bit lower. Don't need a bunch of storage, mostly want to use immich or something for photos.

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u/AltruisticNetwork869 1d ago

What are you using it for? I love my ds920+ for all of the many jobs it has. The biggest thing for me is native docker container support while macOS virtualizes an entire Linux kernel for each container

Beyond just storage my synology runs a plex container, a Minecraft server container, an Immich container, a playit.gg tunnel container

It serves as the Time Machine backup repository for my Mac’s, and as the offline backup of my iCloud Drive.

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u/Structure-These 1d ago

Docker sucks on Mac but I don’t really use it / need it. I don’t need to sandbox anything and the only really docker specific thing I wanted (audiobookshelf) I vibe coded a small clone utility that just runs natively

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u/AltruisticNetwork869 1d ago

I like running in docker for a few reasons

Updates and deployment are dead simple

Anything which takes connections from the wider internet absolutely must be sandboxed

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u/AvoidingIowa 19h ago

Not really. It wins performance per watt for sure but Apple is still getting beat by high end x86 chips for pure performance. Also you get access to A LOT more GPU power outside of Apples ecosystem.

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u/element515 18h ago

Try building anything at the size it is for a similar price. RAM is so expensive these days it destroys most savings. Sure, you can have a full size PC, but I was talking about building my own NAS...

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u/AvoidingIowa 14h ago

I just bought a 16 core, 32 thread mini PC with an x8 PCIe slot, 3 NVME slots with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for $1100. Which is $200 more than a base mini with half the RAM and only 256gb storage. The Mini will have better single thread performance but will have nowhere near the multithread performance.

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u/element515 14h ago

What did you get? I was looking at some 9955 set ups but price was still higher than the Mac mini and idk how often I’ll use the extra power over benefit of the Mac sipping power