Upgrade late 2012 mac mini

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Level 1

8 points

Upgrade late 2012 mac mini

VERY slow when editing stills with Lightroom or Photoshop. Video editing EXTREMELY slow when using Final Cut X. Goal is to upgrade to gain maximum efficiency for this little computer for these purposes.

(I am not rich or I'd chuck this sucker and get an iMac Pro 10 core or better.)

Present hardware:

5400 rpm drive

2.3GHz Intel Core i7

16GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 15136MB

I'm assuming a SSD of 1TB will help, but is there anything else I can do?

Very much appreciate your input!!

Randy

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on May 4, 2019 5:25 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

DonH49

Level 6

16,710 points

May 5, 2019 5:13 AM in response to rforbes

you should not look for anything else you can do...get rid of that SLOW and most likely dying mechanical hard drive. Replace it with a good SSD. You go from write speed about 60 to 80 m/sec to 410 and read speed from 80 to 90 to 500.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

82,570 points

May 5, 2019 8:07 AM in response to rforbes

Yes' upgrading a Late 2012 Mac Mini's HDD to an SSD makes a huge difference.

I have upgraded several Late 2012 Mac Mini's over the years using PNY SSDs. Their read/write speeds have increased from around 80/60 MB/s up to around 520/480 MB/s.

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Answer 3

May 5, 2019 10:41 AM in response to rforbes

One other thing, even with 16GB of RAM, Photoshop

and Lightroom editing should not be very slow unless

you are editing very, very large images or a very large

number of layers, even with the glacial HDD as everything

is done in RAM until it runs to of RAM.

You may want to download Etrecheck and post the results

here as there may be additionally some software issues on

your system as well which may not be obvious to you but we

may have seen before.. It is available here https://etrecheck.com

or in the MacApp Store.

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Answer 4

rforbes Author

Level 1

8 points

May 30, 2019 2:03 PM in response to woodmeister50

After installing an OWC Extreme 1TB SSD, I had compatibility issues that took awhile (several days!) to correct, with the help of the support staff at OWC. They were kind, patient, knowledgeable and competent. Very pleased with the results. My computer is much more responsive after installation.

The issue (my mac mini couldn't see the drive) was resolved after updating and cloning my MacBook Pro OS - then installing it on my mini desktop. Then I used a time machine backup to bring my old desktop back to life. I then ran EtraCheck and it detected no problems.

Thank you so much for your support. Usually this kind of difficulty would land me at a Mac repair shop. Not this time!! ;-D

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Answer 5

rforbes Author

Level 1

8 points

May 5, 2019 8:22 AM in response to DonH49

Thank you! Direct answer even a stupido like myself can grasp. I figured 16gigs of ram was all this little machine could swallow. I’m ordering my SSD swap kit as we speak! Thanks again!

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Answer 6

rforbes Author

Level 1

8 points

May 10, 2019 11:23 AM in response to woodmeister50

Thank you for your suggestion regarding software to improve my editing w/PS & LR - which are notoriously slow. I will download it and follow up. Great advice!

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Upgrade late 2012 mac mini

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