Fully loaded Mac Mini or 2012 Mac Pro for Photoshop CS6?

[tsinsf]

I need a new system for my photo editing in Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom. My first generation Mac Pro is just too slow now, even with 16GB RAM. It seems that unless one is editing video, the yet to be released 2013 Mac Pro would be overkill and quite expensive. I'd jump on a Mac Mini with the fastest processor and SSD drive, but I'm put off by the limit of 16GB RAM.  I realize that is probably enough now, but might not be in the near future. So my other consideration would be to buy the old 2012 Mac Pro 3.2 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon (refurbished at $2139 or new at $2500) and install 32 GB of RAM. I'd put my current SSD boot drive and three other spinning drives in it. Since I would have to spend around $600 for a Thunderbolt external drive enclosure if I bought the Mac Mini, the price of the two systems would be in the same ballpark. How would the two compare in terms of speed running Photoshop with large files and Lightroom 5 (both using comparable SSD boot drives)? Thanks!!

[Josh-H]

I really depends on how much that 16 GB ram limitation bothers you. For me, it makes the mini a non starter.

I did just upgrade to the current Mac Pro with 64 Gig of RAM - the upgrade was mostly for RAM, but also because I wanted internal storage, and I wanted upgradeability (RAM, Processors, Hard Drives, GPU's) and PCIe. With an OWC Mercury Accelsior SSD in the PCIe slot it hammers for speed and was thousands cheaper than the new model.

The only downside to the last of the current Gen. Mac Pro is no thunderbolt. There are however lots of other connection options

[Chris Kern]

I'd jump on a Mac Mini with the fastest processor and SSD drive, but I'm put off by the limit of 16GB RAM.  I realize that is probably enough now, but might not be in the near future.

I did some reasonably rigorous testing on OS X 10.6.8 with LR 4.X and Photoshop CS6 a while back, and concluded that 8 GB/core was the effective minimum for a usable system.  Not ideal, mind you: just usable.*

Apple has improved the memory management somewhat in OS X 10.9 ("Mavericks").  My impression from watching the Apple Activity Monitor app—I haven't done any instrumentation of my own—is that the garbage collection routines (to free up real memory) are somewhat more aggressive (albeit not up to the standard of enterprise UNIXes), and that the new memory compression feature reduces demand-paging to some extent.  But especially if you're going to be running Photoshop coactively with Lightroom (i.e., launching PS from LR using the "Edit In" menu pick), you may find a machine with a hard 16 GB real memory limitation to be confining.

I'll probably pop for one of the new Mac Pros, myself, but as Josh-H points out you can get a lot of bang for your buck with one of the older Mac Pro systems.

Of course, you can get even more bang for your buck with a machine running MS-Windows.  But you may consider that—as I do—a cure worse than the disease.

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* N.B., I was working with raw D800E files.  I don't know to what extent my findings
generalize to images with lower pixel count and bit depth.

[Jimmy D Uptain]

I just got rid of a Mac Mini. It was the latest version with 16gb ram and a Samsung 840 Pro SSD.
To be honest, I never felt the need for more power as far as Photoshop Lightroom go. It seemed fine. Where it lacked was with Capture One. Capture One isn't very efficient but I love it.
Even so, I "upgraded" to a Mac Pro 2012 3.33 6 core with 24gb ram. I am very happy with this setup. I do have a bit of buyer's remorse as 12 cores would have been better for Capture One, but I'm very happy.
The difference between the Mini and the "Old" Pro is expandability. I'm talking storage, memory, video, and in some cases, CPU.
The Mini is an exceptional machine, but I think you will miss the ability to upgrade.
I haven't had a tower since my PC days. Man I forgot how nice it is to have options.....