Hi. My aging 8-year-old i7 based desktop is slowly failing. I have been saying this for more than a year, when a couple of USB sockets and internal Wi-Fi failed. It's still going hardware-wise but is too slow for editing/exporting raw images.
I am planning for an inevitable replacement, possibly by this year-end (get some Thanksgiving deals). I feel that I need to get the best I can afford with all necessary hardware integrated from the start.
The following is what I found so far (all numbers in USD). I am trying to keep it around 2,000.
Intel NUC 13th gen i9 barebones
32 GB memory, 1 TB m.2 drive
Win11 64-bit
Total about 2,000
No GPU.
HP Z2 G9 13th gen 24-core i9
Same configuration as above, about 1,900
With NVIDIA T1000 8GB, about 2,230
Both include Win11 64bit, USB keyboard and mouse
Macs at similar price
14" MacBook Pro
M2 Pro 12-core chip
16GB unified RAM, 1TB SSD
19-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
[Switch to 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD, cost goes up $100]
Mini with M2 Pro 12-core chip
32GB unified RAM, 1TB SSD
19-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
MacBook obviously has included screen and keyboard.
The mini trades those for additional RAM (32GB instead of 16GB).
The mini needs keyboard and mouse extra.
The problem is, the following two tech specs are not apples to apples. They both do all my other personal stuff but editing photos in PL6 (PL7 in future) will be the key. * i9 24-core with T1000 GPU, 32GB RAM and 1TB M.2 drive * M2 Pro 12-core with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 19-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine
With intel chips, I cannot get a desktop performance in a laptop. The two processor designs are different.
With Apple M1/M2, the same SoC is used in both mini and laptops. So, same performance.
What would you say are the pros and cons between the two?
Thanks.
Satya