M4 Cube

It’s here! Well, it’s been here for a few weeks now and I’ve been using it as my primary desktop while I decide how to mount it inside the cube.

My initial impressions - it’s small! I’d already watched many youtube videos about it and knew it’d be small but seeing it in person is something else. It’s also really fast - this should last me many many years.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on integrating the M4 Mini into the Cube chassis. My plan is to mount it as-is - without any disassembly.

To-do in the next few weeks

• Disassemble the G4 Cube - just leaving the chassis intact
• Mount the M4 Mini inside the chassis
• Mount the external NVMe drive inside the chassis
• Mount a USB-C Bluray drive into the optical drive slot

To-do longer term tasks

• Work out how to integrate the touch power button on the top of the cube to power on the mini

Concerns

Will the metal chassis act as a faraday cage to block wifi and bluetooth? There are two round cutouts where the G4 Cube antennae were mounted. Will this be enough to let signals through?

The M4 Mac Mini was announced late last month and I put in a pre-order immediately. I’m super excited for the new mini. It’s 5” x 5” which should fit easily inside the G4 Cube chassis without needing to disassemble it!

So what spec mini did I order?

Mac Mini

• Apple M4 Pro chip with
• 14 core CPU
• 20 core GPU
• 16 core Neural Engine
• 64GB unified memory
• 1TB SSD Storage
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 3 x Thunderbolt 5 ports
• HDMI Port
• 2 x USB-C Ports
• Headphone jack

Yes, I upgraded it a lot (particularly the memory) but I want this to last me a long time.

Accessories

• Caldigit TS3+ dock
• Apple Studio Display
• Logitech MX Keys
• Logitech MX Master 3
• Fosi Audio MC101 2 channel amplifier
• Krix Equinox bookshelf speakers
• 4TB Samsung 990 Pro NVMe SSD in Sabrent TB3 NVMe enclosure

The mini should arrive in a couple of days. After the inital setup to make sure it’s all working OK, the next steps will be to mount it inside the Cube chassis!

There’s been an interesting development in the world of the M4 Mac Mini. According to this article there’s a redesign of the Mac Mini in the works.

If the rumours are true, then Apple intends to shrink the size of the Mac Mini down to a taller version of the Apple TV set top box.

The article also mentions that Apple will be releasing M4 and M4 Pro versions of the mini, with the Pro version being slightly taller than the regular version.

What does this mean for the M4 Cube? Well, at that form factor I might not even need to disassamble the mini! It could just fit inside the Cube chassis as-is.

This would be an ideal scenario although it might mean I’d have to abandon the idea of keeping the bottom handle in place. And powering it up via the top touch button might be impossible.

We’ll just have to wait and see!

I’ve been using a 27” Dell 4k monitor for a number of years now. It’s been fine but as part of this project I wanted to upgrade it to something befitting an M4 Cube!

What were the requirements?

• 27” size - this works well for the space I have available at my desk. Anything bigger would take up too much room
• Colour accuracy - I do a lot of design work for print and fabric so I need the colours on the screen to be representative of what they’ll be in real life
• 5k - MacOS prefers 5k screens at 27” to keep the dpi in the sweet spot of a retina screen.

Where I live that just left two options, the Samsung Viewfinity S9 and the Apple Studio Display.

I considered the Samsung, as it was a lot cheaper than the Studio Display. But the major concerns I had with it was it was running a TV operating system, which meant changing basic things like brightness had to be done via a remote control and navigating a bunch of menu options.

So I chose the Studio Display. I got the nano texture model with VESA mount.

So far it’s been fine. The screen looks amazing and I’ve actually noticed a performance improvement with 5k (I was using display scaling with the 4k monitor) which was a nice bonus.

I was thinking I might be able to retire my Krix bookshelf speakers and just use the inbuilt speakers of the Studio Display, but unfortunately I can’t. The display’s speakers aren’t that good.

So will I be keeping the monitor? Apple has a 14 day return period and I’m about 4 days into it. So far I’m leaning towards keeping it. It’s definitely a high quality monitor but is it worth the purchase price? I guess when the only viable alternative is a Samsung, I’ll pick the Apple option 99% of the time!

And honestly, what better monitor is there for an M4 Cube?

M4 or M1

What Mac Mini to get? This is a question that’s been niggling at me for a while. When I get my cube, what spec Mac Mini do I get?

I’ve had two thoughts about this:

1. Get a cheap machine

I’ve never done anything like this before. Sure, I’ve built my fair share of computers over the years and I’ve got no issues with handling computer components. But I’ve not done anything like this before where I’ll possibly need to do major case modifications.

Do I risk damaging an expensive donor computer? Used M1 Mac Mini’s can be found pretty cheap these days, so if I break it, it’s not so bad.

But…

2. It’s a Cube!! Go BIG!

The other thought is, if I’m going to do this I should do it right. I’ve already got an M1 Pro Macbook Pro, so why go backwards? The M4 is coming soon so spend some money and go all out! After all, the original G4 Cube wasn’t a cheap computer was it?

So that’s the plan. I’m going to go with a M4 Mini, 32GB RAM (I’ll go 64GB if they’re supported) and 1TB SSD.

I think it’ll be a worthy upgrade for the G4