hey all. any thoughts on flame running on the new Mac mini. could be super cool and super portable. I think im going to get one just to try out. I was thinking the pro one.
1 Like
The form factors between the mini and the studio are both in the portable range. If rumors are right that there will be an M4 Studio within the next 6 months, I’d wait for that. Still portable, fewer regrets.
Or go with an MBP M4. Then you don’t have to lug a screen and keyboard around as well.
The mini is great for desktop setups that don’t need as much top-end margin as a studio.
I use a m2 studio now. I think I’ll wait for the m4 studio.
Jh
2 Likes
me too
The thunderbolt 5 is pretty crazy. 6000mbs with the new owc!
1 Like
I ordered the new MBP. Hope flame is supported soon
1 Like
Heya Sam- I feel pretty confident Flame is supported on the MacBook Pro M4–screenshots of Flame were prominently featured in the release video and on their main specs page. Also the latest version of Flame supports the current Mac OS
2 Likes
mines just arrived - unfortunately I havent got a thunderbolt 5 SSD drive to try yet!
you can plumb it in to one of your mac studios and do thunderbolt networking.
copy at least 100GB of data from your studio to your mac mini.
that will theoretically be 40Gb flat out read, to 80Gb flat out write.
it should only take couple of minutes at most, although we’re all rooting for ~20seconds
1 Like
how are you doing Phil?
this claims 64Gbit networking but it also havent seen more than like 16Gbit or so from tb4 networking
@Jonhollis - oh you know Jon, it’s just another day in paradise, brother
1 Like
3 Likes
so I got one - top spec one. and have used it on the last three jobs. works pretty well. about the same as my M2 Ultra studio. but the thunder 5 stuff is out of this world. makes it feel faster anyhow. haven’t had any problems and its so small and light
9 Likes
Hi Jon,
thanks for your insight and your test with the MacMini M4 Pro. Which Flame version are you running on the machine?
I’m actually also happy with my Studio M2 Ultra, but now I have to get a few more boxes for a few projects and I’m also faced with the choice of getting 4 or 5 of the MacMinis, which of course makes a huge difference compared to 4 or 5 MacStudios or MacBook Pros. Especially at the current time and the state of the industry. Of course, there are also monitors and other small things, but the M4 is probably testing quite well at the moment. I need that for a small Flamer team on sight and togather. So I would be really interested to hear about your experience with Flame.
Many thanks and best regards,
Sebastian
Hi there. so ive been completing two quite intensive jobs on it. using latest flame 2025-2-2. it seems as good as the M2 Mac Studio, if not better. snappier interface and feels quicker anyhow. Im running the apple XDR monitor and the blackmagic ultrastudio 4K mini to a broadcast monitor. ive also tried it on two apple studio monitors, ive also tried using the HDMI out to run the broadcast at the same time as the 6K XDR - and that’s fine. I don’t know about render times, but feels the same. im using a thunderbolt 5 OWC drive. so that helps. I think flame has a way to go in terms of integration with all of these stuff. I use blender and resolve a lot and they render much faster and feel much faster on the M4. not sure why. only problem I have is there aren’t enough ports. I just got one of those OWC thunder 5 hubs and that should help. the whole thunder 5 daisy chain thing is much better. worth having just for that. I can easily have my cache and my footage on two separate drives on the same thunder 5 port no problem. where as with thunder 4 it would sometimes fall over kicking a drive off. so I can recommend this, and of course its tiny and makes no noise and hardly any heat! i spend my time between two suites in different locations and I can bag all of this up in my camera bag and super easy to get around! Of course when the Mac Studio M4 Ultra comes out then I will get one of those.
10 Likes
I very appreciate this review, we have ordered both a base model with 10Gbit/s and a top of the line m4 max! the m4 mini will be more of a conform/ ultillity station while the max will be a full workstation, we allready have 4 m2 ultras and 1 m1 ultra so exited to see what it does!
2 Likes
Thanks Jon for your details…that sounds really damn promising. I’ll probably get myself a couple of the Minis then. But I can’t get my head around the fact that you can now do all this on a device that you can almost put in your pocket.
I still have the big fridge-sized Inferno in mind…and now this 
Just madness.
A thousand thanks and best wishes
2 Likes
I remember, back in the day, when the Bosch FGS400 arrived at MPC, it was so big and heavy, (think 4 full size Onyx1’s stuck together), they had to put all sorts of monitoring in to make sure the floor could take the weight.
1 Like
2 Likes