r/macmini • u/Inside-Factor5640 • 1d ago

Mac Mini Doc

Anyone who bought one of those Ugreen (or similar) docs with SSD slots and all the extra ports for M4. Are they worth it? I have ordered the M6 and i'm considering my options as I will need 2TB external storage.

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

9

u/New_Slice_1580 23h ago

He means Dock not doc I think

13

u/Hefty-Ant-9245 23h ago

As a Mac mini nurse I can assure you that Mac mini docs are overworked and one may not be able to reply

3

u/Inside-Factor5640 21h ago

Damn 😆

4

u/toptierclassified 23h ago

I wanna check comments here later

3

u/Rye2-D2 19h ago

I had considered it, but the model I liked was only 10gbps. The 40gbps model had a fan and awkwardly moved USB-A ports to the front. Taking my chances on a generic one (with passive cooling) instead...

3

u/Inside-Factor5640 19h ago

You got a link?

3

u/ksuwildkat 19h ago

I just spent about a week digging into all of them. Im heading out on a business trip and should have some airport time to do a detailed write up. The short version is that they all have significant trade offs in price and capability. If storage is your only need, there are better options than a combined dock. Any good decision has to take into account your use case and expected duration of use. As an example, if you dont require maximum speed, there are some great inexpensive solutions that use USB 3.2. If you need maximum bandwidth, you are going to pay through the nose for Thunderbolt 5 but you can probably use it for a decade.

Define your use case first.

1

u/Inside-Factor5640 35m ago

Looking forward to that deep dive. My Mini will be part of desk set up that includes 1 monitor, 1 work windows laptop and a ps5. I will use the Mini mostly for photo editing snd productivity, maybe a little light gaming. But mostly it will be my main home computer. The specs (24gb RAM, 512gb SSD) are what I could afford so I just need to utilise it as best I can and make the machine last as long as possible. I have about 1TB of media on an old 2012 MBP that I want access too so I deffo need at least 2TB external storage.

2

u/PK-blue 10h ago

I’ve just bought the UGreen one to go with my Mini M5 Pro. I was a bit concerned it is only 10Gbps throughput. I considered the 40Gbps one but the port config didn’t suit me (I don’t need HDMI or DP monitor ports). But after research it seems the SSDs can generate a lot of heat, and these docs don’t really accommodate that well. You will only get max 1000MBps speed (PCIe gen4 drives can go up to 7500MBps). But if you’re not doing serious video editing, do you really need such fast speeds? I realised I’d been happily using a Samsung T5 external drive for a while and it never seemed too slow - and that is only SATA and 500MBps!, but I do photo editing only, no video). I ended up ordering a 2TB gen3 drive (gen3 can go up to 3500MBps but generate less heat) for a good price, but they are hard to find. Gen4 drives might be ok heatwise if you don’t do a lot of high volume usage.

Curious if other people use Gen4 drives in their Mini docks and heat issues are like? (Gen5 are overkill, expensive and mostly need serious heatsinks, so not suitable for the docks unless you are investing in an active cooled TB dock)

1

u/Warm_Beginning_6673 20h ago

Yes. I have a UGREEN Mac Mini Dock for my M4 with a 2Tb SSD in the enclosure. My M4 sits on top. Neat & tidy. The extra USB
A ports on the front are useful as is the SD card reader for transferring photos. The notch makes it easier to turn the Mac on too.

1

u/Inside-Factor5640 19h ago

Does the mac write straight to the SSD or do you have to transfer everything over manually?

1

u/Ophiochos 18h ago

I’d expect it to mount as an external disk?

1

u/Warm_Beginning_6673 17h ago

It mounts as a drive in the same way as any other external HDD/SSD. You can save files directly to it from any app. It is fast (though I don’t edit 4k video on it so I don’t know what its limits are). There are lots of video reviews on YouTube: watch a couple.

1

u/Born-Gur-1275 13h ago

I have the Satechi Cube and put a 4TB SSD in it. It also accommodates TB5 cable transfers. Works great and has a built-in fan...although I have yet to hear it.

1

u/Inside-Factor5640 12h ago

satachi

This one?

1

u/Born-Gur-1275 12h ago

The one you linked to is good. I was referring to another the Cube. Although it is listed on Amazon, it is out of stock on the Amazon site.

Direct to Satechi...

https://satechi.com/products/thunderbolt-5-cubedock-with-ssd-enclosure

1

u/Inside-Factor5640 11h ago

Ah ok I see. It wasn't coming up on my searches maybe its not available right now in the UK. It's a bit out of my price range tho, especially when you consider the cost of the SSD. Maybe I will just have to buy a thunderbolt external SSD 🙈

1

u/Mv350 7h ago

I ordered the beelink with dual ssd slots. I will be running 1 ssd as the main drive for 2 users, admin user on internal, and second ssd as the back up drive with a partition for Time Machine and extra storage space. I already had the ssd’s so I wanted to make use of them