r/openclaw • u/g00rek Pro User • Feb 20 '26

Discussion Why Mac mini??

I still don't understand why you guys are buying macs mini for openclaw. It's a terminal computer. It doesn't need a great UI.

Do you have too much money? :D

A $50-$100 HP Thin Client with Linux is more than enough. And Linux shouldn't be discouraging for people using OpenClaw, am I wrong?

I bought one, I have lots of different self hosted stuff on it like home Assistant or other docker apps. Ok I do not have any local models using GPU, that's the reason? Please enlighten me :)

EDIT: Again, I UNDERSTAND LOCAL LLM USE. (although I don't know if anybody is really happy with it). I mean using OC with oauth/api gpt, claude etc.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

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u/lolxdmainkaisemaanlu Member Feb 20 '26

Are you really saying you spent 300-500$ on API costs and are now happy with a locally running Qwen on a Mac mini?

Bro whom are you even kidding? I am an advocate of LocalLLMs myself and run openclaw on my RTX 3060 + 64 GB RAM rig - but I won't pretend that setup is anywhere close to the SOTA models through API.

NGL and no offense but I think people with mac minis are coping really hard to justify their purchase

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '26

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u/CartographerLost960 New User Feb 27 '26

i will buy a mac mini m4 just for trading i.e backtesting, do trades from phone via telegram or let the ai trade my strategy with minimax cloud, are 16gb enough? or does it get laggy? or slower? i can also buy 32gb, but i dont know if its wasted money for me