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So ... I kinda need mac mini rent (not colocation)
rinaldohack
Member
in Requests
but the cheapest one is on https://www.macminivault.com/ (part of cyberlynk.net)
$30 for 2012 Mac Mini.
anyone have experience with them? anyone have better price somewhere?
or should I go mad and install hackintosh on hetzner's serverbidding? 
Comments
+1 macincloud.com
>
$25 a month and no root access.
no thanks. was planning to run VMware Fusion all day.
Ticket them and give your usecase. They are known to be very accommodating. If what you are planning to do is justified, they will help
But be ready to pay a premium. Service is flawless
gonna ask them then.
I'm still thinking about that mac mini 2012 from macminivault.com, but they are 2012, and technically i'm downgrading from my current hetzner server.
Hetzner has M1 servers too - https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple
Scaleway has Mac Mini also -
https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/compute/apple-silicon/quickstart/
It's the recent model with M1 chip, not the 2012 electronic waste.
€0.10/hour, but minimum rental period is 24 hours.
If I wanna play with a Mac, I'll have to pull an all nighter, which is something I don't want to do.
Install ESXi on Hetzner and use ESXi unlocker to run macOS without hackintosh mess.
They are wicked expensive to get compared to a normal VPS. This kind of peeves me about everything Apple - the cost of owning, the cost of renting, the cost of licensing for the store. I mean for any profitable business this is okay, for a literal one man startup - not so okay. You could consider a hackintosh until maybe that gets phased out as well - assuming the arm chip will force folks away from this option.
do you know if 3D acceleration will be enabled? because that's what I need.
for everyone else - thanks for your input, but I'm not looking for M1 one, or something that's more expensive that what macminivault.com offers which is $30.
yeah that's pretty ridiculous price, even if that's not even a mac.
I am not 100% sure on that, but I think @freerangecloud was renting Macs from Canada. Will likely be cheaper than anything else out there.
very unlikely
We were offering mac VMs for a while but had to stop due to the abuse it attracted.
We do have a mac mini in Fremont, but it's honestly kinda a turd (mac mini 7.1, dual core / 4GB RAM) and I wouldn't want to lease it out for less then $30 due to how much of a pain in the ass it is to setup.
It won’t be, unless you have a supported GPU (probably AMD) in your server to pass through
What about buying a second hand and sell it when you’re done? On EBay the 2012 model costs less than 100 dollar (excl. shipping).
Indeed.
I found these eBay listings, with free shipping.
However, they can only run Catalina and will never get Big Sur or newer.
Essentially they are already electronic waste because there's no upgrades.
There is also mac in cloud, and rent it hourly. I have a half dozen mac minis sitting unused on a shelf, cheaper to buy if you really need them. I really hate apple though... If your goal is to use this for iOS app building compliance just remember xcode doesn't update on a lot of those old mac minis.
Maybe the 2014 one makes more sense, ist doesn't cost much more on ebay than the 2012 one but can run newer versions.
i just realized i never talked about my used case.
... no it's not xcode.
I talked about my use case here : https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/161211/i-was-looking-for-cheap-gpu-servers-to-render/p1
pretty much the same, except now I'm now planning to run Resolve 17. And for some reason, Resolve runs better on macOS (tried installing Windows on my MacBook Air 2014, vs it running macOS Mojave), the difference were day and night.
and Xcode ... Yes but not now. I'm planning to learn how to build iOS apps later on, but definitely not today. I guess I could slap Big Sur or Monterey later on VMware Fusion inside it?
Apparently Hetzner also will increase their price (due to Germany increasing electricity costs). So me moving out rn is actually a good timing.
What is my plan? Moving my existing Windows 10 there - to a VMware Fusion.
Then moving my current linux VM inside that Windows 10 - as another VM in VMware Fusion.
Well I have no idea what else to do. I can't afford much servers. Only one, and even that I'm scratching my wallet already.
Already bought one in https://www.macminivault.com/. Waiting for it to be setup.
They said it is i7, 2012 (so Quad Core), should have Intel HD 4000 which is barely enough for Resolve, but vs HD 4600 on my current server it should be negligible.
the RAM is halved (32GB on hetzner vs 16GB on this thing) and storage is also halved (2x2TB vs 2x1TB) ... But what can you complain? I don't think I use half that RAM and storage too.
We are not increasing the prices on our new/regular dedicated root servers (including the Mac Minis) or on our cloud servers. The recent price change affected some, but not all servers from the Server Auction. --Katie
The "some reason" is Metal API.
You can passthrough GPU to Mac on KVM.
Nvidia CUDA works the best on Resolve, but CUDA on Resolve 17 works only for 10-series up. On 9xx, 7xx, 6xx you can just do OpenCL, because they dont support CUDA 11 and Resolve 17 is based on that. If you get 6xx or 7xx series be sure to downgrade to 461.92 drivers as newer ones are broken on Resolve.
With GTX670 I tested some days ago I could edit 10bit 4:2:0 H265 video from Lumix G9 without any problems, GPU usage was around 57% with effects applied, no proxy, full res.
With integrated graphics you will quickly exhaust all of your RAM (as iGPU uses this and needs to duplicate everything, because it doesnt have access to system memory. Unified Memory on M1 fixed this and thats why these low ram machines can edit fine.)
You can try to get Linux dedi with Intel iGPU and play with KVM to install Mac
or
get dedi with some nvidia GPU. If HD 4600 was enough then even GT710 is fine. Ask for it, many providers can install addon cards. Or even make request here for server with GT710, maybe someone already sells that.
https://www.ikoula.com/en/dedicated-server
it does affect mine, that's why I'm leaving. Sorry
@levnode once lend me a server with GT710 on ikoula. I don't recall does it black screen or not detecting any GPU, but it ends up not running.
So yes and no. They are officially not supported, but my Mac Mini 2012 (and a 2011 Mini I sold recently) all run Monterey thanks due to OCLP (OpenCore Legacy Patcher) . Previously, 2011 and before would be stuck on Catalina due to the fact most of these were running Radeon HD5/6XXXXs which did not support Metal for graphics acceleration.
But recently they added patches that support Metal on non-Metal compatible GPUs. Now with that said, these are still early i5s and i7s and only run so well. I keep mine around so I have a hardware Mac device, but it mostly acts as a spare office computer.
Now, moving on, there is also these two projects...
https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM
https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX
The later I have used on my Windows 10 (VNC) and Windows 11 (via WSLg X11) successfully and they work quite well for their needs. If you need something to build Mac apps on in a CI environment, look no further!
I already look at this and unfortunately it doesn't help my video editing project.
But I guess it will help my xcode journey! Thanks for reminding me about this.
As @yoursunny said your place to go is scaleway. Their service is flawless and uptime is perfect,
...
Ah yes, that might prove to be detrimental to video editing. Even a 2012 Mac Mini is going to be sluggish for you.
Hmm, I think it's working with Windows server 2019, but don't remember exactly.