Kickstarter is currently funding a dock that turns the Mac Mini models into an ergonomic workstation by adding two desktop graphics cards, four SSDs and an SD card reader to the small computer.

The idea behind it makes perfect sense: The Mac Mini 2018 (starts from $679 on Amazon and $1,099 on Bhphotovideo) can be used by Apple with a passable CPU in the form of an Intel Core i7-8700B with six cores at a clock frequency of up to 4.6 GHz and at least 64 GB memory. However, the Intel UHD 630 remains the biggest weak point, so the 3D rendering with this built-in GPU is not possible.

And this is exactly where Animaionic comes in. Technically, nothing is being reinvented: graphics cards have been connected to the Mini Mac via Thunderbolt for years, and external SSDs and card readers are not new either. In this project, two PCIe and four M.2 slots should be combined in a dock for Apple mini computer for the first time.

You should be careful when choosing the graphics card: The description of Animaionic speaks of that the cards must be compatible with macOS Catalina without providing a list. In practice, this excludes most Nvidia graphics cards. In contrast, all current GPUs from AMD should work. The manufacturer himself shows in a video the use of two AMD RX Vega 56.

In order to be able to go into production, the company needs almost EUR 585,000, which are to be collected by Kickstarter by January 18. So far, only EUR 19,500 of 38 supporters have been reached. If you want to support the project, you can support the dock for GBP 699, or the “XE” variant with four 2 TB M.2 SSDs and two AMD Radeon RX 5700 XTs for GBP 2,599.

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