Apple's Much Smaller M4 Mac Mini Has All-New Thermal Architecture to Maximize Speed

The Mac mini received a major update today, with Apple introducing a slimmed down design that shaves more than two inches off of the size so it takes up less space on a desktop or in a rack. Despite the size change, the ‌Mac mini‌ uses Apple's most powerful M-series chips, including the new M4 Pro.

Combining the smaller form factor and updated chips necessitated a redesigned thermal architecture. The foot of the ‌Mac mini‌ allows it to pull in air from the surrounding environment, and the air is able to circulate throughout before being vented back out through the bottom foot.

Apple says that air is guided to each level of the system, and that combined with the power efficiency of the M4 chips, the ‌Mac mini‌ can "breeze through intensive workloads at outrageous speeds."

The redesigned ‌Mac mini‌ measures in at five inches square and two inches tall. It's taller than the prior version, but it is 2.75 inches smaller. Rumors suggested that it could be as small as the Apple TV (which is 3.66 inches), but it ended up being a bit bigger than that.

The M4 Pro hasn't been benchmarked yet, but it has a 14-core CPU and up to a 20-core GPU, which is up to twice as powerful as the M4 GPU. 3D renders in Blender are up to 2.9x faster compared to the M2 Pro and motion graphics render up to 2x faster.