Mac Shootout: $3,500 iMac 5K vs. $1,700 Mac mini

“The first computer that comes to mind for an Apple desktop for best performance for less than $3500 is the iMac 5K with lots of upgrades, but the Mac mini gives it a run for its money,” Vadim Yuryev writes for AppleInsider.
“Our iMac 5K was priced at $3,300 and came loaded with a 4.2GHz 4-core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. The Mac mini we’re comparing has an upgraded 3.2GHz 6-core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, and 128GB of Flash storage for $1700,” Yuryev writes. “That’s almost half the price the iMac and would leave you $1,600 for a monitor — except that you lose $400 of that if you add flash storage to the Mac mini that’s comparable with the iMac’s.”
“Testing raw processor performance, the Mac mini matches the iMac 5k in single-core tasks and easily outperforms it in multi-core,” Yuryev writes. “In Geekbench 4’s Metal test, the iMac 5k delivers almost five times the score of the Mac Mini, scoring 117 thousand compared to the Mac mini’s just-under 25 thousand, showing where the true power of the iMac lies.”

Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, if you need better graphics performance, you can always boost the Mac mini significantly with an eGPU.