> Don't go off on me - I said SIGNIFICANT storage, as in to the nearest TB, not a little cache and startup drive, which should obviously be SSD. Apple price, SSD, fastest i7 and 16GB RAM $1499.

If money is no concern for say 10 to 20 boxes, that is convenient and minis are cute. But at those prices, the same render speed can be had for well under 50% of the price, maybe even close 1/3^rd of the price. Over 10 to 20 boxes, that is a huge amount.

Someone should do a detailed study benchmark, but I’m pretty convinced this a terrible ROI for AE rendering. You can get a OC’d Sandy-Bridge E system that will smoke that box for several hundred dollars less than that.

If we were talking 20% price or performance difference, I can see that justifying a premium. But from the starving IMAX filmmaker perspective, that is just spending a lot of money for lesser performance.