DaVinci Resolve on Mac Mini m1

[Tom Evans]

I just bought Macbook Air m1 and it's incredible fast and I'm going for a Mac Mini M1 to run DaVinci Resolve next.

I need to connect a screen , a calibrated monitor, two speakers and a panel. In addition, I need two usb-c inputs for external disks. 

Does the Mac Mini have enough inputs for this setup? 

And I need a UltraStudio to get XLR outputs for the speakers and SDI to the monitor?

Sorry for the newbie questions. I have the Mac Pro 2020 and it comes with lots of inputs and a decklink card but want to scale things down for my home office. 

[Bruno Mansi]

With this many external devices, are you not going to saturate your Thunderbolt connections? 

Having monitors connected is really going to eat up the bandwidth.  Although Thunderbolt is fast, I believe there are restrictions when  you want monitors and fast storage attached in the chain. 

Also, I did hear that (presently) you can't attach external GPUs to the M1 Macs. 

[Tom Evans]

That's what I'm afraid of, but I see the devices that I listed as necessary to work. 

Monitor
Screen
Speakers
Panel
External Disk

The Mac Mini M1 has the following ports:

2x Thunderbolt/USB4
1x HDMI 2
2x USB A
1x 3.5 mm/headphone

Any chance this is enough?

Edited January 29, 2021 by Tom Evans

[Bruno Mansi]

It's my view that despite the number of external ports you might have, it's the total throughput of the CPU/hardware that's the deciding factor.  So, if your Thunderbolt controller has a 40Gbs bandwidth, that's all you can (theoretically) get from all your Thunderbolt ports combined. This is without factoring in the effect that having  active HDMI  ports might have.

You see this all the time when you start looking at CPU/motherboard specs when building PCs.  When you delve down into these specs, you'll often see the manufacturers state something like 'when using the second M2 slot, the bandwidth of PCIE slot 2 will reduce from x16 to x8).'

As an early adopter of the new M1 Macs, you end up being the guinea pig  for testing out these  scenarios! The rest of us will no doubt benefit from your results.

I suspect there's already people with similar desires testing this out for you. They often pop up on YouTube. 

Barefeats.com are often quick-out-of-the-gate with testing all things Mac related, I know they recently did a comparison between Intel and M1 chipped Macs.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Bruno Mansi

[Nicolas Hanson]

I would set up the DaVinci Resolve Mini M1 with your devices like this:

 

1x Thunderbolt/USB4:

UltraStudio HD/4K with external monitor and speakers. The ports on the Mini m1 has its own busses so it should not steal bandwidth from the other ports.

1 x Thunderbolt/USB4:

External drives (with our without a hub)

1x HDMI 2:

Screen

2x USB A:

Panel etc

1x 3.5 mm/headphone:

Desktop audio