Mac mini or MacBook Pro 16", which has the faster CPU... for gaming?

Now I'm looking to upgrade my poor little MacBook Air from 2011, and I would love to be able to do some gaming on the side. Not the Mac's strong suit, I'm very well aware. But my idea revolves around an eGPU as a solution. And with that in mind CPU performance becomes much more important.

Now my primary idea is to:
A) buy a Mac mini i7 with an added Razer Core X with a 5700XT on the side, or
B) buy a MacBook Pro 16" with a 5500M 8GB for now, and expand on it with an eGPU later on when my abused wallet recovers as the 5500M might actually perform decently enough for my needs. At least short term.

Either choice really comes down to the CPU. The thermal solution of the new MacBook is much better than the older one, and it has the newer mobile 9th gen i9 eight core processor whereas the mini makes do with an 8th gen i7 six core, twelve thread, cpu. Generationally speaking not much of a difference than in security, I know. Portability of the MacBook is a very welcome bonus, but repasting my current Air would probably let it soldier on if necessary.

I have seen very few comparisons of the Mac mini and the new MacBook, so I honestly don't know what to pick from a performance standpoint. So I'm hoping you all might know more or have experience for guidance? I REALLY want to be able to play Alyx when it comes out too... dear god my Valve boner at the moment...

 

That's true. And I could try to rationalise why I want to stick to the Mac in spite of obvious lower costs on the PC side of things, or hackintosh alternatives letting me use most of MacOS, etc. But that'd be a fools errand.

At the end of the day, I just want a Mac because I like and want them. And out of the options I can think of - that'd allow me some gaming on the side of everything else I do - these two options seemed like the best ones. Depending on CPU strength.

 

That's exactly my idea. Even though they share a thermal solution I don't think the 5500M would be up to playing games at a level where that meaningfully impacts the experience. But moving to an eGPU would free up thermal constraints of the CPU for higher resolution gaming.

But again, portability isn't a must (but a nice to have). At this point I just need to know which has the stronger CPU. But there are really no benchmarks I've come across that compare the Mac mini and the i9 MacBook Pro 16"

Truth be told it does seem like the Mac mini was equal to the "old" thermally limited i9. So maybe that's all the baseline I need to decide against?

 

I'm more and more into the Mac mini actually. I'm hoping we'll hear some rumours about a potential update around the launch of the new Pro. According to MacRumours they usually updated them every 350-400 days or so. Which we've passed just recently. So... fingers crossed? That or I might go for a second hand one. It would suck to buy one new now only for an updated one to be launched a month or so later.

I'm actually thinking about external SSD storage for backups and potential BootCamp/Linux boot drives. I haven't yet gotten from the idea stage to the point of researching my options though.

 

The Hackintosh community has come a long way. I need something that's solid, reliable, and full fledged when it comes to MacOS. And while they've come a long way, there are still missing features and the risk of ending up with a partially broken experience. So for a project? Yea. For my main? No. Not at this point in time. But that answer is liable to change as things improve.

That's basically what I'm hoping for. A simple CPU upgrade and hopefully a tweak to the fan design for increased cooling capacity to go with it. As you said, there really isn't much wrong with the i7-8700B. But who'd say no to a few more cores and a few more hardware patches to the security mess that is Skylake?

(Also, those rendering farms where they stack little minis are awesome! I kinda wish that's how you upgraded. Need more performance? Pop another mini ontop of your existing one!)