A new Kickstarter campaign is seeking funds for Animaionic, a Mac Mini docking station that supports external GPUs and SSDs. The team behind the campaign says that Animaionic was created specifically for the creative community, offering it the graphics capabilities and storage it needs at a price ultimately lower than that of the Mac Pro.
Apple’s Mac Mini, a small square-shaped desktop computer, starts at an affordable $ 799, but doesn’t offer the level of performance needed by professional filmmakers and photographers. The Mac Pro desktop is a more powerful alternative, but with a starting price of $ 5,999, the model is too expensive for some creators.
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The Animaionic docking station aims to solve this problem by transforming the Mac Mini into a proper workstation. The model supports two PCIe graphics cards and up to four SSDs, according to the Kickstarter campaign, for up to 8TB of additional data storage capacity. The docking station also features an SD card reader, two USB 3.1 ports, Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, Ethernet and an audio mini jack.
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When used with a pair of AMD Radeon Vega 56 graphic cards, the Animaionic team claims the Mac Mini with docking station offers considerably higher performance in a number of popular applications, including 4.5x greater performance in Final Cut Pro X, 10x in Apple Motion and 25x in Luxmark.
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The Kickstarter campaign is offering Animaionic to backers who pledge at least £699; shipping is estimated to start in May 2020.
Disclaimer: Remember to do your research with any crowdfunding project. DPReview does its best to share only the projects that look legitimate and come from reliable creators, but as with any crowdfunded campaign, there’s always the risk of the product or service never coming to fruition.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)