Mac Mini crashes in Blender "bake" only

[Joshea]

That's interesting to see Mac mini Intels still being used. Apple told me it was worthless (no trade in value)
I haven't decided what to do with the 2012 Mac mini yet. Only has 8GB where my M2 has 24GB. I mainly use Blender, GIMP, Mixamo, Makehuman and sometimes Inkscape.
I'm using a 27" monitor with the M2, but over the summer will move to a 32.
Cheers.

[Ricardo2020]

The MAC Mini you have can run Linux Mint Cinnamon, which can host Blender and Make Human. I would try a focal release rather than Jammy and run MakeHuman 1.2.0 along with Blender 2.9x. The jammy release will run MakeHuman 1.3.0 alongside Blender 4x, but rendering might be funky. As yet, I cannot figure out why that is...

Linux runs better on an Intel Apple than MACOS does. You can run Firefox, GIMP and Libre in place of the Apple stuff. It just runs better and faster on smaller, older kit. The Intel MACs were the best of the best, as exemplified by my 27inch machine which currently has a XEON E31246 at 3.4GHz on 8 threads. I am soon going to upgrade the RAM from 12 GB to 32GB. The stock GPU, an AMD Radeon with 512MB, was replaced with a PNY nVidia Quadro K1100 with 2GB, and like all my other boxen, boots off a solid state drive.

I like the way Apples are made. I do not like servicing them. They are not designed to be worked on, but the Intel models were more service friendly than the current lineup. If I compare the build quality of the iMACs on my LAN, the older ones are made much sturdier than the newer one. The newer one is mostly disposable and glued together, whereas the older ones are held together with screws and magnets. Although not easily taken apart and even harder to put back together, they can be repaired and/or upgraded.