Base M1 Mac Mini in 2024.

[macsound1]

I have a base M1 and base M2 Mac Mini. The M1 is our media server and is connected to our living room TV. Zero issues. Love the under 10 second restarts.
I play City Skylines on the M2 and it does great even though there's only 8 GB of ram.

 

[EugW]

A friend of mine who is a web designer (who does work for billion dollar companies) ran his professional apps on an 8 GB M1 Mac mini for several weeks and he said it was OK. Not as good as his M1 Max 32 GB Mac Studio, but OK nonetheless.

Anyhow, I have an M1 16 GB / 1 TB for mainly business type apps and it's fine. My M4 iPad Pro sometimes feels a bit faster surfing, but for that usage, it's not a dramatic difference. I was using a 2014 Core i5 8 GB Intel machine with NVMe SSD before that and it was OK, but did lag from time to time. I found that with 8 GB RAM, if I ran a lot of apps, the swap size would increase, and once it got over about 1 GB I'd start to feel the delays due to swap. With 16 GB RAM, I don't get much swap at all with my usage.

 

[Dimvol]

If use Thunderbolt 3 SSD and install Mac OS on it where will swap be located? Internal works faster, won't it get worse?

 

[Fomalhaut]

If use Thunderbolt 3 SSD and install Mac OS on it where will swap be located? Internal works faster, won't it get worse?

I would run the OS on the internal SSD, and use an external for your data (if you are writing a lot). Don’t worry about the SSD life for any normal usage.

 

[Ben J.]

M1 mini is great value for money. Works great for basic use. Yes, you should use the internal drive for macOS and basic documents, because it's most often fastest. Just create folders on external disks to store large folders like movies, music, photos, etc. Any display will work, a couple of cheap old LCD pc screens or a big OLED TV (like I have), whatever suits you. Also the M1 mini is totally silent.

 

[Dimvol]

Documents, photos, videos can be stored on a slow USB HDD and connected as needed. Don't need an expensive Thunderbolt 3 SSD for this. Games are installed in the Programs folder. For example, Lies of P takes up 35 GB. I'm looking for a way to keep something on an external SSD but so that there is a shortcut in the launchpad. At least a shortcut to a folder with the contents displayed.

 

[Dimvol]

Tried both methods. The disk speed is quite high. Slower than the internal, but still fast enough. Larger SSDs (1-2 TB) have higher speed performance.

Installing the OS on an external SSD is not difficult. I chose the second method.

Steam allows to choose the installation location and creates a shortcut. In some cases, an alias is created, transferred to the launchpad and grouped as you need. Expanding disk space is not difficult at all