This is what I'm doing. I got the base model from Microcenter for $499. At that price point, I do not mind upgrading every 3-4 years or earlier depending on my usage.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How much unified memory to get?
- Thread starter kalex
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is what I'm doing. I got the base model from Microcenter for $499. At that price point, I do not mind upgrading every 3-4 years or earlier depending on my usage.
It is not about comparing to Intel. And it is not about "what are you doing now," even though that is of interest. The proper question is what your expectations are for the life cycle of a new box. And the life cycle of a new box starts tomorrow and goes for ~5 years [you decide]. So what do you suppose your OS/apps RAM demands will be 2025-2030 or whatever? Not today!
Mac RAM needs have increased every year for 40 years. IMO [feel free to disagree if you have supporting reasons]:
1) The way AI integration appears to be going RAM needs may increase even faster.
2) Reading up on Apple's Unified Memory Architecture clearly suggests that RAM is more critical in the M-series SoC. Certainly it is substantially faster and more efficient.
3) Apple's 8x increase of maximum available laptop RAM in 8 years suggests where Apple thinks RAM demands are going.
Last edited:
Processors in Macs have been strong since long before Apple's SoC and are even stronger now. However many apps, especially images apps, need RAM. And Apple's Unified Memory Architecture portends that more apps rather than less apps will be putting added demands on RAM.
Suggesting that short life cycles with less RAM and the latest CPUs are appropriate is wrong-headed thinking for such folks. For them it makes more sense to invest in RAM and save money by not constantly chasing the latest CPU via short life cycles. For the OP it may be the opposite, where chasing latest chips makes most sense.
We each have to evaluate our own future workflows when building a new box and choosing the intended life cycle of that new box. For your described usages that include 3D personally I would be looking for the strongest most modern M-series chip that I could afford. The later M chips have evolved to stronger hardware support of 3D type work, and I would expect apps to evolve to take advantage.
Last edited:
Depending on your usage, I recommend 24 GB. Apple does wonders with its unified memory, much better than the competition.
With only 16 GB in my Mac mini M4, I can do a lot of pretty heavy tasks, like 4K editing and photo editing.
M-series Macs can get by on less RAM. From the looks of the graph you posted, I'd say you already have about the right "headroom" now. 32GB would give you some room but you could get by fine with 24GB. As it appears you are almost never using all 32GB. But 70% utilization is "about right". We should size for the peaks, not the avaerages.
Of course, everyone will recommend 48GB but THEY are not paying for it. It is just so easy to tell someone else to spend more.
Another thing is that the new internal storage is so darn fast that swapping is not so costly as it once was back in the days of spinning disks.
In summary, you could do ok with 24, 32 is about right and 48 would provide insurance for future needs.
About "future needs". My plan is to just buy a new computer when this old M2-Pro 16gb no longer keeps up. But it is doing just fine with Fusion360, slicers and Final Cut Pro editing consumer-format 4K video. I decided to NOT pay up front for capacity I don't need. I'll buy that when I do need it.
OP, with those apps, wouldn’t you want a faster GPU - M4 Pro?
Flash storage is on a removable daughterboard and it can be replaced with third party ones.
Don’t think I need pro. As far as I read storage can be replaced on non pro m4 only. Unless I read it wrong
I'm not 100% sure, but I do think you are correct that it's M4 non-Pro only for those available flash daughterboards.
However, I just went with external storage instead. USB 4 / Thunderbolt is about as fast as the internal drive, and you can go up to 8 TB per drive with external. I have two 4 TB external SSDs actually.
Sure, but reading/writing to flash is still an order of magnitude slower than using RAM. It depens whether you just want your shiny new M4 to be faster than your current machine, or whether you want it to be as fast as it can be.
OP looks like they're fine with 32GB, but looking at that memory pressure graph I don't think they should be downgrading - you don't want these things to go over 50% - in most cases getting near 100% = grinds to a halt, and those "average" graphs may be smoothing out any spikes.
Send any complaints to Apple for charging 5x markup on commodity RAM & low-balling on the base specs. Getting 32GB-64GB RAM in a ~$2000 computer shouldn't be a hugely exzpensive, niche option. The change to 16GB base with the M4 improved things, but they're still behind the game.
Yes - but with a lot of ifs and buts, and probably still not an option for the fainthearted. Again, 1TB should be the default for this class of system - and again you don't want your system drive to ever get anywhere near full.
I had a 1 TB M1 Mac mini and got 512 GB when I upgraded to the M4. Why? Cuz 1 TB was either too much or too little. Considering my Photos Library alone is almost 700 GB, that meant putting the Photos Library on my internal 1 TB drive would make it too crowded. However, if I put the Photos Library on the external drive, it meant I had a ton of empty space left over on that 1 TB drive. I believe I had over 750 GB free.
So, now with my M4 512 GB, I have well over 300 GB free, but my Photos Library is on an external USB 4 / Thunderbolt SSD.
One should always base RAM needs on swap cache occurring then buying more than you need as shown in activity monitor. Your unified memory can cope with highly busy Ram jostling even when pushed. If you never see swap occurring what the problem? If 16 or 24 or 32 differences are not impacting how your software works that you usually utilize all you doing is allowing more to be loaded in ram to run faster .
Correct, "...all you doing is allowing more to be loaded in ram to run faster." That is exactly the point of having more RAM than simply minimizing swap to SSD: "...to run faster." Apple's Unified Memory Architecture constantly uses RAM very efficiently (less cycles wasted on controllers, physically closer to CPU, etc.). Building a 2025-2030 [YMMV] with lesser RAM will not compute as well. The Mac OS will make lesser RAM work of course, just work less well - - what you call "jostling even when pushed."
Some users here love to observe things like "look here I am running xyz app fine with only 8 GB RAM," which of course gets to their definition of fine, because the OS is swapping to SSD to make it work, albeit less quickly, less smoothly and more prone to hiccups. Users can do that, saving money by buying bargain base-RAM computers; user choice. Plus running just one app is very inefficient workflow TBH.
Even otherwise uncaring users often will first really feel RAM limitations when running multiple apps. Even the excellent Mac OS memory management can get overwhelmed switching among multiple open apps running under limiting RAM, and for most folks attempting real work having multiple open apps is important. Typically some minimum like [Mail + PDF Reader + Messages + Browser] plus whatever work applications are in use: Filemaker, Affinity, Excel, Photos, whatever.
IMO it is user time inefficient to be constantly opening and closing apps, interrupting focus and workflow. Time is money, so IMO buying RAM to facilitate instant smooth app switching is cost effective. Not because of the (IMO silly) tests the clickbait comparisons UTubers show with faster renders or whatever, but because briefly interrupting focus impedes the creative process, which is overall very costly to one's work output.
Just my $0.02 based on using decades of Macs, primarily doing database development and also images work. YMMV.
Last edited:
I disagree.
1) I agree with EugW who commented:
"OP, with those apps, wouldn’t you want a faster GPU - M4 Pro?" and
2) Unless one is a solid motherboard tinkerer, replacing SSDs on mobos in 2025 is a fool's errand and probably voids any warranties. Best is to buy the minimum that you must have on board from Apple and add cheap third party external SSD capacity as needed.
I agree with adding external storage (USB 4 / TB), and in fact, that's what I have done. However, as mentioned, on the M4 Mac mini, the storage is on a separate daughterboard, not the main motherboard. It does require opening the case, and likely voids the warranty, but the tinkering is less involved than one might think. People who did it (and who are not repair techs) said it took about an hour. It's actually much easier than swapping out the SATA drive of a 2014 Mac mini.
I would consider this on say a 256 GB machine past the warranty date. You buy the daughterboard with the storage pre-installed and then just swap out the board. The one issue though is you need a second Mac to initialize the storage.
In the pic below, the M4 flash storage daughterboard is at the bottom. (The top one is a short M.2 SSD just for comparison.)
The new drive will get recognized as native Apple, since the controller is in the Mac mini anyway, not the daughterboard.
Even if you don't want to do this yourself, I think this will be popular with third party repair shops, since they can do the upgrades with aftermarket parts. However, the big drawback right now is that these daughterboards cost more than external SSDs, and you have to order them online.
Last edited:
It’s also dependent on memory bandwidth
The Apple M4 chip has a memory bandwidth of 120GB/s. The M4 Pro and M4 Max versions offer higher memory bandwidths of 273GB/s and 546GB/s, respectively.
That yields significant improvements in speed compared to other SoC comparisons.
This is the best advice you’ll get Kalex.
Most other members will tell you that you’re wasting your life unless you max it out to 96Gb. They love ram.
The fact is that if you needed 24Gb of RAM you’d be in an industry where it was blindingly obvious because it’d be costing you a fortune in time.
What some fail to grasp is that lack of RAM usually does not present as "...blindingly obvious because it’d be costing you a fortune in time." That kind of thinking is a trap y'all fall into after watching siily clickbait UTube sensationalism.
The effects of limiting RAM are less obvious, since the Mac OS almost always makes things work, just much less smoothly. Apps or the OS may pause briefly or even crash; the SBBOD may rear its ugly head.
Brief pauses maybe be simply a minor irritant to content consumers reading email, playing WoW, watching Netflix or otherwise Tiktoking. However for folks doing real work on their Macs such pauses can insidiously interrupt the creative process. The impact on how one feels while working a project as well as the cost in productivity can be quite significant, even though it is not "...a fortune in time."
Amortize $400 for RAM across a 5-year Mac life cycle and the cost is about 4 cents per working hour. We each make our own decision on whether it is worth 4¢ per hour to not have our creativity constantly, insidiously interrupted as a blur applied to an image briefly hesitates to apply or whatever. After years of observing the process, I have found the value of RAM to have been constantly reinforced.
P.S. Note that even shortening the Mac life cycle to an absurdly short 2 years the amortized cost is still just 10¢ per working hour. It just depends on how one wants to spend one's computer work time.
Last edited:
In December I replaced my 2018 Mini i7 1TB with a M4 Mini 512K. After two months of use, I'm finding that 16GB isn't quite enough RAM, because I'm noticing some issues such as web page loading and some delays opening apps. Activity Monitor confirms that it's frequently using swap memory.
So I've decided to send it back and buy one with more RAM and more internal storage; probably 32GB and 1TB. I'm toying with 2TB, but that extra $400 is hard to swallow. I don't see the need for the M4Pro version in my workflow. We'll see.
512 GB you mean. What is your workflow? How much swap?
With business apps I didn’t really see delays until I got to about 1 GB swap or more. If it was like 300 MB, I would not notice it was using swap.
Again Allen, Context friend.
Half of the memory pressure in his graphs is coming from a 3rd party browser. The apps that should be memory intensive, 3D, just aren't. This use case doesn't need a penny spending more than simply titivates their fancy.
Yes, 512GB. I'm seeing a minimum of 1GB swap, but more frequently 2 or 3GB. I didn't realize it until I watched a video on youtube and found out about Activity Monitor.
I keep a number of apps open, as it's convenient. Nothing unusual: Mail, Excel, Safari, Fantastical, Messages, Google Earth, and often Word and Acrobat Reader or Preview.
It wasn't a problem on my old i7 Mini, which had 32GB of RAM. It seems to be for this Mini, though.
For infrequently accessed applications, you don't have to keep them open, if pauses are a concern. The reason for this is macOS caches previously opened apps.
If you close an app, it isn't actually purged from memory. If you need it again and it's still in memory, then it will access it again from memory and there will be no delay. However, if you do need the memory for something else, it will overwrite that cached memory as needed.
I have a 24 GB M4 Mac mini now, and my swap usage for my business apps is almost always 0.
By the sounds of it, 24 GB might be sufficient for you too but 32 GB would give you even more breathing room if you always want to have all your apps open all the time. YMMV.