M1 Mac mini versus Intel I7 (and ram) question

[orionquest]

Here's my firsthand experience:

Personally, I have a 2019 Mac mini, i5, 32GB RAM that was my daily driver until I bought a 14" MBP, M1 Pro 10/16, 16GB RAM to replace it. The mini continues life in my basement as a server and spare machine. I was worried about halving my RAM as I frequently open way too many tabs and would have high memory pressure on my mini. But over a month using this new MacBook Pro, I haven't once felt that it was slowing down or not keeping up. Truly an incredible machine in all ways. Very happy with this purchase. And compared to my work Mac — a 2019 13" MBA with an i7 — it's night and day. That MBA is hot, loud, and painfully slow, even with an i7.

Professionally, one of my clients is a small medical business. We switched to Mac back in 2011-2012 with a bunch of Intel Mac minis. We recently replaced all of them with new M1 minis, base model, 8GB RAM. They've been incredible for the office, and 8GB has been plenty for them. Their needs are pretty simple: couple browser tabs, Google Drive File Stream, and Acrobat Reader for those pesky federal PDF forms that just won't work in Preview. I was a bit worried about the RAM, but my concerns have proven to be unfounded. A few minor pains moving to a new processor architecture for sure, but no complaints or issues worth noting.

So overall, I say go for it!

Do what kind of workloads??

Opening browser tabs and doing office productive is hardly demanding task. Heck those tasks can be preformed by any computer over the last 5+ years.

I'm sitting in front of a haswell i7 computer with 32 gigs rams and it never really slows down. The only time it does is when I am doing video encoding in the background while working on graphics. Even then it's not unbearable.

RAM is the issue these days and for the most part has always been with Mac's. More RAM the better and especially now since you can't upgrade over time as your needs change you have to invest upfront for future proofing.

 

[Pugly]

I did a couple informal tests with my MacBook Airs a couple of times with the ram. I use Logic Pro and can overload the RAM with samples, I have never experienced this in my usage... but I know it's possible with what I have.

On my 8GB 2015 Air, I was able to load a decent amount of instruments... about twice what I think I would use at the time. When I crossed over the 8GB limit though, the Mac became basically unusable until I closed down Logic. It was actually pretty alarming, I never have experienced this outside of that test. I now understand those who really need the RAM, if you need it you can't do anything about not having it.

I did the same on my 16GB M1 MacBook Air, and again I had to really load it up. I just kept on adding the sample instruments without any consideration. The M1 Air never reached the unusable state though, things started to slow down a little and it was in yellow memory pressure. But still usable and I could use a web browser still and other basic tasks. I started to go pretty heavy into swap memory, and I didn't really push beyond this to avoid wear and tear on the SSD. It recovered from this pretty quickly, too... not anything like the 2015 8GB.

I have a couple takeaways from this experiment. It is possible for me to overload my RAM. It's pretty unlikely with the types of Logic projects I make currently. I didn't notice any 'place of no return' that the Mac became unusable, and it didn't hinder my usage. These RAM problems are of a 'you'll know it when you see it' kind, it wasn't really subtle that the computer was slowing down. I had to go way into yellow memory pressure before I started to notice any problems.

Also both my 8GB and 16GB Macs pretty much always read near 8GB or 16GB RAM used, that isn't an indicator of a limitation.

 

[DJLC]

Do what kind of workloads??

Opening browser tabs and doing office productive is hardly demanding task. Heck those tasks can be preformed by any computer over the last 5+ years.

I'm sitting in front of a haswell i7 computer with 32 gigs rams and it never really slows down. The only time it does is when I am doing video encoding in the background while working on graphics. Even then it's not unbearable.

RAM is the issue these days and for the most part has always been with Mac's. More RAM the better and especially now since you can't upgrade over time as your needs change you have to invest upfront for future proofing.

Mostly simple office workloads like you describe, although I do occasionally render 1080p video with Adobe Media Encoder. Nothing crazy. Certainly don't need M1 Max or Ultra. Heck, I probably don't even need M1 Pro if we're being honest.

I wasn't hurting for performance on my 2019 mini, although my render times did take a while. But the MacBook Air with an i7 from work is total crap; can't even handle a few tabs without a beach ball. This new MBP flies through 1080p rendering AND my basic office work. Faster than the mini for sure, although both the mini and MBP run circles around the MBA.

Agreed that RAM is a huge issue for Macs. But my experience is that the efficiency gains from unified memory are enough for users with use cases similar to mine. Can't say how that holds up with more demanding tasks. But if an i7 with 16GB is crap for basic office work where an i5 with 32GB and an M1Pro with 16GB are both great, that says to me that Intel Macs are hungrier for RAM capacity than Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[orionquest]

Mostly simple office workloads like you describe, although I do occasionally render 1080p video with Adobe Media Encoder. Nothing crazy. Certainly don't need M1 Max or Ultra. Heck, I probably don't even need M1 Pro if we're being honest.

I wasn't hurting for performance on my 2019 mini, although my render times did take a while. But the MacBook Air with an i7 from work is total crap; can't even handle a few tabs without a beach ball. This new MBP flies through 1080p rendering AND my basic office work. Faster than the mini for sure, although both the mini and MBP run circles around the MBA.

Agreed that RAM is a huge issue for Macs. But my experience is that the efficiency gains from unified memory are enough for users with use cases similar to mine. Can't say how that holds up with more demanding tasks. But if an i7 with 16GB is crap for basic office work where an i5 with 32GB and an M1Pro with 16GB are both great, that says to me that Intel Macs are hungrier for RAM capacity than Apple Silicon Macs.

Not sure what to say on that last bit. It could be since Apple has complete control they can make it as efficient as they require, instead of relying on a 3rd party.

I've always over spec'd my RAM in all the Mac's I've owned or used for work just to avoid bottle necks and that has worked out pretty well. But now with the Apple locking out any kind of 3rd party upgrades that future proofing is a lot more expense then it was before.

 

[dieselm]

Hi, I could really do with some advice from those with better tech knowledge.
I have a MacBook Pro 2020, i7, 4 ports, 32gb Ram. Yes, the fans get a bit noisy sometimes (while doing nothing much)

How would this compare to a specced up Mac mini m1, 16gb ram? Would the Mac mini be slower as there is less ram or is the M1 as good as everyone says and can beat the i7 and 32gb of ram?

(I have a 27" 2017 iMac, 32gb ram, i7, which I am going to pass on to someone else and so need to replace it. Was hoping for Apple to announce new iMacs, but alas! I don't need tons of power but am no light consumer either, and notice in the activity monitor I am usually using around 24gb of memory. With my iMac gone I need a new set up so thinking of the new Studio display and connecting it to my MacBook or getting a Mac mini (or Mac studio but that's probably overkill))

Thanks for any help!

I came off a 2015 iMac w/32gb ram. I'm using a 16GB Macbook Air. It's not even close.

You'll get a big increase in perceived performance. A big boost in general application performance. M1 also pushes all the background tasks like indexing and backups onto the efficiency cores, so the system stays very interactive. It's rare to get a beachball.

If you don't know for sure why you need 32gb, you'll be fine with 16gb on any M1. I run lightroom, photoshop, browsers with hundreds of tabs. Make sure you buy enough storage space.

If you feel like throwing money against it, you could buy a Mac studio for 32gb, but it's significantly more expensive. Since you're not doing heavy graphics or multi-core, it'll feel exactly the same to you for everything day-to-day (fast). The Macbook Air is completely silent too. All the above applies compared to your Macbook Pro.

 

[dieselm]

But still usable and I could use a web browser still and other basic tasks. I started to go pretty heavy into swap memory, and I didn't really push beyond this to avoid wear and tear on the SSD. It recovered from this pretty quickly, too... not anything like the 2015 8GB.

Also both my 8GB and 16GB Macs pretty much always read near 8GB or 16GB RAM used, that isn't an indicator of a limitation.

fyi on swap and the SSD. I run hundreds of browser tabs alongside my app use. The Macbook has done 400TB of writes over the last year and a half and the stats say the SSD still has 89%+ of it's usable life left (1TB model).