[M4 Mac Mini] Is 16GB RAM Enough For Me as A First Time Mac User?

[KooL BeAnZ]

I’ve ordered the new M4 Mac Mini and wanted to ask if the 16GB of RAM was enough?

Apple being Apple, the next step is £200 for just 24GB !!

What I will use it for:

- Chrome Browsing
- YouTube
- Discord
- Pages/ Numbers Apps
- Maybe Gaming from the App Store to test out M4

Now, I’m sure the first few uses are fine, it’s more that if I did want to try some gaming on it - would 16GB be too limiting?

I’m so used to having a PC with 32GB+ RAM so just making sure I’ve got longevity in the Mac.

 

[danb1979]

I’ve ordered the new M4 Mac Mini and wanted to ask if the 16GB of RAM was enough?

Apple being Apple, the next step is £200 for just 24GB !!

What I will use it for:

- Chrome Browsing
- YouTube
- Discord
- Pages/ Numbers Apps
- Maybe Gaming from the App Store to test out M4

Now, I’m sure the first few uses are fine, it’s more that if I did want to try some gaming on it - would 16GB be too limiting?

I’m so used to having a PC with 32GB+ RAM so just making sure I’ve got longevity in the Mac.

Yes…

My M1 Mac Mini with 8GB has zero issues and it’s been used hard and never faltered…

I’ve recently sold my M2 Mac Mini Pro as it wasn’t getting used; so that’ll go towards a new M4 Mini but not sure if the Pro is needed; like you I’ll probably up the RAM for future-proofing

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Oh no, it's happening! The conversations from "is 8gb enough" are now " is 16gb enough"...

 

[Mr.Ben]

I have a 16gb M2 model - works perfect for me. General web browsing, 4k streaming, design apps etc. It'll be fine, don't overthink it 👍

 

[JokerPower]

Last year, I upgraded from a 16” MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i7 and 16 GB RAM to a 16” MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip and 16 GB of Unified Memory.

After a year of use, here’s my take:

1. The Unified Memory outperforms traditional RAM impressively. Even with the same 16 GB, it feels comparable to using a Windows machine with 32 GB of RAM.
2. The performance has been flawless – I haven’t experienced any lag since getting the M1 Pro. The responsiveness is noticeably faster compared to my previous Intel MacBook Pro.

Hope this helps!

 

[M4pro]

Now, I’m sure the first few uses are fine, it’s more that if I did want to try some gaming on it - would 16GB be too limiting?

Game performance always varies - a lot.

(Just like on PC hardware)

 

[cassmr]

I dont think you'd see a notable gaming improvement by getting slightly more ram. There will be some games of course that do better, but not many and likely by not much. If you want to spend extra for better gaming performance, you should look at the base m4 pro. But given the state of gaming on mac, unless there is a very specific game you want to run (in which case you can research how it performs), then its probably better to save the money and get the m4 16.

 

[maddogeco]

I currently have a 20 1927 inch iMac with 24gb RAM and the intel i5. I’m thinking of upgrading this to The base model Mac mini. I am concerned that 16 gig may not be enough and I might need to go back up to 24 gig. I run three screens, the iMacs screen and 2 external 1080P screens . I mostly use it for online versions of Microsoft Office apps. Lots of spreadsheets in Firefox, slack, teams and outlook.
what do you all think?

 

[pig pile]

I currently have a 20 1927 inch iMac with 24gb RAM and the intel i5. I’m thinking of upgrading this to The base model Mac mini. I am concerned that 16 gig may not be enough and I might need to go back up to 24 gig. I run three screens, the iMacs screen and 2 external 1080P screens . I mostly use it for online versions of Microsoft Office apps. Lots of spreadsheets in Firefox, slack, teams and outlook.
what do you all think?

I recently got the base M4 mini with 16GB RAM/512GB SSD. Came from a 2017 iMac i7/32 GB RAM. Run various Excel spreadsheets on 2 screens daily. ASD and old Thunderbolt Display. Also relatively heavy amateur Lightroom user (but not Photoshop). So far the M4 completely blows away the old intel iMac with only half the RAM of the old iMac. Many here have reported trouble if Lightroom and Photoshop are open at the same time working. My workflow doesn't have that so can't report anything from my end. But in terms of specifically the question you asked; I think I can say confidently, at least now, that base mini will easily handle what you have to throw at it.

 

[Alameda]

I recently got the base M4 mini with 16GB RAM/512GB SSD. Came from a 2017 iMac i7/32 GB RAM. Run various Excel spreadsheets on 2 screens daily. ASD and old Thunderbolt Display. Also relatively heavy amateur Lightroom user (but not Photoshop). So far the M4 completely blows away the old intel iMac with only half the RAM of the old iMac. Many here have reported trouble if Lightroom and Photoshop are open at the same time working. My workflow doesn't have that so can't report anything from my end. But in terms of specifically the question you asked; I think I can say confidently, at least now, that base mini will easily handle what you have to throw at it.

Photoshop is a huge RAM hog. 16GB is fine, but it’s one of those applications that can cause slowdowns if run concurrently with other memory intensive apps. Another notorious RAM hog is the Chrome browser with many tabs open.

 

[nieks]

Oh no, it's happening! The conversations from "is 8gb enough" are now " is 16gb enough"...

This was literally what I was thinking as soon as I saw the title.

Also:

- Chrome Browsing
- YouTube
- Discord
- Pages/ Numbers Apps
- Maybe Gaming from the App Store to test out M4

For that type of use, you'd probably be alright with only 4 Gb. And 16 Gb is already an overload.

And if the case of memory hogging Chrome presents itself: try Safari.

 

[theluggage]

I currently have a 20 1927 inch iMac with 24gb RAM and the intel i5. I’m thinking of upgrading this to The base model Mac mini. I am concerned that 16 gig may not be enough and I might need to go back up to 24 gig.

Run Activity Monitor on your iMac and look at the "Memory Pressure" while you work (Ignore the "Memory Used" stuff - its misleading). If it's still in the green you'll probably be OK with less RAM.

For the sort of thing you're doing, the killer is leaving lots of tabs open in Chrome.

Odds are you'll be perfectly OK with 16GB, and would have been on your iMac - it's just that with the 5k iMac, bunging in an extra pair of 8GB sticks was an affordable, no-brainer upgrade. (I mean, you could try unplugging the original two 4G sticks and see how it runs with 16GB - the M4 will do better than that).

This was literally what I was thinking as soon as I saw the title.

Well, yes, but it's only Apple's silly upgrade prices that lead to this sort of "artificial scarcity". On any other platform, if you were speccing up a system for anything beyond office apps, you'd just pay the 50-100 bucks to stick in 32GB (if that wasn't the base spec) for peace of mind rather than agonising over whether you needed it enough to pay $200-per-8GB just to match the RAM on your outgoing 5-year-old machine...

Upping the base to 16GB helped a lot, and that's probably fine for the majority of M4 Mini buyers - but it's not exactly generous by 2024 standards.

 

[maddogeco]

Run Activity Monitor on your iMac and look at the "Memory Pressure" while you work (Ignore the "Memory Used" stuff - its misleading). If it's still in the green you'll probably be OK with less RAM.

For the sort of thing you're doing, the killer is leaving lots of tabs open in Chrome.

Odds are you'll be perfectly OK with 16GB, and would have been on your iMac - it's just that with the 5k iMac, bunging in an extra pair of 8GB sticks was an affordable, no-brainer upgrade. (I mean, you could try unplugging the original two 4G sticks and see how it runs with 16GB - the M4 will do better than that).

I tend to use Firefox and safari because they are much easier on ram than chrome. I think this model came with a single 8gb stick of ram and I added a 16 gb stick to bring the total to 24. It might not be optimal but it’s been fine for me.

 

[Spock]

The number changed yet the conversation remains..

 

[McScooby]

The number changed yet the conversation remains..

Difference is what you don't know what you don't know - if you're using apple intelligence, how much of a resource hog that sucker will be, LLM's supposedly run heavy on the RAM. Only time will tell, but I'm guessing since it runs ok on 8, 16 would be fine, then again there must be a reason why they've bumped it to 16.

I'm not referencing Sequoia here either, it's what that comes after is the unknown, so if you're not planning to use the AI it's defo enough.