Mac Mini Buying Advice

[iAssimilated]

You would be safer with the 256GB SSD.

I have the following large programs installed on my Mac and I am using 111GBs of my drive: MS Office, LibreOffice, Adobe Acrobat DC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Audition CC, Photoshop CC, Steam (although the game library is on an external drive w/ my iTunes Library), and all of Apple's default free apps (ie Garageband, iMovie, Keynote, etc.).

As BasicGreatGuy said, you do not want to fill up your drive because it effects performance as well as you will want to have some room for future growth (if all of the sudden you want to start using Final Cut Pro for some reason).

 

[Azeroth1]

As someone who likes to hold onto their machines for awhile (like me) I would pay the extra now to max out the CPU with an i7 on the 1099 version. That also gets you arguably what are the minimums of 8gb and 256 ram and storage. Both of those you can expand or augment easily in the future, CPU you’re stuck with.

Small cost increase now, but well positioned for the future.

Just my two cents.

 

[Sarpanch]

Well, I just had to 'nuke' it to get it running again (it wouldn't recognize any usb devices...like my keyboard) so my hard drive now has 480GB available. I haven't put Office or PhotoShop back on, only Quicken so far. Unfortunately, I don't know how 'full' it was before but imagine it was about 1/2 full. I save everything to the cloud. Although I also belong to Apple Music so I do download music to my computer sometimes (but mostly to my phone).

I have a 2018 i5 Mini and really like it so far. However, a friend of mine is using a 2011 iMac and prefers the All In One configuration. So the 2018 Mini was not an option for him. He had some similar problems like yours (spinning beachballs, occasional crashes).

My usual suggestion would have been to add an external SSD that would breathe new life into any system with an HDD. But since the 2011 iMac only comes with USB2 (which is really slow), we had to be a little creative.

We ordered a used Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt Drive (~50$). Turns out that swapping the HDD in the Lacie with an SSD is very straightforward. And as the Thunderbolt interface is at 10Gbps, it is way faster than USB2. After the swap, he now has a external 500GB SSD running on Thunderbolt, and an iMac with a significant performance boost. This allows him to use his 2011 iMac while he waits for the 2019 iMac refresh.

 

[Spectrum]

We ordered a used Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt Drive (~50$). Turns out that swapping the HDD in the Lacie with an SSD is very straightforward. And as the Thunderbolt interface is at 10Gbps, it is way faster than USB2. After the swap, he now has a external 500GB SSD running on Thunderbolt, and an iMac with a significant performance boost. This allows him to use his 2011 iMac while he waits for the 2019 iMac refresh.

This solution can also be ported to a 2018 mini if he prefers. External data drives via TB are definitely useful!

 

[Loddonlily]

I bought an i3 with 256GB and 8GB, and then upgraded the RAM to 32GB myself. Works well for me.

But I would just like to comment on the RAM question. My experience was that 8GB was barely enough to turn the thing on, and that as soon as I started to load up a few apps I was getting into swapping, with (in some cases) really horrible lag as a result. I wasn't doing anything excessive, I don't think! I have been surprised at the amount of RAM being taken up even by just a browser with a few tabs open - so much so that I even switched browser in case there was a problem with the first one. To be fair, I am using 2 monitors which may be relevant.

But the DIY RAM upgrade is not without risk - I'm pretty confident doing that sort of thing but there are a couple of high-risk points in the process which you could easily get wrong. I think that non-demanding users should consider just going straight to 16GB - it will almost certainly be enough and takes out the upgrade/warranty risk.

 

[pl1984]

I bought an i3 with 256GB and 8GB, and then upgraded the RAM to 32GB myself. Works well for me.

But I would just like to comment on the RAM question. My experience was that 8GB was barely enough to turn the thing on, and that as soon as I started to load up a few apps I was getting into swapping, with (in some cases) really horrible lag as a result. I wasn't doing anything excessive, I don't think! I have been surprised at the amount of RAM being taken up even by just a browser with a few tabs open - so much so that I even switched browser in case there was a problem with the first one. To be fair, I am using 2 monitors which may be relevant.

But the DIY RAM upgrade is not without risk - I'm pretty confident doing that sort of thing but there are a couple of high-risk points in the process which you could easily get wrong. I think that non-demanding users should consider just going straight to 16GB - it will almost certainly be enough and takes out the upgrade/warranty risk.

Something has got to be wrong if 8GB is insufficient to browse the web with a few tabs open. I just retired a 2007 Windows 10 Professional PC with 8GB of RAM. I had no issues with performance when over two dozen (or more) pages open.

 

[Spectrum]

Something has got to be wrong if 8GB is insufficient to browse the web with a few tabs open. I just retired a 2007 Windows 10 Professional PC with 8GB of RAM. I had no issues with performance when over two dozen (or more) pages open.

I disagree. I think it is due to the VRAM needed to drive to hi resolution monitors. Comparing to a 2007 PC makes no sense since it will either be unable to drive such large displays, or will have a dedicated GPU that takes the load off the system RAM.

If you search for my post in another thread, it is clear that window server can itself suck up to 6GB of RAM in extreme circumstances. And that is before you add th RAM being used by other apps like separat chrome or safari tabs. Clearly that will lead to swaps when total RAM is only 8GB. Dropping down to lower resolutions, solves this problem.

 

[Loddonlily]

I disagree. I think it is due to the VRAM needed to drive to hi resolution monitors. Comparing to a 2007 PC makes no sense since it will either be unable to drive such large displays, or will have a dedicated GPU that takes the load off the system RAM.

If you search for my post in another thread, it is clear that window server can itself suck up to 6GB of RAM in extreme circumstances. And that is before you add th RAM being used by other apps like separat chrome or safari tabs. Clearly that will lead to swaps when total RAM is only 8GB. Dropping down to lower resolutions, solves this problem.

Indeed. My Mac Mini has replaced a Windows 7 64bit machine with 6GB: as I was going to be running similar apps I hoped that 8GB would be enough. It wasn't. The system is using about 3GB - my monitors aren't 4K or anything but there are two of them. And a browser (Firefox and Vivaldi are the two I've had a proper go with) easily chews 3GB or more with a few busy tabs going. Add to that a little email/document/spreadsheeting and you're probably through the 8GB already.

I suspect that the MacOS apps are chewing more memory than their Windows equivalents, though I don't have enough energy to take the time to investigate.

 

[pl1984]

I disagree. I think it is due to the VRAM needed to drive to hi resolution monitors. Comparing to a 2007 PC makes no sense since it will either be unable to drive such large displays, or will have a dedicated GPU that takes the load off the system RAM.

If you search for my post in another thread, it is clear that window server can itself suck up to 6GB of RAM in extreme circumstances. And that is before you add th RAM being used by other apps like separat chrome or safari tabs. Clearly that will lead to swaps when total RAM is only 8GB. Dropping down to lower resolutions, solves this problem.

As I said, something has got to be wrong. That statement doesn't exclude poor design.

 

[LeeW]

8GB ram has been the standard for so long, it is perfectly adequate for most people's needs, if the memory pressure is such that it's causing swapping or system slowdown then you need to look more closely at what you are doing before suspecting the device.

At present, I am away from my new Mac Mini using a 2018 MBP, 13" with 8gb Ram.

- Hooked up to 2 FHD 1080p monitors and the MBP screen is on.
- Chrome with all sorts of developer plugins installed and 8 tabs open.
- 3 three terminal windows open running server monitoring.
- Running Sublime Text, Sequel Pro, mysql, Nginx and a few others through Brew.
- Oh and spotify.

Memory pressure is very low, no swapping. No issues whatsoever.

If your experience was that 8GB is barely enough to turn it on then you should find out why before resorting to ram upgrades as a solution.

 

[Spectrum]

8GB ram has been the standard for so long, it is perfectly adequate for most people's needs, if the memory pressure is such that it's causing swapping or system slowdown then you need to look more closely at what you are doing before suspecting the device.

At present, I am away from my new Mac Mini using a 2018 MBP, 13" with 8gb Ram.

- Hooked up to 2 FHD 1080p monitors and the MBP screen is on.
- Chrome with all sorts of developer plugins installed and 8 tabs open.
- 3 three terminal windows open running server monitoring.
- Running Sublime Text, Sequel Pro, mysql, Nginx and a few others through Brew.
- Oh and spotify.

Memory pressure is very low, no swapping. No issues whatsoever.

If your experience was that 8GB is barely enough to turn it on then you should find out why before resorting to ram upgrades as a solution.

All true. I think 8GB is generally plenty for basic apps in macOS. The sluggish UI only arises on the 2018 mini for some of the animations, and when driving two 4K or 5K screens (especially if scaled). The 13 inch MBPro you are comparing has a better iGPU than the mini I think. But in any case, driving 2x1080p monitors is not even close to the same stress - each is less than 1/7th of the pixels of a single 5K monitor.
Driving 5K + 4K is the ~same pixels as driving 11 FHD 1920x1080 screens.

 

[LeeW]

But in any case, driving 2x1080p monitors is not even close to the same stress

Indeed, but my comments were more directed at the user above who was struggling with 8GB, also he/she did say;

my monitors aren't 4K or anything but there are two of them.

 

[Spectrum]

Indeed, but my comments were more directed at the user above who was struggling with 8GB, also he/she did say;

Ah yes! I'll get my coat. That just sounds wrong to me, unless these are some crazy web sites.

 

[Loddonlily]

Ah yes! I'll get my coat. That just sounds wrong to me, unless these are some crazy web sites.

Well, that was me, so let's see ... as I type, App Memory = 6GB, Wired = 3.24, Total Used = 9.24GB ... so I'd be into swapping if I hadn't upgraded. Apps open right now are Vivaldi Browser (10 tabs including this one), Outlook, Acrobat Reader, Activity Monitor, Finder. The big memory user is Vivaldi with >3GB. I had similar usage with Firefox.

And this is without firing up a word processor or spreadsheet, which I usually have, never mind a photo editor.

 

[phrehdd]

Everybody has different utility needs of their computer. If all you were going to do is browse the web, answer email and other items of this sort then i3 8 gigs RAM and 128 SSD should be quite a nice fit.

My needs are different. I would opt for a bit more loaded system as I expect to get it through at least 3-4 years of service that goes beyond the above. I do web, streaming, on line courses, media file work, some level of composed work (writing) and a bit more. 16-32 gigs of RAM would serve me well, 250-500 gigs SSD gives me speed and space to work without concern (especially if I throw up a virtual machine for a particular app), and then that leaves a 6 core cpu. I mentioned using virtuals and nice to assign at least 2 cores and then some native apps to Mac certainly can use some heavy lifting. If i need in the future video, it can be done externally. For this, I would get a few years service with no regrets.