I am currently using a VERY old mac mini (late 2011) that has served me well for well over ten years. I had the memory upgraded (16gb) and hard drive swapped out to an SSD (2TB) a handful of years ago. I fear my mini is on it's last breath and am in the process of looking for a hasty replacement. My needs are pretty simple for this computer, I will usually have anywhere from 15-25 browser tabs open at any given time (to include at least one running youtube, Netflix, etc.) and probably word and/or excel open. Only other thing i use it for are importing, editing, and maintaining a photo library of about 60k photos and 5k videos. When I look at my activity monitor now it shows that I generally use about 12gb of RAM +/-. My initial thought was a mac mini M2 Pro 10 core CPU 16 core GPU and 32GB of RAM. When I visited the Apple store they mentioned that because of how efficient the new processor and memory are that I really don't need more than 16gb RAM, even though i am pushing that limit now. I have since read that a few times in different forums? Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice.
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Need Help on MacMini Memory Selection
- Thread starter edward-k
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Since the ram cannot be upgraded, and you do use it for photos and 5k video I would consider getting more ram ONLY is the cost is not a driving issue for you. I replaced a 2013 Mac Pro (trash can Mac) w/32GB ram, upgrade graphic card, etc. with a 16gb M1 Mac mini and still saw improved performance. I do not do as much video or photo editing as before but when I do I was seeing a 20% improvement in rendering times. Given that anecdotal information an M2 mini with 16gb ram should work fine, but a bit of future proofing cannot hurt.
The 16GB M2 will give you an order of magnitude improvment in performance. But do also look at you storage needs. How much data is on the current system disk. You want the new computer to be no more then 1/2 full on day-one.
You can add very fast external SSD to the Mini. I just did that. $100 for the empty enclosure from OWC and $100 for the 1TB M.2 SSD. But you do not want to have to do that on Day one.
My 16GB M2 does what you describe well. But of llate I find that I am moving my robotics and AI development work from Linux/Nvidia to Mac. So I'm runing Virtual Machines and AI models on the Mac now. It works OK now for development but i see the need for a much more powerfull Mac in the future. But this is an extreme and rare usecase.
For casual use like email and online shopping and entertainment, any current Mac is overkill, even the basic M1 with 8GB. You would want the 16GB upgrade and enough SSD storage. I doubt the extra CPU cores would matter much for your use.
You can add very fast external SSD to the Mini. I just did that. $100 for the empty enclosure from OWC and $100 for the 1TB M.2 SSD. But you do not want to have to do that on Day one.
My 16GB M2 does what you describe well. But of llate I find that I am moving my robotics and AI development work from Linux/Nvidia to Mac. So I'm runing Virtual Machines and AI models on the Mac now. It works OK now for development but i see the need for a much more powerfull Mac in the future. But this is an extreme and rare usecase.
For casual use like email and online shopping and entertainment, any current Mac is overkill, even the basic M1 with 8GB. You would want the 16GB upgrade and enough SSD storage. I doubt the extra CPU cores would matter much for your use.
That statistic doesn't help much - MacOS will use "spare" RAM for file caching etc.
The more informative statistic is "Memory Pressure" which goes up when the OS is actually running short of memory and is having to swap chunks of memory out to disc etc. If that's still in the green you probably won't need more than 16GB.
Bear in mind that there are other advantages to a M2 pro, though: more Thunderbolt/USB-C ports and support for more than 2 displays.
You're probably fine with a regular M2 though.
macOS is designed to use as much RAM as possible. If you have 16 Gb of RAM, it will typically use around 12-14 Gb, with the remaining space for file caching.
Similarly, on my 32Gb Mini, it's using 24 Gb, with 8 Gb of cached files, as standard.
Yes, any modern OS will find use for (within reason) all the RAM you have. Also swap is not the bad thing iut used to be back when storage was slow. A with very fast SSD the cost of swapping is very low and it actualy make sense that the OS would swap stuff out just to make room for file caching. As said, Memory Pressure" tries tobe a better indicator.