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Normal or faulty?

M

Macs4u

Suspended
Original poster
Apr 19, 2008
387
352
Stoke on Trent
Hi,

I have a new Mac Mini with the i5 processor and 4GB ram. It obviously has Mavericks on and i find it very sluggish. Beach balls lots of times and just generally slow, sluggish and a pain when wanting to get work done and i have to wait 20 seconds for the settings to open, or an app to open.

Are these known for being sluggish with only 4Gb ram or is there something wrong with mine?

I have reinstalled Mavericks 3 times now (2 of them fresh installations with a USB made as an installation) and still sluggish. I don't have any heavy software on , just the standard install and a few apple apps actually.

Do you think adding an SSD and 8GB ram would sort it? I don't really want to go and spend another £200 to add the above if its still going to be sluggish.
Matt
 
You would definitely see better behaviour with 8 GB RAM, as beachballs and lag are an indicator of RAM being copied to or read from the HDD.
An SSD would also improve speeds quite well.

RAM is easy to upgrade, the HDD to SSD replacement is a bit more cumbersome.
 
Is it worth getting 16GB Ram? The price difference isn't a load more. Was thinking of getting a 256GB SSD and 16GB Ram and then reusing the internal 500gb HD and put it into an external usb 3.0 hard drive and use that for Time Machine.

Matt
 
Macs4u said:
Is it worth getting 16GB Ram? The price difference isn't a load more. Was thinking of getting a 256GB SSD and 16GB Ram and then reusing the internal 500gb HD and put it into an external usb 3.0 hard drive and use that for Time Machine.

Matt
Click to expand...

It depends on what applications you use.
Go to Activity Monitor and use the MEMORY tab to show you the size of the SWAP USED after a day of typical day of usage, a day, that had the computer power up at the beginning of it. If that SWAP USED is bigger than 4 GB, you might benefit from more than 8 GB of RAM.

Since the Mac mini uses two 2 GB modules, you could always get an 8 GB module and use it with the remaining 2 GB module. You will lose dual channel support using mismatched RAM, which is a RAM performance loss of 10 to 15 %, which is negligible in most cases anyway.
Though it is recommended to always get RAM in pairs when buying it.
 
Here is a screen grab of that. Its been on all day..


2lscx8y.png
 
It sounds like your hard drive is slow, nearly full, or both. If you want to make it faster, start with the SSD. That'll probably take care of it.
 
chabig said:
It sounds like your hard drive is slow, nearly full, or both. If you want to make it faster, start with the SSD. That'll probably take care of it.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Its definitely not full, has over 400gb spare. It is a 5400rpm normal hard drive so thinking it is just a stupidly slow hard drive.
 
chabig said:
I got that impression. I think you will be amazed at the difference an SSD makes.
Click to expand...

Lets hope. Will go pick the stuff up tomorrow as i live very close to a big computer supplier. Will report back when it all done and setup.

Thanks

Matt
 
Faulty- I have a new mac mini with the i5 processor and 4 GB of ram. It takes about 3 seconds to open a app.Sorry but I don't know enough about computers to help you,but yours is faulty. My swap used has always been zero if that is of any help.
 
bobcat ranny said:
Faulty- I have a new mac mini with the i5 processor and 4 GB of ram. It takes about 3 seconds to open a app.Sorry but I don't know enough about computers to help you,but yours is faulty. My swap used has always been zero if that is of any help.
Click to expand...

Ive just opened 3 apps , separately and closing them off after each and they all took approx 6-8 seconds.

Matt
 
Normal, has same thing on my mom's mini from 2011. The problem is the HDD is 5400 rpm, and modern computers get into trashing like condition a lot, at startup, or application startups. Whenever app launched, that thing would beach ball for a while sometimes. Had the same 4GB RAM.

Put an Intel SSD in it, all good now.
 
Macs4u said:
I have a new Mac Mini
Click to expand...

Give it a few days before you throw money at it.

The problem could be as simple as Spotlight consuming resources building its initial index. i.e. a temporary situation that will resolve itself.

You said it's a new computer and you re-installed OSX a couple times. Presumably you moved all your stuff over to the computer. Spotlight needs to go through everything and build its index; happens once and then it'll quit being in the way.

See item #1 here: http://osxdaily.com/2012/10/11/mac-running-slow-reasons/

That said, an SSD will definitely make life much nicer; 5400rpm HDDs are slow no matter what. If you go with an SSD, the new Crucial mx100 is a great option.

I doubt you need 16GB of ram unless you're running multiple virtual machines and/or doing huge photo or video edits. 4GB will handly basic web/email stuff with aplomb, 8GB if you're doing moderate real work. Your screen grab above doesn't suggest a significant need to upgrade RAM at this time.
 
If you think on keeping your Mini for a couple more years, upgrade it to 16GB and be happy with Yosemite running smoothly.

EDIT: don't you already have a SSD?

It's like using diskettes in the Blu-Ray era :p
 
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