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POLL: How much RAM do you use for your Mac Mini or iMac or MacBook?
- Thread starter Mac Hammer Fan
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MacBook Air M1, with 16GB RAM & 500GB storage. And I don't think I need the 16GB. Mainly photography workflow (LR & PS).
My Macbook M1 pro running with 16gb, not for gaming or video editing. That is why enough for me.
32GB on my M1 Mac Studio.
What do I do with it? I mix music.
Do I really need 32GB and not 16GB? No idea. That's for nerds to obsess about, who seem to buy a computer literally for the purpose of running stress-tests and installing daft third-party live activity monitors into their menubar so they have something to get anxious about in real-time.
What do I do with it? I mix music.
Do I really need 32GB and not 16GB? No idea. That's for nerds to obsess about, who seem to buy a computer literally for the purpose of running stress-tests and installing daft third-party live activity monitors into their menubar so they have something to get anxious about in real-time.
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I've typically bought base RAM because I don't do any heavy lifting with my systems and upgrade every four years or so, but I'm getting back into photography so my next Mac will have a minimum of 16GB, ideally 32GB.
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I couldn't vote because I need to select all three. One MacBook Air for a family member has 8 GB of RAM, which is plenty. One MacBook Air has 16 GB of RAM, which is plenty. Another MacBook Pro has 32 GB of RAM, which is plenty (although I could use much more on occasion but I have high performance cluster access for that!).
If I remember rightly, my 21" iMac bought in December 2011 had 16 GB of memory and was the most I could buy at the time. My 27" iMac bought in December 2019 has 64 GB of memory.
I always get one level more than I need, in case of scalability and future software updates requiring more resources. At a minimum 16GB. But I opted for 48GB.
All depends if you’re going to put in serious work on your computer, or if you’re just going to be doing basic work with it.
All depends if you’re going to put in serious work on your computer, or if you’re just going to be doing basic work with it.
I’ve got a 19 pro 15inch with 32gb of ram. I use it with an egpu for gaming so while I could safely get away with 16 I wanted to match my desktop at 32 so I’d never have to worry about multitasking writing swap files or anything. Don’t wanna wear out my ssd.
Every Mac I've owned since 2011 has had 16 GB. Right now, at an arbitrary time during a break from my work I'm using 9.03 GB of memory on an M1 Mac mini. I rarely use much more than that either, so I'm pretty happy with 16 GB. I originally installed 16 GB in my 2011 MacBook Pro for running analysis on datasets up to about 20 GB in size using custom code written by a former colleague that used tons of memory. But shortly thereafter I rewrote the code (in Fortran) and optimized the routines so that the analysis used less than 100 MB of memory. I'm pretty sure that I could easily get by with on 8 GB of memory even in 2024 even when doing "professional" work with my Mac.
I have a MBP 16" M3 Pro 12C with 36GB RAM and a MBA 13" 2014 with 8GB of RAM. Both sufficient for what I use them for.
However, in a desktop, such as a Mac Studio, I would probably go for at least 64GB. Also, I plan to buy an MBA M3 when these will come available, and I will opt for either 16GB or 24GB (it depends on the pricing, i.e. if it will make some sense), to avoid performance deterioration and disk swapping caused by RAM bottleneck, since I plan to push harder the M3 MBA than the 2014 one (plus software nowadays is more RAM-demanding than it used to be).
However, in a desktop, such as a Mac Studio, I would probably go for at least 64GB. Also, I plan to buy an MBA M3 when these will come available, and I will opt for either 16GB or 24GB (it depends on the pricing, i.e. if it will make some sense), to avoid performance deterioration and disk swapping caused by RAM bottleneck, since I plan to push harder the M3 MBA than the 2014 one (plus software nowadays is more RAM-demanding than it used to be).
Mac Mini 2018 (i3) with 8GB. I am using it as a media server (drives my stereo and TV) now and more than fine for that. At one point I had it simultaneously running Safari, Mail, MS SQL Server under Docker, PostgreSQL w/PostGIS, Azure Data Studio, Tableau Desktop, and Excel buttery smooth while iTunes ran in the background without skipping a beat (literally) under Mojave. Had plans to upgrade it to 32 or 64 GB of RAM but doing it myself looks like a lot more work than I expected and don't have the time to take it to someone. Plus it works so well as-is. One day...
MacBook Air 2020 (i3) with 16GB. Use for general productivity work (Mail, Safari, MS Office, etc). Measured 11.5 GB free for applications under Catalina and Monterey doesn't seem any better. Normally runs fine but then Safari grabs all available memory and spills over into swap from time to time (lots of tabs open...). Restarting Safari helps (closing every window usually not enough) but also notice that WindowServer gets big and rebooting the only way to get the system running smoothly again. Probably would be fine with 8GB if it wasn't for Safari and runaway processes/applications. Bought 16GB because I knew it wouldn't be upgradable and wanted flexibility for the future.
MacBook Air 2020 (M1) with 16GB. For a college student. Runs well under Monterey. 8GB probably would have been fine for Google Docs, Minecraft, and Spotify but 16GB a little more future proof for lasting through college and maybe the year after.
MacBook Air 2020 (i3) with 16GB. Use for general productivity work (Mail, Safari, MS Office, etc). Measured 11.5 GB free for applications under Catalina and Monterey doesn't seem any better. Normally runs fine but then Safari grabs all available memory and spills over into swap from time to time (lots of tabs open...). Restarting Safari helps (closing every window usually not enough) but also notice that WindowServer gets big and rebooting the only way to get the system running smoothly again. Probably would be fine with 8GB if it wasn't for Safari and runaway processes/applications. Bought 16GB because I knew it wouldn't be upgradable and wanted flexibility for the future.
MacBook Air 2020 (M1) with 16GB. For a college student. Runs well under Monterey. 8GB probably would have been fine for Google Docs, Minecraft, and Spotify but 16GB a little more future proof for lasting through college and maybe the year after.
Not sure if you have used the M1 MacBook Air yourself, but it would be interesting to know if all those issues you have with Safari and WindiwServer on your i3 MBA are still present on the M1 MBA With the same 16GB of RAM.
I've used it but not for hours and weeks at a time so can't really say.
I assume there little to no Apple Silicon-specific code in Safari (i.e. it is all processor-independent code or processor-specific code is abstracted into system libraries/frameworks) and the same version of Safari works equally well or not well on both architectures assuming the same usage patterns. I could see WindowServer having more architecture/GPU-specific code though I assume most of it is generic.
In the meantime I've also modified my usage pattern to mitigate. I try to close Safari every chance I get and maintain an active Note with saved links rather than keeping windows open for interesting/valuable content that's not needed for the specific thing I'm working on. Not as productive as I'd like but better than the alternatives.
I only partially blame the OS for this -- I bet the problem is part websites (which continue to bloat more and more every year), part the browser (which need to act like an OS and better throttle bloated websites as well as completely and reliably release resources when windows are closed), and part the OS (e.g. WindowServer needs to reliably shrink as well as it grows to meet changing demands).