SSD vs 16gb ram upgrade (Late 2012 i5, 8gb, SSHD)

[Dominat0r]

Ok, so going back and forth. I know both are pretty good upgrades, but I am leaning towards SSD over ram for my late 2012 (i5 and 8gb). I have a 500GB SSHD right now, so it might be put in the top bay (If I feel ballsy enough to attempt it).

What are your thoughts? I mean, SSHD is certainly better than a normal spinny, but is an SSD enough of an upgrade over the SSHD to justify it, instead of going to 16gb ram from 8gb?

 

[ActionableMango]

Hard to tell without more information. What does your Memory section look like in Activity Monitor when your computer is at its most active? For example if you're only using 5GB, then upgrading from 8 to 16 isn't going to do anything noticeable.

 

[adam9c1]

Ive read that in the 2012 the optical bay is only capable of SATAII.
I have an older SSD in mine there.

EDIT: Nevermind, I thought you were talking about 13" MBP (Pre Retina)

 

[Trusteft]

Ive read that in the 2012 the optical bay is only capable of SATAII.
I have an older SSD in mine there.

There is no optical bay in the 2012 model.
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Ok, so going back and forth. I know both are pretty good upgrades, but I am leaning towards SSD over ram for my late 2012 (i5 and 8gb). I have a 500GB SSHD right now, so it might be put in the top bay (If I feel ballsy enough to attempt it).

What are your thoughts? I mean, SSHD is certainly better than a normal spinny, but is an SSD enough of an upgrade over the SSHD to justify it, instead of going to 16gb ram from 8gb?

Depends on what you do with that machine.
SSHD are ok for small files and benchmarks but that's about it. I hate SSHDs as I find them the worst of both worlds and slow in real life, but others swear by them, I swear at them.
If you only do web browsing or something light, going for a SSD won't prove all that important upgrade, but in that case neither will the RAM upgrade.
Again, it all depends on what you do with the machine.
If you don't do anything heavy then in day to day difference you will probably see more difference with the SSD upgrade.

 

[jtara]

What's a an SSHD?

Oh... hybrid drive? (had to look it up... better to spell things out so we know what you are talking about.)

Do you have a single third-party hybrid drive? Or do you have a Fusion Drive that came with the Mini. Fusion drive is really two separate drives filling both bays. A rotating hard drive, and a smaller flash drive.

Anyway... both. But if you have to pick one, you will have to decide based on the price difference. The RAM will be much cheaper than the flash drive, at least if you need to upgrade the storage capacity too. I think if you are going to spend the money on the drive, you might as well upgrade the RAM as well.

I have a late 2012 2.6 gHz i7 (Unicorn (tm) model). I upgraded the RAM long ago. I recently replaced the flash from the Fusion drive (top bay) with a 1TB OCZ Vector 180. I left the hard drive in the bottom bay (and connected) I may use it as a backup drive.

Actually, I've had the Vector for a while, but was reluctant to install due to the potential for disruption. I took the opportunity to install it with the High Sierra update. I put it in a USB "toaster" and formatted with APFS and used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone. Then installed in the Mini after verifying it would boot from the USB. I honestly don't remember how/when I updated to High Sierra! There was trouble, and so then I decided to install the drive. I think I formatted by booting from a USB stick with High Sierra installer that I made on my old 2008 Macbook.

Anyway, BlackMagic Speed test reports about 500MB/sec both read/write. The Fusion drive was around 80MB/sec read, somewhat higher write. It is a HUGE speed boost.

I use it for software development (hybrid mobile apps). This significantly improved build times. For this usage, both upgrades are equally useful - I'd say essential.

Alas, I can see the dark at the end of the tunnel for the Mini. New Macbooks do 2GB/sec and better on flash drives. The 500MB/sec I am getting is about at the limit for SATA III.

adam91C: the late 2012 Mac Minis do not have an "optical bay". There are two mounting positions for 2.5" hard drives. If it came with a fusion drive, the hard drive is in the lower, the flash in the upper. Apparently, there is some variation on Minis that came with only a single drive. The lower bay takes more disassembly to get at, which is why I left the hard drive in.

 

[Dominat0r]

Hmm, memory pressure was much higher in HS than in Sierra, so I was thinking memory. However, I could be seeing some slow downs with HS in HFS+ and no APFS. Which makes me lean towards SSD.

I would like to keep the SSHD in there and mount it in the bottom with the SSD on the top bay, but I am a little scared to do the operation to my mini. Hard drive is easy, but removing the entire board seems a little risky to me.

 

[jpietrzak8]

What are your thoughts? I mean, SSHD is certainly better than a normal spinny, but is an SSD enough of an upgrade over the SSHD to justify it, instead of going to 16gb ram from 8gb?

If you are looking for a completely abstract comparison between RAM and SSD, the key is that RAM is far faster than an SSD, but is smaller in size and is erased when the machine is turned off.

Now, before you yell at me for stating something completely obvious, let me point out that these factors determine whether you will see greater gains from one or the other.

First: how often are you rebooting your machine? As the operating system tends to be too large to fit comfortably within the SSD space available in a hybrid drive, you should see a fairly decent improvement in bootup time with an SSD. RAM can't help here. (I personally leave my machines running 24/7, so I rarely deal with bootup time.)

Also, if you are dealing with large, random-access databases (large enough that they cannot fit entirely in RAM)-- for example, a enormous collection of photographs -- an SSD will truly shine.

If you do keep your machine up and running for long periods of time, though, I'd go for the RAM. Even if you are not running applications that demand enormous amounts of memory, the OS will utilize all available RAM as a disk cache (effectively the same trick a hybrid drive performs), only better, because again, RAM is much faster than SSD.

Also, I personally wouldn't bother trying to crack open a 2012 mini to add an SSD, when the machine sports both Thunderbolt and USB3 ports. There's not all that much difference between the throughput of internal and external drives in this situation. And you can boot off of an external drive.

 

[bopajuice]

My vote goes to an SSD. If you already have 8gb of ram (which is plenty for most tasks), I feel you would see the most day to day improvement with an SSD.

 

[jtara]

Also, I personally wouldn't bother trying to crack open a 2012 mini to add an SSD, when the machine sports both Thunderbolt and USB3 ports. There's not all that much difference between the throughput of internal and external drives in this situation. And you can boot off of an external drive.

Late 2012 mac Mini only has Thunderbolt 1. Now, that might theoretically allow performance up to 1Gbyte/sec (the data rate is 10Gbit/sec). But an external Thunderbolt drive/enclosure is going to be pricey. And then if you connect your monitor via Mini DisplayPort, now you may also need a pricey hub (if not included on drive enclosure). And then you are going to be limited by the drive interface itself, anyway, so if you use SATA III, you are still limited to about 500Mbytes/sec. Sure, you can get an external enclosure that will take a PCI Express flash. Pricier still, for both of the enclosure and the card.

So, for a pretty considerable price, you could in fact upgrade to something as fast as 1Gbyte/sec. Or perhaps two, using both channels (RAID 0?).

Or you can just crack it open and be done with it with a bare 2.5" drive.

You need to at least slide the motherboard out somewhat to install in the top drive position. There is not THAT much more disassembly to get at the bottom position. I didn't have the special board removal tool. I just used two small-diameter screwdrivers or nails or whatever (don't remember) just be careful to use equal pressure and be careful. And I didn't have a "spudger". Just careful work with a small-blade screwdriver (for popping off cables). Just be careful, and watch some YouTube videos.

The RAM will probably be less than $100. A good 1GB flash will run close to $400. Probably makes sense to start with the RAM. And, as I previously suggested, if you feel you need the flash, it would be silly to omit the RAM for the incremental cost.

 

[Boyd01]

I can't see any reason not to upgrade the RAM to 16gb. I did it about a year ago before giving my 2012 base mini to my daughter. It only cost about $65 from Best Buy and it took less than 5 minutes. Why not do that first since it's cheap and easy, then you can decide if you want a SSD. I'm using a 1TB Samsung T3 USB 3.0 SSD on my 2012 quad and it is very fast - I only use this machine for video editing.

Just posted a comparison between my internal and external SSD's here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/worth-adding-a-2tb-to-a-2012-mac-mini.2084394/#post-25397085

 

[MarkJames68]

Do you have 1 8 GB DIMM or 2 4 GB sticks currently? If a single stick it’s a stupidly easy and cheap upgrade. Otherwise you can buy a stick and see how 12GB works out.

 

[lucasvel]

Hello!

Just upgraded RAM slots but "about this mac" is still showing previous RAM info.
Is there a way to refresh this info? I wanna make sure my mac is communicating alright with the RAM Ive just installed.

 

[MarkJames68]

Hello!

Just upgraded RAM slots but "about this mac" is still showing previous RAM info.
Is there a way to refresh this info? I wanna make sure my mac is communicating alright with the RAM Ive just installed.

No “refreshing” is needed - I’m assuming you turned off the Mac and on again after seating the RAM

You can try doing a PRAM or SMC reset, but I would try and reseat the RAM too.

 

[Dominat0r]

I have 2 4GB sticks, so would have to replace both. I think the ram is the easiest for sure.

Do you have 1 8 GB DIMM or 2 4 GB sticks currently? If a single stick it’s a stupidly easy and cheap upgrade. Otherwise you can buy a stick and see how 12GB works out.

Does MAC run ram for dual channel? Ok to have 2 different size sticks?

 

[MarkJames68]

I have 2 4GB sticks, so would have to replace both. I think the ram is the easiest for sure.


Does MAC run ram for dual channel? Ok to have 2 different size sticks?

Yes and yes.

Also check eBay for deals, might be able to get 2 sticks for the price of one new one.

 

[campyguy]

I'm recommend both upgrades, but with a caveat… My GF owns an i7 Mini Server, as do I, and there's 8 more in my company's inventory - all 2012 units. The SSD upgrades, all Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, transformed their performance - you won't get much of a fight in this thread on this bit.

What I'll add here is that the Mini uses shared VRAM. My caveat is that all of my Minis were upgraded from 4 to 16GB of RAM, but I can share that the upgrade from 4GB to 16GB of RAM also upgraded the VRAM from 1MB of VRAM to 1.5MB of VRAM - a fairly significant performance boost if you're using your Mini as a main Mac. I don't know what the dynamic VRAM value is for the 8GB configuration is for this Mini as all of mine went straight to 16GB. None of my Minis are daily drivers, but the VRAM upgrade is definitely noticeable - when I sign on from my rMBP I don't notice much of a hit, performance-wise. My 2¢…

 

[Dominat0r]

So it looks like I am leaning towards 16GB of ram...It being just plug and play is a good option.

BTW, anyone looking to unload 2 sticks (8GB each), let me know.

I might wait a bit on the SSD and get a new one for my main machine and use the SSD I have in there now in the mac.

 

[Boyd01]

Also check eBay for deals, might be able to get 2 sticks for the price of one new one.

How much does it cost new and how much could you save? Have prices gone up? I thought the $65 I paid at Best Buy in 2016 was reasonable. I wouldn't want the hassle and risk of eBay just to save $30 when I could buy at a local store with warranty and good return/exchange policy.

 

[MarkJames68]

How much does it cost new and how much could you save? Have prices gone up? I thought the $65 I paid at Best Buy in 2016 was reasonable. I wouldn't want the hassle and risk of eBay just to save $30 when I could buy at a local store with warranty and good return/exchange policy.

If you got 2 8GB sticks for $65 that is an unbeatable deal.

RAM is generally either good or not good. I have in 25+ years never had memory go bad after extended use, although I believe it can happen. No matter the source I recommend a full memtest after installation.

 

[ziggy29]

Also, I personally wouldn't bother trying to crack open a 2012 mini to add an SSD, when the machine sports both Thunderbolt and USB3 ports. There's not all that much difference between the throughput of internal and external drives in this situation. And you can boot off of an external drive.

Late 2012 mac Mini only has Thunderbolt 1. Now, that might theoretically allow performance up to 1Gbyte/sec (the data rate is 10Gbit/sec). But an external Thunderbolt drive/enclosure is going to be pricey. And then if you connect your monitor via Mini DisplayPort, now you may also need a pricey hub (if not included on drive enclosure). And then you are going to be limited by the drive interface itself, anyway, so if you use SATA III, you are still limited to about 500Mbytes/sec. Sure, you can get an external enclosure that will take a PCI Express flash. Pricier still, for both of the enclosure and the card.

Yes, it only has TB1, but USB3 is pretty much fast enough that an external SSD with USB 3 might -- might -- be only a 10% decrease in throughput compared to an internal SATA SSD mounted internally. (I intentionally used "internally" twice, because with the right cable adaptor [USB 3 to SATA with UASP support] you can use an internal SATA SSD just like an external SSD.) And that might be close to theoretical.

As for the TB1, not great but it is still enough with an external GPU enclosure with a Radeon RX580 to give me anywhere from 40-60 FPS at medium-high on 1080p. Not a gaming beast, but for a Mini limited by TB1 that is fairly awesome compared to what the crap integrated graphics gave.

Frankly, as I've said before a few times in this forum, I just don't think the slight extra speed potential for mounting an internal SSD compared to external USB 3.0 is worth the hassle and risks of the "surgery" involved on this model.

As an aside for a data point -- I've been using an internal EVO 850 using the aforementioned USB to SATA cable as my boot disk on the Mini for a few months now. And a few days ago, for another project on another machine I purchased a Samsung T5 external SSD (both are 500 GB). The T5 comes with two cables -- one USB-C to USB-C and the other a USB-C to a Type A USB 3.1.

Before purposing the T5 to its new usage, I decided to see how the performance differed between the two. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate my EVO's disk to the T5, then booted from the T5. Using benchmarks to test the throughput, the T5 appears to be *very* slightly faster than the EVO -- consistently (at least in the few runs I did, I wasn't going to wear the thing out for testing but running a few gigs through wasn't a big deal), but probably by only 2-3% over the entire benchmark. Still, I might keep the T5 on this Mac as the boot volume and repurpose the internal EVO. This is my main machine so I'll take the performance boost, small as it is, where I can use it most.

 

[MarkJames68]

The interface isn’t the limiting factor, rather the SATA nature of the drive.

 

[ziggy29]

The interface isn’t the limiting factor, rather the SATA nature of the drive.

True, mostly, but only if the USB ports can put out the max the SATA interface allows. If you put a SATA drive into my Late 2008 MacBook with USB 2.0, for example, the interface definitely *does* limit the throughput. I won't get the ~430 MB/s I get from the USB 3.0 interface. I've heard people getting a little more than 450 MB/s for an EVO 850 mounted as an internal SATA, so it feels like there is a little penalty for using it externally with USB. And when using a cable to convert internal SATA to USB, results may depend on the cable quality. But it's not much if it exists and, as I suggested, IMO it's not worth performing fairly complicated surgery to get what might be a small performance boost.

 

[MarkJames68]

True, mostly, but only if the USB ports can put out the max the SATA interface allows. If you put a SATA drive into my Late 2008 MacBook with USB 2.0, for example, the interface definitely *does* limit the throughput. I won't get the ~430 MB/s I get from the USB 3.0 interface. I've heard people getting a little more than 450 MB/s for an EVO 850 mounted as an internal SATA, so it feels like there is a little penalty for using it externally with USB. And when using a cable to convert internal SATA to USB, results may depend on the cable quality. But it's not much if it exists and, as I suggested, IMO it's not worth performing fairly complicated surgery to get what might be a small performance boost.

Fair point, absolutely. I was thinking about USB 3.0 vs 3.1, but you are correct that 2.0 will max out a fast USB 3.0 SSD.

To that point, I believe on the nMP there are performance limits even with USB 3.0 as the speed is aggregated across the ports.

 

[ziggy29]

Fair point, absolutely. I was thinking about USB 3.0 vs 3.1, but you are correct that 2.0 will max out a fast USB 3.0 SSD.

To that point, I believe on the nMP there are performance limits even with USB 3.0 as the speed is aggregated across the ports.

Ah, gotcha. I was getting at the idea that the SATA-3 standard specs to 6 Gb/s and the USB 3.0 only to 5 Gb/s. So in theory, a maxed out SATA-3 using its native interface will be slightly slowed down by being fed through an adapter to USB 3.0 -- but the real world difference is small in the typical case, at least in my experience -- a lot less than the 16.7% theoretical slowdown.

And I suspect that as you say, if you have multiple USB 3.0 ports doing large amounts of I/O, in most architectures I think you'd get less than 5 Gb/s on each port because of the sharing of a common data bus. (For example if you had four USB 3.0 ports, if only one of them was massively churning I/O it might get close to 5 Gb/s but if you had four devices all trying to do massive I/O at the same time they would be limited to no more than 1.25 Gb/s each. I think that's how it works, anyway.)

 

[Dominat0r]

I am extremely comfortable removing the bottom mounted drive as this (and I am sure you all know) does not require me to remove the board itself. Just the fan and a few other things. I have done this before a few times. First I tested a normal spinny drive. Tore out a SSHD from my gaming laptop and replaced it with a SSD. Installed that. It ended up going on me, so it was removed and replaced via RMA from Seagate. So basically, I have installed a drive 3 times haha.