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MacOSXuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
177
0
Toronto
I am seeing a lot of people upgrade their ram to 8GB or even 16GB in their 2012 mini. Right now I have the stock 4GB ram in my system, so far it works for me, I don't see any sluggish(maybe because I am using SSD).

I usually have less than 400MB ram left when I am doing work on my computer, I am wondering if I need 8GB ram as well?

thanks
 

stu.h

macrumors 65816
May 8, 2010
1,337
504
West Midlands, England.
I am seeing a lot of people upgrade their ram to 8GB or even 16GB in their 2012 mini. Right now I have the stock 4GB ram in my system, so far it works for me, I don't see any sluggish(maybe because I am using SSD).

I usually have less than 400MB ram left when I am doing work on my computer, I am wondering if I need 8GB ram as well?

thanks

For the sake of £70 you might as well put 16GB in for a laugh.
 

Rhinoevans

macrumors 6502
Oct 5, 2012
408
63
Las Vegas, NV
I say 4 is never enough, 8 probably is, but i just upgraded to 16 because of price. Never thought about the heat issue, can't be that much though, ya think.
 

theRAMman

macrumors regular
May 6, 2012
168
0
The Moon.
don't bother, ive always been told that getting more RAM is usually pointless unless your either an intensive photoshopper, doing lots of video editing or screen recording. The whole 'more RAM = Faster computer' thing is pretty false unless you had like 2gb to begin with. You should be fine with the stock memory
 

MacOSXuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
177
0
Toronto
A lot of people here have their ram upgraded more than 4GB... This seems like a trend now, maybe a lot of us here do photo editing, screen recording, intensive jobs.

But I never really run out of ram, when I used to have 2GB in my MBP, yes I had to force quit applications for the laptop to run. But in this mac mini, I never have to force quit any applications.

It's just seem like a trend, in the old days 1GB was large, then came 2GB for a good few years. And now 4GB seems to be the standard. I wonder how long it takes to reach 8GB to become standard in Macs.
 

mchoffa

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2008
832
52
Asheville, NC
4GB barely cuts it if you use anything from adobe, or aperture for photos, or VM software to run windows, etc. or even if you like to have a lot of tabs open in Chrome. I've got 4 in my current 2008 imac and have to close one program to open another. I keep about 20 tabs open in chrome and have to close that to open aperture. Closing Chrome usually frees up about 1.5 GB of ram, and aperture uses about the same (I've got about 17,000 mostly RAW photos for reference).

As cheap as ram is, there is really no reason to stay at 4GB. It might be "enough" now, just like it was plenty for me in 2008, but software needs grow and eventually you'll want more, and that ram might cost more in 2 years than it does now.
 

Mr. McMac

Suspended
Dec 21, 2009
2,968
363
Far away from liberals
I went from 2gb's to 8 in my base mid 2011 mini. It made a huge difference. I'm not sure if going from 8 to 16gb's will make a noticeable difference. I personally think 8gb's is enough for most people. BTW, I went from 8 to 16gb's in my PC. I noticed absolutely no difference.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,362
248
Howell, New Jersey
A lot of people here have their ram upgraded more than 4GB... This seems like a trend now, maybe a lot of us here do photo editing, screen recording, intensive jobs.

But I never really run out of ram, when I used to have 2GB in my MBP, yes I had to force quit applications for the laptop to run. But in this mac mini, I never have to force quit any applications.

It's just seem like a trend, in the old days 1GB was large, then came 2GB for a good few years. And now 4GB seems to be the standard. I wonder how long it takes to reach 8GB to become standard in Macs.

well if you are short ram your computer swaps to your hdd which slows you up. In your case you would swap to an ssd which is less of a problem, just go to your activity monitor. on mine I have 1.38gb page

in with 60.8 mb page out and 61.1mb swaps. this is with 8gb ram on a 2011 mini and a large ssd as the booter. So 4 % of the time I use the slower ssd since I exceeded my 8gb ram. 4% is 60 million over 1.4 billion. or close enough.

I do not notice the slower ssd when I swap . yeah it is more writes on my ssd but not too many. look at your activity monitor and if you do 1 billion in and 400 million out or 40% you are using your ssd more. your ssd is harder to change and cost more then ram. so why not drop in the ram. but certainly at least read the activity monitor on and off for a week. it resets with each boot. so don't boot until you check the ram use.

In a week you will be more informed. by the way you can buy 1 8gb stick and then have 10gb ram. 40 bucks or so.


http://www.jr.com/crucial/pe/CRT_102464BF160/

these run 38 to 45
 

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calvol

macrumors 6502a
Feb 3, 2011
995
4
If I were to upgrade, I think I would go with lower latency 8GB RAM (CL9) over 16GB of higher latency RAM (CL11). I don't think many users need more than 8GB unless they have multiple intense numerical processing or video conversion processes going on.
 

MacOSXuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
177
0
Toronto
well if you are short ram your computer swaps to your hdd which slows you up. In your case you would swap to an ssd which is less of a problem, just go to your activity monitor. on mine I have 1.38gb page

in with 60.8 mb page out and 61.1mb swaps. this is with 8gb ram on a 2011 mini and a large ssd as the booter. So 4 % of the time I use the slower ssd since I exceeded my 8gb ram. 4% is 60 million over 1.4 billion. or close enough.

I do not notice the slower ssd when I swap . yeah it is more writes on my ssd but not too many. look at your activity monitor and if you do 1 billion in and 400 million out or 40% you are using your ssd more. your ssd is harder to change and cost more then ram. so why not drop in the ram. but certainly at least read the activity monitor on and off for a week. it resets with each boot. so don't boot until you check the ram use.

In a week you will be more informed. by the way you can buy 1 8gb stick and then have 10gb ram. 40 bucks or so.


http://www.jr.com/crucial/pe/CRT_102464BF160/

these run 38 to 45

I just looked..

VM size 278.19GB
page ins: 16.22GB
Pages out: 17.54 GB
Swap used: 2.41GB

SO does it means i am always exceeding 4GB of ram and using my SSD very much?
uptime 9 days.
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,362
248
Howell, New Jersey
I would add some ram. you are doing it often enough that even though the speed may not suffer you are writing on the ssd.

So far 2.41gb (swaps) in 9 days.


That translates to at least 100gb in a year. If you have a 128gb ssd it is extra wear and tear. One 8gb stick of ram should stop the wear and tear on the ssd. See if your stock ram is this.

These are micron the same as crucial.


http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT102464BF160B

this will work with it and solve all issues.
 

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MacOSXuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
177
0
Toronto
I would add some ram. you are doing it often enough that even though the speed may not suffer you are writing on the ssd.

So far 2.41gb (swaps) in 9 days.


That translates to at least 100gb in a year. If you have a 128gb ssd it is extra wear and tear. One 8gb stick of ram should stop the wear and tear on the ssd. See if your stock ram is this.

These are micron the same as crucial.


http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT102464BF160B

this will work with it and solve all issues.

yes thats the exact ram I got.

you said 1x8GB, but why not 2x4gb? isn't it dual channel better?
 

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,362
248
Howell, New Jersey
yes thats the exact ram I got.

you said 1x8GB, but why not 2x4gb? isn't it dual channel better?

well sometimes but not as much as 10 years ago. there was a time matched pairs were a must.

controllers now are better so the benefits of matched pairs are less with the ivy bridge and sandy bridge.

Buying a pair of the 4gb gives you 8 gb and costs about the same as the 1x 8gb stick which gives you 10gb. Either way should be good.
 

Sir Ruben

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2010
1,884
1,199
UK
Just installed 16GB, thought that if I was going to upgrade then I may as well put the max in.

System is breezing through everything now, importing into and running iPhoto for example is a lot faster now.
 

CanadaRAM

macrumors G5
Dual channel memory access theoretically doubles the RAM access speed but the effect on overall performance is lower, It has about a 6% - 8% advantage in real-world speed over the same amount of RAM in single channel mode (tested with Photoshop and other application performance)

So 2 x 4 is a bit faster than 1 x 8. 2 x 8 would be ideal of course.

More RAM doesn't speed up a machine, but it removes barriers to speed - like taking your foot off the brake pedal doesn't make your car go faster, but it does stop slowing it down.

As mentioned, when you multitask more than a couple of programs open at once, then you exceed the physical amount of RAM and OSX is forced to page out and page in memory contents to the hard drive to make room. This causes a slow down because hard drives are hundreds of times slower than RAM chips. An SSD is better but it is still many dozens of times slower than RAM.

iPhoto is a great example of RAM vs hard drive: it loads its thumbnails into RAM, so the first hundred or two images load up quickly. But if you have a large library, you've probably noticed that when it hits a certain point, they slow to a crawl. That's because iPhoto has loaded as much as it can into RAM and it's now having to hit the hard drive. If you increase the RAM, the bar gets raised, and iPhoto can load up many more thumbnails quickly, before hitting the ceiling.

The Page Out / Page In figures posted (about 1:1) indicates that the user is regularly going over the 4 GB of RAM. Your Page Out to Page In ratio should be 1:5 or lower. Ideally, the Page Out number should be 10% or less of the Page In. (Because these numbers are cumulative, the absolute numbers don't mean anything, it's the ratio between the two that is important.)

http://www.computer-answers.ca/2011...-what-will-adding-more-ram-to-my-computer-do/

http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/29/does-your-mac-need-more-memory-how-to-know-if-you-need-a-ram-upgrade/
 

dasx

macrumors 65816
Jun 18, 2012
1,107
18
Barcelona
I needed -at least- 10GB for some reasons (work stuff). After seeing Apple's prices for 16GB checked online for a simple 8GB module (was gonna put 10GB) but saw I could get two for just €74 so went for it.

If you got the money, go for it. You can always wait some months and still get better prices. ;)
 
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