I am waffling between deciding whether I need 16GB or 32GB of RAM. I am a UX/UI Designer and Motion Designer. I do a lot of work in Sketch, After Effects and a variety of prototyping apps. I am trying to decide if the extra RAM would benefit me.
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Do I need 16GB or 32GB of RAM
- Thread starter Elektrofone
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General rule of thumb, if you have to ask then you don't need it...
Honestly depends on the value it brings to you. If you're generating money from the machine, then you may as well go for 32GB as the cost difference is negligible across the lifespan. You don't need 32GB and would get by with 16GB just fine, 16GB is still a large amount. You could use 32GB though, you could use 64GB, as I said it's a case of whether you want to spend the extra money.
Honestly depends on the value it brings to you. If you're generating money from the machine, then you may as well go for 32GB as the cost difference is negligible across the lifespan. You don't need 32GB and would get by with 16GB just fine, 16GB is still a large amount. You could use 32GB though, you could use 64GB, as I said it's a case of whether you want to spend the extra money.
I am making money off of it. It will be my personal freelance machine. I am currently using a late 2013 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM. And while I’ve been getting by for the past couple of years it would be nice for it to be faster. But it doesn’t seem like I’m running out of RAM regularly.
It's like $400 more for the 32GB, so at worst 1 days work? If you think you might need it then you may as well invest, better than spending the next 4 years worrying.
I wouldn't worry about resale value, if you don't ever use the 32GB of RAM it'll still depreciate at the same rate as the rest of the machine. So it will likely be $100 more when you actually sell it... And assuming you keep it for as long as your previous machine, the price will still be minimal even if it has an i9 and 2TB SSD in it. So just think about what you want to spend now. If you're budgeting and it's between the larger SSD or the RAM, then maybe grab the SSD.
Your computer is just a tool. If you currently do not need 32GB RAM - I wouldn't recommend committing capital to an unneeded use & instead either invest it in something else you need now or save for a rainy day. If your business booms and you really need that extra RAM someday, your growth would pay for it by itself.
Check Memory Pressure on Activity Monitor when you are doing a "heavy" workload. That will give you an idea about your memory needs.
It’s kind of tricky I think because an application like After Effects will take advantage of extra RAM if alotted but will not if it’s not available. So it’s not as though the application runs slower but 32GB would give me more overhead.
As of right now I could have both Premiere and After Effects open and they would both only use 4gb each if I only had 16GB but would both use up to 13GB if I had 32GB. So it’s hard to tell because I’m not overtaxing my RAM currently but I wonder if I could have better performance with 32.
With all that said, should I stay with 8GB of RAM, or upgrade to 16GB of Ram of normal average everyday use. I don't know if I should future proof the laptop and add more Ram. I'm planning on purchasing the 2018 13" MBP-tb, 6 Core, 256SSD, 8GB Ram, the model that cost $1799.
Pretty sure you've been planning on purchasing a MBP for a few years now? Normal average usage, just get 8GB and be done. If you find you need more RAM in 'the future' then buy a new laptop...