FIRST MAC I need help choosing configuration for M2 or M2 Pro

[Mardiel8128]

Hello friends,

I've been using iPhone for over 10 years now it's the time to buy a mac and say goodbye to my windows pc. I am going for the macmini because I will work most of the time at home.

My daily would be:
- Excel, Word, read Pdf
- Read emails
- Watching content Youtube, Netflix,
- Edit basic photos with photoshop
- Edit basic videos (5 minutes)
- Discord
- Skype
- Maybe a game like dota2 or starcraft but it can be every 2 months
- I'm also planning to take code lessons in python, data science.

And over 50 tabs of chrome or edge. I have a bad habit to open a lot of tabs in the browser.

I would like to keep my mac mini as long. as it can be.

I would like to use 2 monitors, don't know if use a third monitor will be something good.

About storage i use One Drive and One Cloud, but 512 seems to low or use an external hard drive worries me that someday I will lose my files.

About ram I would like to have the 50 tabs in edge or safari open and excel or even dota 2 open at the same time.


I hope someone can help me, I don't really know much about mac

Thanks everyone !

 

[sorgo †]

Maybe the least-expensive mini with M2 Pro? But maybe bump up the storage and save yourself the grief in the long term if 512GB would be that much of a hassle. Idk, I’m no Mac expert, but I feel this machine would hopefully be able to do what you need without much if any delay. Good luck!

Honestly, no matter what you choose, I feel like you can’t really go wrong (I myself am perfectly content with a base M1 Air). Just maybe make sure you get at least an M2 and plenty of storage by the sound of it.

 

[wilberforce]

For 2 monitors, an M2 (not Pro) Mini with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD would likely do you good. 8GB RAM is not a good idea, and 24GB RAM will probably be of limited benefit. The 1TB SSD is reasonably priced; more than this it becomes more cost-effective to use an external SSD. 512GB SSD is also good. You can lose files no matter how stored, the solution is to have multiple backups. Plan on not filling an SSD more than 90%, else it will become inefficient.

For 3 monitors, the M2 Pro Mini would be best. It is possible to connect 3 monitors to the regular M2 Mini using Displaylink adapter, but there are drawbacks, it is not as good.

Another advantage of the M2 Pro Mini is that it had two more USB-C ports. With the regular M2 mini you will have no USB-C ports left if you connect 2 monitors to them, although one monitor (up to 4K) can be connected by HDMI instead

 

[ChrisA]

You said "Data Science". For anything other than student exercises, you need more than a Mac Mini. But if you are starting from scratch, it will take some years before you get past being a student. All the other tasks on your list can be done with the base model, unless you need more than two monitors.

 

[Fishrrman]

Get 16gb of RAM on whatever you buy.
8gb is no longer enough !!

If you can afford it, I'd suggest the base model m2pro Mini, which comes with 8gb/512gb SSD.

If you can afford it, special-order the base model with an SSD upgraded to 1tb. The 1tb SSD is TWICE AS FAST as the 512gb SSD (the 512gb is not "slow", but the larger drive is faster).

Final thought:
Do you really, really need all those tabs open at once?

 

[Mardiel8128]

Get 16gb of RAM on whatever you buy.
8gb is no longer enough !!

If you can afford it, I'd suggest the base model m2pro Mini, which comes with 8gb/512gb SSD.

If you can afford it, special-order the base model with an SSD upgraded to 1tb. The 1tb SSD is TWICE AS FAST as the 512gb SSD (the 512gb is not "slow", but the larger drive is faster).

Final thought:
Do you really, really need all those tabs open at once?

Hello
I think I will choose between m2 24gb ram and 1 tb ssd
or m2 pro base model 16gb ram and 512gb

Will the ram and ssd will be a huge difference or better go for the pro model

 

[ChrisA]

If you can afford it, special-order the base model with an SSD upgraded to 1tb. The 1tb SSD is TWICE AS FAST as the 512gb SSD (the 512gb is not "slow", but the larger drive is faster).

Final thought:
Do you really, really need all those tabs open at once?

The speed increase with added SSD is only when you go from 256 to 512. The Mac as the ability to interleave (or ping pong) the data between two SSD chips. SO if there are two chips it can be much faster. But it does not do more the 2-way it see,s

 

[Mardiel8128]

For 2 monitors, an M2 (not Pro) Mini with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD would likely do you good. 8GB RAM is not a good idea, and 24GB RAM will probably be of limited benefit. The 1TB SSD is reasonably priced; more than this it becomes more cost-effective to use an external SSD. 512GB SSD is also good. You can lose files no matter how stored, the solution is to have multiple backups. Plan on not filling an SSD more than 90%, else it will become inefficient.

For 3 monitors, the M2 Pro Mini would be best. It is possible to connect 3 monitors to the regular M2 Mini using Displaylink adapter, but there are drawbacks, it is not as good.

Another advantage of the M2 Pro Mini is that it had two more USB-C ports. With the regular M2 mini you will have no USB-C ports left if you connect 2 monitors to them, although one monitor (up to 4K) can be connected by HDMI instead

Hello, Why 24GB RAM will probably be of limited benefit?

 

[Mardiel8128]

Get 16gb of RAM on whatever you buy.
8gb is no longer enough !!

If you can afford it, I'd suggest the base model m2pro Mini, which comes with 8gb/512gb SSD.

If you can afford it, special-order the base model with an SSD upgraded to 1tb. The 1tb SSD is TWICE AS FAST as the 512gb SSD (the 512gb is not "slow", but the larger drive is faster).

Final thought:
Do you really, really need all those tabs open at once?

Hello,

It will be better to choose the base model 24gb ram and 1 tb ssd over the m2 pro model?

 

[ChrisA]

Hello, Why 24GB RAM will probably be of limited benefit?

OK, a technical answer. What you care about is the time required to access a word of data in RAM. We can compute this roughly using a simplifed model...

time = (probability of the data being in L2 cache) x (speed of L2 cache) +
(probability of the data being in RAM) x (speed of RAM) +
(probability of the data being in swap file) x (speed of swap file) +

The value (probability of the data being in RAM) is very high if you have 16 GB of ram and are only doing office productivity and social media. So going from 16GB to 24GB only moves the chance of the data being in either L2 or RAM from maybe 0.95 to perhaps 0.98 This was a big deal when the swap file lived on a spinning disk drive as the disk was almost a million times slower than RAM. But with faster SSD we care 1000 time less about swap.

In short, once almost all your data fits in RAM, there is little to be gained by having more RAM. (the above was a hint about how to calculate a numeric answer)

How do you know if the data fits in RAM. Use the prefomace meter app that comes with maxos. Or ak someone who has Mac to look and report results.

 

[Mardiel8128]

Get 16gb of RAM on whatever you buy.
8gb is no longer enough !!

If you can afford it, I'd suggest the base model m2pro Mini, which comes with 8gb/512gb SSD.

If you can afford it, special-order the base model with an SSD upgraded to 1tb. The 1tb SSD is TWICE AS FAST as the 512gb SSD (the 512gb is not "slow", but the larger drive is faster).

Final thought:
Do you really, really need all those tabs open at once?

Hello,

It will be better to choose the base model 24gb ram and 1 tb ssd over the m2 pro model?

OK, a technical answer. What you care about is the time required to access a word of data in RAM. We can compute this roughly using a simplifed model...

time = (probability of the data being in L2 cache) x (speed of L2 cache) +
(probability of the data being in RAM) x (speed of RAM) +
(probability of the data being in swap file) x (speed of swap file) +

The value (probability of the data being in RAM) is very high if you have 16 GB of ram and are only doing office productivity and social media. So going from 16GB to 24GB only moves the chance of the data being in either L2 or RAM from maybe 0.95 to perhaps 0.98 This was a big deal when the swap file lived on a spinning disk drive as the disk was almost a million times slower than RAM. But with faster SSD we care 1000 time less about swap.

In short, once almost all your data fits in RAM, there is little to be gained by having more RAM. (the above was a hint about how to calculate a numeric answer)

How do you know if the data fits in RAM. Use the prefomace meter app that comes with maxos. Or ak someone who has Mac to look and report results.

wou, I would go for the 16gb ram then
Thanks a lot friend