How many people regret getting the base 16GB RAM on the M4 Mac Mini....?

[redheeler]

No one knows what AI will require. It may require minimal hardware as most of the work is done on servers. 16GB may be fine. I don't buy second guessing the a future I cannot predict. I buy for what works now. If three years down the road I have to buy again, so what. At least then I will know what I need.

Yes, buying again will lose some value. But how much? $300 a year if trade-ins are included. Less than a dollar a day. From people that spend $8.00 a day for a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the best strategy with the base model Mac mini. If the upgrades were cheaper or could be done DIY, it'd be a completely different story. And this is coming from someone who's always preferred to keep Macs for the long term – Apple has made it just not very logical in this case with an attractively priced base model Mac mini but upgrades that are overpriced. Things like OpenCore Legacy Patcher to keep it going past the 7 years are likely to have trouble working well on Apple Silicon also.

On the plus side, I can always find secondary uses for older Mac minis after they get replaced. They make great servers on a lightweight Linux for example, the low power consumption and noise level makes a very ideal server.

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

I could use a new computer pretty quick, and the M4 Mac Mini seems like a bargain and as updated as I need, but getting the max ram doubles the price and keeps it from being the quick purchase I need.

How many people have the 16GB RAM and regret it on a daily basis? I do a lot of browsing, open Chrome tabs, and have 5 or 6 different brand browsers open at once most of the time (research). I 3D print, also I'm learning some CAD programs, but just learning, and I can put it off for a few months till I upgrade again, but in the meantime, is the base RAM only good for a few tabs and browsing, or does it take some pretty heavy applications to slow it down?

It depends what sort of CAD work you're doing. I worked on an 11" i7 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, for over 10 years, primarily running AutoCAD doing 2D drafting. In the last couple of years larger jobs started running a little slow. Not unbearably so, but you'd notice it. Also SketchUp would start running badly when the jobs got bigger, but that would just stop rendering things when you moved them.

I've got a bit over a year on my M3 Pro (with 18GB RAM), and everything is still flying. I never notice RAM being a problem, even when I'm doing thermal modelling, and have a Windows VM open on another screen, which is definitely pushing something into swap. The only time RAM has been an issue for me was when I was mucking about with running LLMs, and that was just about what sized LLM I could run. Since I never found anything useful to do with them, I stopped using them, so it no longer matters.

I would expect doing larger jobs in Revit or something might require more RAM.