How Much Memory as BASE specs

[chefwong]

I never really looked at activity monitor since I generally ran higher specs builds

I wanted something thin so I ordered a max spec MBA

I have a new MB Air M5 loaded with its max mem config of 32gb and was curious about memory ....and what potentials I may see before it goes to swap.


Fresh install, dropbox, OneDrive, Messages , Safari....6 tabs open, .All in , it's currently utilizing 16-18 1/2 GB on average and another 8 GB in cached files

With that said, swap memory aside, as I see posts about 16gb being sufficient for most, etc.....would one say 16GB or 24GB should be the minimum memory one should spec on any MacBook....just short of a laptop meant for web surfing.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I never really looked at activity monitor since I generally ran higher specs builds but it was always a MBP variant

I have a new MB Air M5 loaded with its max mem config of 32gb and was curious about memory ....and what potentials I may see before it goes to swap.


Fresh install, dropbox, OneDrive, Messages , Safari....6 tabs open, .All in , it's currently utilizing 16-18 1/2 GB on average and another 8 GB in cached files

With that said, swap memory aside, as I see posts about 16gb being sufficient for most, etc.....would one say 16GB or 24GB should be the minimum memory one should spec on their machine ?

MacOS will always use a high proportion of the installed memory. Doesn’t mean that everyone needs the actual amount of RAM being used by a machine with more installed RAM. All that matters, as a measure of sufficient memory, is Memory Pressure.

 

[bapegg]

The more RAM you have, the more MacOS will use.

I can run my Neo with Safari open with 10 or so tabs along with Messages, and a few of my amateur radio programming apps and it uses an average of 6 GB of RAM with 1-2 GB in cache. 8 GB is fine for general casual use.

My M4 Mini has 24 GB of RAM and I run three monitors with two Safari windows open, one for research/general web surfing and the second one for watching YouTube videos. I generally use the third monitor for documents and playing solitaire. I can have up to 20 tabs open, depending on what I am doing. I've never seen my RAM usage go over 18 GB and it averages 16-17 most of the time.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

As others said… just look at Memory Pressure, and Swap Used. Those are the only areas of concern, the rest is just “information” but not useful to diagnose a problem with capacity.

 

[Alameda]

Three things which take no talent:
Spending all your money
Filling up all your storage
Using all your RAM

Plenty of multimillionaires spent their way into bankruptcy. Anybody can fill an SSD drive no matter how big it is. And anyone can open browser tabs until they use all their system memory.

But what happens to memory in real life? Unless you have ultra-demanding requirements, as you switch from one app to another, the system pages a few gigs of memory to SSD and back in under a second. You can’t even notice the lag.

 

[maflynn]

Unlike windows, macOS is rather aggressive in allocating free memory. The old adage fits, free memory is wasted memory, so seeing higher amounts of memory being used isn't really a bad thing per say.

I'm of the mentality, that you configure your computer with the most memory (and storage) that you can afford.

 

[bapegg]

I'm of the mentality, that you configure your computer with the most memory (and storage) that you can afford.

You still can have more memory than the system will use. That will depend on your use case though. 16 GB would not really be enough for me on my Mac mini so I went with 24 GB. That being said, I have not seen more that 19 GB of memory being used with my mostly casual use.

I run three monitors with two Safari windows open and documents or simple card games on the third monitor. I could get by with 16 GB if I was only running 1 or 2 monitors and wasn't using one Safari window for web surfing/research and the other for watching videos.

My workload on the Neo is even less so 8 GB is fine. Though it would be nice to see the next Neo to have 12 GB.

How much RAM someone needs is going to depend on their use case.

 

[avro707]

The higher base ram amount on recent macs was the best thing and widely praised.

Until the MacBook Neo arrived and now we are back to “you don’t need more than 8GB”.

My lowest machine is 16gb - an M2 MBA. My highest is 96GB which I was going to upgrade much higher until memory prices shot upwards.

 

[Alameda]

You still can have more memory than the system will use. That will depend on your use case though. 16 GB would not really be enough for me on my Mac mini so I went with 24 GB. That being said, I have not seen more that 19 GB of memory being used with my mostly casual use.

I run three monitors with two Safari windows open and documents or simple card games on the third monitor. I could get by with 16 GB if I was only running 1 or 2 monitors and wasn't using one Safari window for web surfing/research and the other for watching videos.

My workload on the Neo is even less so 8 GB is fine. Though it would be nice to see the next Neo to have 12 GB.

How much RAM someone needs is going to depend on their use case.

You would need to test two comparable Macs back to back with the different memory configurations in order to say, definitely, that the added memory is necessary or a performance booster. Then you could benchmark how long various tasks take to complete.

Then again, I finally upgraded my M1 Pro to an M5 Pro and chose 48 GB. So obviously I set a terrible example.

 

[bapegg]

You would need to test two comparable Macs back to back with the different memory configurations in order to say, definitely, that the added memory is necessary or a performance booster

I don't have the luxury of having two comparable Macs available to me. All I have is my M4 Mac Min an Neo. I gave my son my old 2018 Mac mini but that would be an apples to oranges comparison too.

The M4 Mac mini with 24 GB of RAM will run circles around the 2018 Mac mini with 64 GB of RAM and the I7 CPU.

Just going by my average memory usage with the M4 Mac mini, 16GB would not have been enough. I average 17-18 GB of memory usage. My uses for the Neo are a lot lighter as I am not running two Safari Windows with multiple tabs open nor I am I using three monitors with it. So the 8 GB works fine for me.

How much RAM one needs is really based on individual use cases. The type of apps and how many apps are open at one time will have an effect.

I would have gotten more RAM in my M4 Mac mini if I was still doing a lot of CAD work or a lot of network modeling/testing. Plus I don't edit a lot of photos or videos either.

 

[Alameda]

I don't have the luxury of having two comparable Macs available to me. All I have is my M4 Mac Min an Neo. I gave my son my old 2018 Mac mini but that would be an apples to oranges comparison too.

The M4 Mac mini with 24 GB of RAM will run circles around the 2018 Mac mini with 64 GB of RAM and the I7 CPU.

Just going by my average memory usage with the M4 Mac mini, 16GB would not have been enough. I average 17-18 GB of memory usage. My uses for the Neo are a lot lighter as I am not running two Safari Windows with multiple tabs open nor I am I using three monitors with it. So the 8 GB works fine for me.

How much RAM one needs is really based on individual use cases. The type of apps and how many apps are open at one time will have an effect.

I would have gotten more RAM in my M4 Mac mini if I was still doing a lot of CAD work or a lot of network modeling/testing. Plus I don't edit a lot of photos or videos either.

What I mean is that the Activity Monitor isn’t really showing you RAM use, except for the “Memory Pressure” graph.

The Chrome browser, for example, is notorious for pre-fetching pages and it can easily take up many gigs of RAM, but they’re all purgeable and pageable.

On my 16GB M1, I never once got an out of memory message, but my son did manage to bring his 8GB M1 machine to a crawl because he didn’t even know he could quit unused applications. And kids think they know everything.

 

[PotentPeas]

Unlike windows, macOS is rather aggressive in allocating free memory.

Windows does the same thing. So does Linux. Extra RAM is used for disk cache. (My Windows workstation right now is using 38 GB for apps and 24 GB for disk cache.) Different monitoring tools report this differently. But putting the RAM to use as a cache is better than letting it sit idle since it doesn't really "waste" in resources to give it something to hold. Memory used for the disk cache will be freed for actual use as soon as a program actually "needs" the RAM.

 

[boppin]

The more RAM you have, the more MacOS will use.

Not really.

Saw a Screenshot from a MacBook Pro with 128 GB RAM and just 46% percent used memory. Total wasted RAM

 

[bapegg]

Not really.

Saw a Screenshot from a MacBook Pro with 128 GB RAM and just 46% percent used memory. Total wasted RAM

It really depends on what you are running at one time. And one would never get close to using 128 GB under daily casual use. An one most likely won't come close to using all 128 GB even with heavy photo or video editing.

I don't even use the full 24 GB of RAM on my Mac mini with three monitors and a bunch of Safari tabs open along with other apps running on the third monitor.

I average 6 GB under my normal use with the Neo.

 

[boppin]

It really depends on what you are running at one time.

I have hast started all Apps on my M4 MacBook Air and also logged in with another user but the memory pressure was all green. So I see no need for more RAM at all.

 

[bapegg]

I have hast started all Apps on my M4 MacBook Air and also logged in with another user but the memory pressure was all green. So I see no need for more RAM at all.

I have said it many times, everyone's use case is going to be different. one can easily get by with 8 GB or 16 GB while others will need more RAM.

 

[boppin]

I have said it many times, everyone's use case is going to be different. one can easily get by with 8 GB or 16 GB while others will need more RAM.

Honestly, I've never heard of someone saying "oh, I absolutely need more RAM!" in real life, and that's usually only from people who've been driven crazy by some forum members.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

I average 6 GB under my normal use with the Neo.

Not Neo-specific, but, people who mount iCloud Drive on multiple systems may find that they get some significant additional memory pressure from that. And, that is something that a Neo user might do without trying to edit a feature-length 4K movie on the Neo.

 

[boppin]

significant additional memory pressure from that.

And if that's the case? What does that even mean? That the RAM is finally being used properly? I never look at the activity monitor. I just use the device. There used to be some paging between 1 and 3 GB of RAM. So what? If I think or feel that something is running slowly, I restart the device. What's the point of having UNIX under the hood anyway?

 

[BSDnostalgia]

And if that's the case? What does that even mean? That the RAM is finally being used properly?

{Yes, that is what it means. I feel sorry for the RAM in systems that have been over-provisioned. It must make the RAM feel bad because it isn't really needed, just running Safari with one or two tabs. You should be able to do really simple stuff in 8 MB, let alone 8 GB.}

I only mentioned it because lots of people use cloud-based things and sometimes that slows things down more than if those things were done locally, what with the network delay and needing local buffer space.

If I think or feel that something is running slowly, I restart the device. What's the point of having UNIX under the hood anyway?

We will have to agree to disagree on that one. I just upgraded to 26.4.1. Last reboot was upgrade to 26.4. I often go a month or two between reboots. If something is slowing down, I figure out what I am doing wrong, because, the "system" doesn't just slow down after running for a while. It isn't Windows.

 

[boppin]

Or to tell you this story: A former colleague of mine had an iMac and downloaded a strange tool from the Mac App Store that was supposed to free up RAM. Instead of doing that, it was just running sudo purge in the background. No wonder the system was so slow.