is m2 air @ 24GB RAM / 256GB SSD overkill / unbalanced?

[tagomagotexas]

Hi all, M1 Mac mini user here (using baseline 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD config), looking to upgrade to an M2 Air.

Mostly email, many tabs on Safari, chat apps, Spotify and occasional Photoshop and inDesign. I have found the 8GB RAM M1 Mac Mini to be frequently too slow for these tasks when many are open, even though I'm only using about half of my existing SSD (about 120 GB).

My question is this: the pricing for the M2 air gets more prohibitive the more upgrades you make. I feel like RAM (24GB) and possibly the GPU upgrade (from 8 to 10 cores) would be most important for me, but would that be weird to make these upgrades and keep the SSD at 256GB? I've heard that when RAM is low MACOS uses SSD swapping, so wondering whether I will have the same issue if my SSD is kept relatively small at 256GB, or whether the RAM upgrade will mean I don't have to worry too much - or ever? - about leftover SSD space? If one gets close to low SSD space but has high RAM, will the machine slow down?

My other question is about whether the 8-core to 10-core GPU upgrade will be worth it. Is that a reason why my current machine is too slow, or can one only feel a difference on the GPU upgrade in gaming or more intensive graphics tasks?

Thanks everyone - I know a few folks have written about these configs, but I hadn't yet seen someone asking about the RAM / SSD balance, if there is one, and whether maxing out RAM but not SSD would have any negative impact. Would love your thoughts.

 

[jav6454]

What is your activity monitor looking like in memory pressure? Let's start from gauging your needs first. Going from 8GB to 24GB is a big jump and as you stated adds cost.

As per space, you buy what you need as well. If you are using half of your SSD, it stands to reason you would need the next level up which is the 512GB drive.

However, as several users have stated, the more you upgrade the more the MBA loses it's value

 

[DHagan4755]

Welp, you're not insane. That's for starters. It's not going to hurt to max out the RAM...but 💰! Also given the state of the M2 13" MacBook Pro pre-orders, you may be waiting awhile for a MacBook Air model that has 24GB of RAM. Thank you supply chain issues.

16GB should be perfectly fine for your needs though. 8GB is limiting, especially with Adobe creative cloud apps. Upgrading the GPU to the 10-core chip is good too, but not necessary.

Besides checking out your memory pressure, when you go into Activity Monitor, sort your list by memory usage so you can see what processes are the largest consumers of memory (this may be set by default but I can't remember). You may have some process unrelated to what you do on the daily sucking up a lot of your memory.

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You can also see at the bottom how much memory has been swapped to your SSD.

 

[ucfgrad93]

For me the balance point is 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. I don’t need the extra GPU cores. However, everyone one has different needs/wants.

 

[Howard2k]

I think a lower storage allocation is more forgiving than a lower RAM allocation. You can do external storage super cheap and while an external SSD won’t be as fast as the internal SSD it’s still going to be fast. And if portability is a concern then that’s purely a factor of time. High performance M.2 SSDs are relatively small these days, even in an enclosure. Or if performance is not a concern then USB stick or SD type media are worthy options.

I went with 512 / 16 on my most recent cut if I had to compromise on one it would be the storage.

To a large degree or does depend on usage patterns too and shouldn’t be too arbitrary.

 

[yitwail]

My question is this: the pricing for the M2 air gets more prohibitive the more upgrades you make. I feel like RAM (24GB) and possibly the GPU upgrade (from 8 to 10 cores) would be most important for me, but would that be weird to make these upgrades and keep the SSD at 256GB? I've heard that when RAM is low MACOS uses SSD swapping, so wondering whether I will have the same issue if my SSD is kept relatively small at 256GB, or whether the RAM upgrade will mean I don't have to worry too much - or ever? - about leftover SSD space? If one gets close to low SSD space but has high RAM, will the machine slow down?

My other question is about whether the 8-core to 10-core GPU upgrade will be worth it. Is that a reason why my current machine is too slow, or can one only feel a difference on the GPU upgrade in gaming or more intensive graphics tasks?

I'm not a YouTube reviewer who can benchmark machines with different hardware configurations so my opinions are educated guesses but for all but the most intensive graphic applications, GPU core upgrade would have the least performance impact, and upgrading from 8GB to 16GB the most impact, so your current machine slowness is most probably due to 8GB RAM, not 8-core GPU. The trade off between upgrading to 512GB SSD or 24GB RAM is not so clear cut. The larger SSD would be inherently faster than the base SSD, but additional RAM would reduce the amount of SSD read/write. Ideally, you should upgrade both, but if you're going to stay with base storage, keep in mind that once you reach around 80% capacity, there's a performance impact and you're at risk of SSD failure. Also, keep in mind that OS update downloads are quite large, like 12.5GB I believe for Monterey, so you should probably limit SSD usage to 80% - 12.5GB.

 

[Cape Dave]

I'm not a YouTube reviewer who can benchmark machines with different hardware configurations so my opinions are educated guesses but for all but the most intensive graphic applications, GPU core upgrade would have the least performance impact, and upgrading from 8GB to 16GB the most impact, so your current machine slowness is most probably due to 8GB RAM, not 8-core GPU. The trade off between upgrading to 512GB SSD or 24GB RAM is not so clear cut. The larger SSD would be inherently faster than the base SSD, but additional RAM would reduce the amount of SSD read/write. Ideally, you should upgrade both, but if you're going to stay with base storage, keep in mind that once you reach around 80% capacity, there's a performance impact and you're at risk of SSD failure. Also, keep in mind that OS update downloads are quite large, like 12.5GB I believe for Monterey, so you should probably limit SSD usage to 80% - 12.5GB.

As a rule of thumb, I use 50% full as the MAX I want to use on my SSD. That leaves plenty of room for the odd big download and keeps the SSD at it's fastest.

 

[Saturn007]

Many report that the 512 GB SSD is a fair amount faster than the 256 GB.

It's really not that much extra money to get it!

 

[hans1972]

Based on Photoshop and InDesign being the only heavy applications you use and doing mostly 2D stuff, I would just upgrade the RAM to 16Gb.

Also PhotoShop and InDesign aren't really GPU dependent for most of the work you do in those applications.

If you are only using 120gb of SSD today, I don't see how you would benefit from getting a larger SSD.