I'm thinking of buying an M1 Mini from either eBay or the refurb store as a test machine while I wait (possibly forever) for Apple to release an Mx desktop machine between the current Mini and the Studio. I'd use this to replace my home server once (if) Apple does see the light, which is an Intel i7 with 16GB memory. My question is about memory needs. I'd like to go as inexpensive as possible, which means 8GB memory. I'm still not sure what memory needs are on M1 machines, so I don't know if 8GB will suffice. It's fine for a test machine, but I don't want to end up with a throttled server because of low memory. I suspect there's not a problem, because the server isn't really doing anything I'd consider memory-intensive, mostly runs some processing scripts/codes (Fortran/python stuff written by me) and handles the backup drives. I got 16GB on the current Mini because of the direction macOS (then OSX) was headed at the time (towards bloated). I'm running Big Sur on an Intel MBP with 8GB, and it does show sluggishness at times, but that's on Intel silicon and I hear rumors that the M1 platform needs less memory. I'm happy with having most storage external, so the size of the internal SSD is not a concern.
If this were a machine I'd be using face-to-face on a daily basis, I'd do 16 GB. However, for an essentially headless server that's not handling video (or heavy audio) I'm not sure that 8GB isn't enough. Thoughts?
If this were a machine I'd be using face-to-face on a daily basis, I'd do 16 GB. However, for an essentially headless server that's not handling video (or heavy audio) I'm not sure that 8GB isn't enough. Thoughts?
