Hello there, dear Mac mini forum!
As you might remember, I already initiated a thread regarding wether to buy the M4 or the M4 Pro Mac mini. During this past holidays I was testing both machines, and I came to the conclusion that the M4 was plenty enough for me.
Then, I realized we were already 6 months in on the M4 cycle, and the M5 was coming rather sooner than later. So I decided to wait… and wait… for the M5 coming in October, as my definitive purchase. Remember that I am that kind of a consumer that instead of buying a base model and replacing it every 2 or 3 years, I usually keep my machines for a long, long time. My current Mac mini is in fact an 11 years old 2014 intel Mac mini, which I barely use now (I’m writing this from my M2 iPad Pro connected to my main monitor).
I was set to wait until the M5 and then buy a well specced machine that could last me 10 years. But now, with the new US administration’s tariffs, and how the stocks and the enterprise world is reacting, I am afraid of prices going up even further, even here in the eurozone. I know this tariffs are initially going to impact US and China, but here in Europe we always, eventually, get hit with higher prices than the US for some reason, so I’ve decided that this is the time to get my new Mac mini, even if it is the M4 instead of the M5. In fact, it is likely that the regular M5 won’t be as high as an upgrade and the focus will be put on the M5 Pro and Max, but even if the base M5 comes with a much better GPU, I’m not buying my Mac mini to game, as I intend to get a PS5 Pro for that purpose.
Now, to the thread’s question:
Okay, this past holidays, as I previously said, I had the chance to test both, the M4 with 16GB of RAM and the M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM. Yes, they were both the base systems. In both systems, storage was rather limited, so I’m going for the 1TB version. I know, I know, Thunderbolt 4 external drives offer better bang for the buck and they are as fast as the internal SSD, but I want a minimum of 1TB of SSD because I know I will eventually need it, I want to have at least a 30 to 40% of free available space, and I don’t like to feel like I need to carry around an external SSD.
That being said, along with the 1TB of storage, I want either 24 or 32GB of RAM. And there is where my doubt is, my main question: should I buy the 24GB or the 32GB model?
My experience with 16GB of RAM:
See, on the systems I had been testing, this were my experiences: The 16GB base M4, with the usage I had been giving it, the 16GB were consumed rather quickly. If this happened on a “launch” operating system, such as macOS 15, I cannot imagine how would it be on a redesigned, brand new macOS 16, or with future Apple Intelligence iterations, that will probably eat up more RAM. On my M2 iPad Pro, now that I have 16GB of RAM, the difference with my previous iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM isn’t that big. Actually, I would say it is rather unnoticeable. But macOS is a different beast, and we all know those memory leaks that end up eating tons of RAM, and web browser tabs etc… If 16GB of RAM is barely enough now for my macOS 15 usage, I am quite sure it will be even worse in 3 or 4 years.
My experience with 24GB of RAM
Now, regarding the M4 Pro machine with 24GB of faster RAM. Yes, it was enough. You might say “you’ve answered yourself, sir” And, well, maybe I just did, but I still wanted to ask the forum. Because the M4 Pro 24GB were faster than the regular M4 are, and I’m not sure if I should take that into account. Regarding gaming: Resident Evil 2 was a bit taxing on RAM with everything maxed out, I reached the yellow or maybe even the red zone, and performance started to degrade, both in the game and the system. Yes, to reach that point I had RE2 running along with another apps, such as the browser and an emulator. Am I going to use my M4 Mac mini as a gaming machine? Definitely not. As I previously said, I plan to get a PS5 Pro in the near future, but there are some games that are either PC exclusive (which I plan to run via Crossover or Whiskey, and those emulators eat a good amount of RAM) or I have purchased on the App Store because I prefer to play them at my Mac, such as Myst and Riven. And yeah, maybe 24GB are enough now, especially if I don’t run other software, but what about in 3-4 years?
I like to multitask a lot. I am that kind of user that has several apps open in the background and switch from one to another, and I like to feel my system responsive. That includes browsers such as Safari and Brave (and maybe Firefox, but definitely not Google Chrome), and other apps that might be RAM intensive or not.
Potential usages (in the future):
This is just an hypothetical scenario but, as I said, I am planning this purchase for the long term and I plan to use it for 8 to 10 years. I would like to get into amateur music production, which is known to eat a lot of RAM. I am also interested in playing with local LLMs as new, more efficient models are coming through. I also plan to purchase Mac Whisper, and use it with a lot of hours-long audios; I’m not sure how much RAM does Mac Whisper need, but I suspect a significant amount.
Another potential use will be, very occasionally, using a streaming software like OBS (or something like that) to stream some games in Twitch. Is that RAM intensive or just CPU intensive?
Conclusions:
I guess after reading all this post, the TL;DR is that, for future-proofing my machine, which is going to be my main computer for the next 8 to 10 years, I should really invest the extra 225€ (now the student discount lowers a bit the SSD/RAM upgrade price) in getting the 32GB model. However, the prices of the 1TB/24GB and the 1TB/32GB models are (discount included) 1.325€, and 1.550€ respectively. While 1.325€ is a reasonable price for the machine… 1.550€ is a bit steep for me. That’s why I am asking, to what extent it is advisable to get the 32GB model.
I guess, at the end of the day, what I really should ponder, is wether those 225€ extra are worth it or not. But I think it is not the same spending 1.125€ vs 900€, where the budget can get stretched more easily to the 1.125€ price, that going from 1.325€ to 1.550€, which is already a lot of money, and even though I can buy it, I would feel a bit of remorse. But maybe I feel the same remorse if I get the 24GB and several years down the road I need the 32GB, and we live in an hyperinflation economy where a similarly specced Mac is impossible for me to access to. That’s why maybe now that I could add those 225€ I should aim for a machine that, while it has more RAM that I might need now, it could come in handy in the mid-future.
I am writing this post, because I’m not sure how well future proofed a 24GB machine is, with the uses I have for it now, and may have in the future. With the uncertainty of the future redesigned macOS, the future Apple Intelligence features, the new hobbies and tasks I might eventually get into… Maybe 24GB are still enough, but a bit tight and having lots of swap. And I hate seeing a lot of swap in the SSD because I know that is eating years of life of my system’s SSD. And as I said, I like to multitask and I enjoy responsiveness among my apps.
What would you do, dear forum?
I know this is a highly subjective topic, even controversial (remember when many MR users advocated adamantly for the base 8GB machines because that was more than enough?), but I think it could be helpful for me to read your experiences and opinions.
Thanks for reading.
As you might remember, I already initiated a thread regarding wether to buy the M4 or the M4 Pro Mac mini. During this past holidays I was testing both machines, and I came to the conclusion that the M4 was plenty enough for me.
Then, I realized we were already 6 months in on the M4 cycle, and the M5 was coming rather sooner than later. So I decided to wait… and wait… for the M5 coming in October, as my definitive purchase. Remember that I am that kind of a consumer that instead of buying a base model and replacing it every 2 or 3 years, I usually keep my machines for a long, long time. My current Mac mini is in fact an 11 years old 2014 intel Mac mini, which I barely use now (I’m writing this from my M2 iPad Pro connected to my main monitor).
I was set to wait until the M5 and then buy a well specced machine that could last me 10 years. But now, with the new US administration’s tariffs, and how the stocks and the enterprise world is reacting, I am afraid of prices going up even further, even here in the eurozone. I know this tariffs are initially going to impact US and China, but here in Europe we always, eventually, get hit with higher prices than the US for some reason, so I’ve decided that this is the time to get my new Mac mini, even if it is the M4 instead of the M5. In fact, it is likely that the regular M5 won’t be as high as an upgrade and the focus will be put on the M5 Pro and Max, but even if the base M5 comes with a much better GPU, I’m not buying my Mac mini to game, as I intend to get a PS5 Pro for that purpose.
Now, to the thread’s question:
Okay, this past holidays, as I previously said, I had the chance to test both, the M4 with 16GB of RAM and the M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM. Yes, they were both the base systems. In both systems, storage was rather limited, so I’m going for the 1TB version. I know, I know, Thunderbolt 4 external drives offer better bang for the buck and they are as fast as the internal SSD, but I want a minimum of 1TB of SSD because I know I will eventually need it, I want to have at least a 30 to 40% of free available space, and I don’t like to feel like I need to carry around an external SSD.
That being said, along with the 1TB of storage, I want either 24 or 32GB of RAM. And there is where my doubt is, my main question: should I buy the 24GB or the 32GB model?
My experience with 16GB of RAM:
See, on the systems I had been testing, this were my experiences: The 16GB base M4, with the usage I had been giving it, the 16GB were consumed rather quickly. If this happened on a “launch” operating system, such as macOS 15, I cannot imagine how would it be on a redesigned, brand new macOS 16, or with future Apple Intelligence iterations, that will probably eat up more RAM. On my M2 iPad Pro, now that I have 16GB of RAM, the difference with my previous iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM isn’t that big. Actually, I would say it is rather unnoticeable. But macOS is a different beast, and we all know those memory leaks that end up eating tons of RAM, and web browser tabs etc… If 16GB of RAM is barely enough now for my macOS 15 usage, I am quite sure it will be even worse in 3 or 4 years.
My experience with 24GB of RAM
Now, regarding the M4 Pro machine with 24GB of faster RAM. Yes, it was enough. You might say “you’ve answered yourself, sir” And, well, maybe I just did, but I still wanted to ask the forum. Because the M4 Pro 24GB were faster than the regular M4 are, and I’m not sure if I should take that into account. Regarding gaming: Resident Evil 2 was a bit taxing on RAM with everything maxed out, I reached the yellow or maybe even the red zone, and performance started to degrade, both in the game and the system. Yes, to reach that point I had RE2 running along with another apps, such as the browser and an emulator. Am I going to use my M4 Mac mini as a gaming machine? Definitely not. As I previously said, I plan to get a PS5 Pro in the near future, but there are some games that are either PC exclusive (which I plan to run via Crossover or Whiskey, and those emulators eat a good amount of RAM) or I have purchased on the App Store because I prefer to play them at my Mac, such as Myst and Riven. And yeah, maybe 24GB are enough now, especially if I don’t run other software, but what about in 3-4 years?
I like to multitask a lot. I am that kind of user that has several apps open in the background and switch from one to another, and I like to feel my system responsive. That includes browsers such as Safari and Brave (and maybe Firefox, but definitely not Google Chrome), and other apps that might be RAM intensive or not.
Potential usages (in the future):
This is just an hypothetical scenario but, as I said, I am planning this purchase for the long term and I plan to use it for 8 to 10 years. I would like to get into amateur music production, which is known to eat a lot of RAM. I am also interested in playing with local LLMs as new, more efficient models are coming through. I also plan to purchase Mac Whisper, and use it with a lot of hours-long audios; I’m not sure how much RAM does Mac Whisper need, but I suspect a significant amount.
Another potential use will be, very occasionally, using a streaming software like OBS (or something like that) to stream some games in Twitch. Is that RAM intensive or just CPU intensive?
Conclusions:
I guess after reading all this post, the TL;DR is that, for future-proofing my machine, which is going to be my main computer for the next 8 to 10 years, I should really invest the extra 225€ (now the student discount lowers a bit the SSD/RAM upgrade price) in getting the 32GB model. However, the prices of the 1TB/24GB and the 1TB/32GB models are (discount included) 1.325€, and 1.550€ respectively. While 1.325€ is a reasonable price for the machine… 1.550€ is a bit steep for me. That’s why I am asking, to what extent it is advisable to get the 32GB model.
I guess, at the end of the day, what I really should ponder, is wether those 225€ extra are worth it or not. But I think it is not the same spending 1.125€ vs 900€, where the budget can get stretched more easily to the 1.125€ price, that going from 1.325€ to 1.550€, which is already a lot of money, and even though I can buy it, I would feel a bit of remorse. But maybe I feel the same remorse if I get the 24GB and several years down the road I need the 32GB, and we live in an hyperinflation economy where a similarly specced Mac is impossible for me to access to. That’s why maybe now that I could add those 225€ I should aim for a machine that, while it has more RAM that I might need now, it could come in handy in the mid-future.
I am writing this post, because I’m not sure how well future proofed a 24GB machine is, with the uses I have for it now, and may have in the future. With the uncertainty of the future redesigned macOS, the future Apple Intelligence features, the new hobbies and tasks I might eventually get into… Maybe 24GB are still enough, but a bit tight and having lots of swap. And I hate seeing a lot of swap in the SSD because I know that is eating years of life of my system’s SSD. And as I said, I like to multitask and I enjoy responsiveness among my apps.
What would you do, dear forum?
I know this is a highly subjective topic, even controversial (remember when many MR users advocated adamantly for the base 8GB machines because that was more than enough?), but I think it could be helpful for me to read your experiences and opinions.
Thanks for reading.
Last edited:
