The Mac Studio seems like overkill for me and I am in theory the kind of user the Mini is made for. I don't really do graphical/video work at all. However, I have an M1 MacBook Air with 16/512 and I've actually been surprisingly unhappy with the memory ceiling. I use large annotated PDFs and have many open at a time, in addition to many Chrome tabs. I find I need to restart more often than I'd like, when memory pressure develops in the Activity Monitor. Since a souped-up Mini is over $1,000, I'm tempted to buy a base Studio, which gives me the 32GB/512 I'd like and then I'd have no worries about future-proofing. But is it just pointless overbuying? Anothe rpossibility is I wait for a new Mini in a few months.
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Mac Mini loaded vs Mac Studio
- Thread starter ecdh
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I went from M1 mini to base Mac Studio. The price increase of a loaded mini vs. base studio is only a few hundred dollars. The extra ports and compute headroom make a lot of sense for the price.
Unless it's a financial burden on you, the Studio will be the better buy...
M1 Mac mini:
M1 Max Mac Studio:
Without those two upgrades the M1 Mac mini would be $1099...
The M1 Max Mac Studio upgrade provides:
- 8-core CPU (4P/4E)
- 8-core GPU
- 16GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
- 66GB/s UMA bandwidth
- 2TB SSD
- 10Gb Ethernet
- $1799
M1 Max Mac Studio:
- 10-core CPU (8P/2E)
- 24-core GPU
- Media Engine
- 32GB LPDDR5 SDRAM
- 400GB/s UMA bandwidth
- 512GB SSD
- 10Gb Ethernet
- $1999
Without those two upgrades the M1 Mac mini would be $1099...
The M1 Max Mac Studio upgrade provides:
- two more CPU P-cores
- two less CPU E-cores
- 16 more GPU cores
- 16GB more RAM (LPDDR5 versus LPDDR4X)
- increased UMA bandwidth
- Media Engine
If you do not have performance problems then stop looking at the Activity Monitor. Forget about memory pressure and swap unless you have performance problems.
An M1 Mac Mini would be fine for you. Don't even need to get it loaded up to the max. I have the 16gb/512gb + external 2tb SSD + 2 monitors and it works very well using Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Topaz programs, Safari with dozens of tabs + Chrome with dozens of tabs, TextEdit with 3-4 open tabs, multiple Finder windows, etc.
For years I tend to reboot about once a week just to clear memory out, reset and initialize the OS and hardware. When I restart I use the option to reopen all my windows so in a few seconds I am back to where I was.
An M1 Mac Mini would be fine for you. Don't even need to get it loaded up to the max. I have the 16gb/512gb + external 2tb SSD + 2 monitors and it works very well using Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Topaz programs, Safari with dozens of tabs + Chrome with dozens of tabs, TextEdit with 3-4 open tabs, multiple Finder windows, etc.
For years I tend to reboot about once a week just to clear memory out, reset and initialize the OS and hardware. When I restart I use the option to reopen all my windows so in a few seconds I am back to where I was.
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Note that a souped up Mac mini in 2023 will likely have a 24 GB option, reflecting that option for the M2 MacBook Air and M2 MacBook Pro.
You don't need the power of Mac Studio judging by the description of your requirements. What you need is lots of memory, although it's up to you to decide if that's 24 GB or 32 GB. If you think 24 GB would suffice, I would recommend just waiting with what you have until the new Mac mini comes out.
You don't need the power of Mac Studio judging by the description of your requirements. What you need is lots of memory, although it's up to you to decide if that's 24 GB or 32 GB. If you think 24 GB would suffice, I would recommend just waiting with what you have until the new Mac mini comes out.
I bought a base Studio last week and I'm using it with the M1 mini 16/512 right now. I'm pretty sure that I could run all of my stuff on the Studio but have the option to use the two together. I do really need the 32 GB to run my production at the same time. I was running production on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro 32/1 for video work when my other production was running on the mini. I can run everything on the MacBook Pro when I am mobile.
The Studio is a no-brainer if you need more than two monitors too.
The Studio is a no-brainer if you need more than two monitors too.
Thank you. Perhaps I was unclear. I wasn't trying to equalize price, I was suggesting a comparison of a 16GB Mini at around $1,100 vs a base 32GB Studio at $2K (though one can do much better on a street price, as with education pricing). I'm basically not thrilled with the idea of getting another 16gb M1, which I already have in laptop form and find merely adequate. The other poster's note about a 24gb next-gen Mini is a good compromise idea.
I do have performance issues. Things slow to a crawl and I get the "not responding" note when I open the Force Quit box--then I open Activity Monitor and see why. But yes, maybe if I just restarted more often, I'd be happier with the laptop!
I moved my main production from the mini to the Studio this morning and am running half my office stuff on the Studio as well. The Studio handles it with ease while I had to run my office stuff on another system and only ran my video editing when I wasn't running main production. I am not completely sure that I can do main production with video editing at the same time as main production uses about 70% of the GPU cores. I will give it a try at some point though. My original plan was to run 2 minis together for the whole workload but it looks like I can just run one studio and it will handle it well.
The mini could technically handle everything that I want the Studio to do but there'd be compressed RAM and swap and probably beachballs. I generally try to avoid swap, and compressed RAM to get the best performance possible from my systems.
If I had it to do over again, I'd think about a 32-core GPU, 1 TB SSD and 64 GB of RAM. I don't think that I need them right now but I like to play around with virtual machines and sometimes need to run Windows.
What is your PDF editor/viewer? Acrobat? I hate that piece of software! Could be part of the problem...
I use Preview. I've always been happy with the feature set and ease of use, but I am kind of amazed by the memory usage when I have a bunch of all-text documents open. Multiple gigs. Granted, sometimes I am working with a 5,000-word court document as one of the windows.
Okay, I see. In your OP you never mentioned any performance problems. You only mentioned seeing memory pressure in the Activity Monitor. It is a great idea to reboot all digital devices (Mac, PC, tablet, phone, digicam, etc.) from time to time to reset and reinitialize both software and hardware. I have been doing this for decades. Many years as a software engineer helps me to understand how complex software (and hardware) which is never 100% bug free, often has some memory leaks, and so on so rebooting occasionally fixes many things. Once or twice a week for my Mac and PC keeps them running well. My phone and tablet I reboot about twice a month.
It takes about 5 seconds once a week for me to reboot and have all my windows restored. If those 5 seconds once a week are a big problem for you then $2000 for a Mac Studio might be the way to go. How is performance after a reboot? Is it good? For how long?
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I had a 16GB M1 Mini for a while (later gen Apple refurb), ordered a Studio Base 32 GB RAM/512 GB storage and sold the Mini while the price was still high (there were no refurbs available from Apple at the time). Could not be happier and have no regrets. Studio performance is significantly better in my opinion.
yeah, but you have free health care.
My GPU and CPU usage on the base M1 Studio. I ran this on my mini and it did run but I'm wondering if I was dropping frames. This is without video editing though I don't know if video editing really uses the GPU cores or if it's CPU or one of the special engines.
Who here on this entire Mac rumors forum (not just mac mini, but all macs) ever regretted buying too fast of a Mac? Ever?
I’ll answer that for you.
Nobody
I’ll answer that for you.
Nobody
In 2017 I bought a Core i7 iMac 27". I regretted it, because the fans were damn annoying. It was fast for the time, but it ran hot. So, I returned it and bought a Core i5 and I was much, much happier. I am still using that i5 to this day, and in fact I am typing this post on it right now. The i5 runs silently.
I have actually heard that the Mac Studio fan is bothersome to some people who have gotten used to the silence of the Silicon MacBooks and Minis. Thoughts from anyone on that?
I think the Mac Studio is hit and miss for fan noise. A friend has one and he says he never hears the fan, unless he sticks his ear right up to it.
In contrast, ALL of the 2017 Core i7 iMacs ramped up the fan with any heavy CPU usage longer than about 30s. Basically, that chip just wasn't appropriate for the iMac cooling system IMO. To bad the iMacs didn't get the cooling that was present in the iMac Pro. IIRC reports are that the iMac Pro 27" actually ran quieter than the Core i7 iMac 27", despite having much hotter chips in the iMac Pro.
Seems like some have it and some don't. I have a Mac Studio 30 inches away and I don't hear it at all.
Some... for example: those who purchased a last gen Intel 16" MBP overheating blast furnace.
I decided on a 10th gen 2020 13" MBP instead that still runs great & cool. Haven't regretted any Mac purchases since G3 Pismo OS X Kodiak days.