Mac Mini questions!

[Joker73]

Hello, there! I want to switch from Windows to Mac and the best way to do so for me it's buying the Mac Mini M1. But before taking that leap I've some questions and I hope you can help me:

• I'm thinking about buying LG 24MK600M monitor. It should work fine as it has a HDMI connection. Am I right?
• I'm thinking about buying the 500GB Mac and a 1TB SSD drive too. Any SSD recommendation? What type of SSD should I be looking for (M.2, 2,5"...)?
• Do you think that choosing the 250GB model is enough if I use a 1TB SSD drive or is it better to choose the 500GB model instead?
• Any other suggestion?

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

If you're talking about the new "m1 Mini" (as distinguished from the Intel Minis, which are still sold), I'd suggest 16gb of RAM and 512gb SSD as "the minimum configuration".

 

[Joker73]

If you're talking about the new "m1 Mini" (as distinguished from the Intel Minis, which are still sold), I'd suggest 16gb of RAM and 512gb SSD as "the minimum configuration".

The M1, yes.
Why that option instead of the 8GB one? It's much more expensive.

 

[Cassandle]

People will always tell you to spend more money, because it's not theirs.

I have an 8GB Mini, and not had any issues. I have multiple Safari tabs open, Music, Photos, 1Password, Messages, Activity Monitor, VMWare Horizon (via Rosetta) and Steam all open right now, and the 'memory pressure' is in green. Never had any slowdown. 16GB is only "the minimum configuration" if you're using heavy-duty apps (in which you're probably better off waiting for the next M1 machines anyway, as the M1 Mini is very much an 'entry-level' machine).

 

[Joker73]

People will always tell you to spend more money, because it's not theirs.

I have an 8GB Mini, and not had any issues. I have multiple Safari tabs open, Music, Photos, 1Password, Messages, Activity Monitor, VMWare Horizon (via Rosetta) and Steam all open right now, and the 'memory pressure' is in green. Never had any slowdown. 16GB is only "the minimum configuration" if you're using heavy-duty apps (in which you're probably better off waiting for the next M1 machines anyway, as the M1 Mini is very much an 'entry-level' machine).

Thanks! My daily use is very similar to yours plus some Photoshop/Lightroom. How does Steam perform on M1? There's no native app, right?

 

[Cassandle]

Thanks! My daily use is very similar to yours plus some Photoshop/Lightroom. How does Steam perform on M1? There's no native app, right?

Yeah I think Steam is emulated via Rosetta (might be wrong though).

I play a few games that are not especially intensive (Football Manager, Planet Coaster, Euro Truck Simulator, Two Point Hospital) all on high or max settings. No slowdown, no fans. The M1 is a fantastic machine.

I'm also interested in the answers you get regarding an external hard-drive. I have the 256GB model as I refuse to pay Apple's tax on memory, and am looking for something to offload music and photos too. I've already got a 1TB external Seagate drive for running Time Machine backups. I'll probably get something similar for the media, but people may have a better suggestion.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"My daily use is very similar to yours plus some Photoshop/Lightroom..."

Then I suggest that you definitely need 16gb of RAM.
It's $200 more. Not all that much.

But I predict it will make a significant difference going forward, particularly with OS releases that are "yet to come"...

 

[harriska2]

The video on my 8gb i5 absolutely did not work with my 4k monitor. Even youtube wouldn’t play videos. Upgraded it to 32 gb and it works perfect. Can’t upgrade the m1.

 

[Lamoonman]

Please read my review at: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252106534
Find LamoonMan user.

 

[Boyd01]

The video on my 8gb i5 absolutely did not work with my 4k monitor.

That is an issue with the Intel UHD 630 graphics chip on the Intel Mini, the OP is talking about the M1 Mini which has a completely different graphics system. From what I've read, 8gb won't be an issue for that, although there are evidently a lot of other monitor issues on the M1 (just look at all the threads in this forum).

You might spend awhile looking at this long thread however. I have not really followed it, but the gist is that the M1 does a lot of data swapping to the SSD which may shorten its lifespan. Don't know, but the 8gb version might be more prone to this, so it's worth having a look at least.

M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

Over the past week, some M1 Mac users have been reporting alarming SSD health readings, suggesting that these devices are writing extraordinary amounts of data to their drives (via iMore). Across Twitter and the MacRumors forums, users are reporting that M1 Macs are experiencing extremely...

forums.macrumors.com

Personally, I got an Intel Mini last summer and love it. It run Windows perfectly in a virtual machine as well as old versions of MacOS, which lets me use my very expensive old software. Can't do that on the M1. However, these are probably not issues for you.

 

[LeeW]

People will always tell you to spend more money, because it's not theirs.

No, knowledgeable people will always tell you to spend when you likely need to rather than finding out too late you should have spent more and there is nothing you do about it as nothing can be upgraded.

plus some Photoshop/Lightroom

You are going to want 16GB of Ram.

How does Steam perform on M1?

If you are going to be gaming you want 16GB of Ram.

--

As it happens my parents wanted a new MM to replace their old 2014 model, I had it sent to me to do the setup for them and install all they needed. In their late 70's so you can imagine their usage, browsing, email, a bit of word processing but they use Pages and Numbers only. A few basic apps.

So really not a huge amount going on. Here is where we are with an M1 Mac Mini, 8GB ram, 256GB SSD.

Sure, all fine right now and for them will remain that way given their very light usage. But you start adding Photoshop/Lightroom then it will be OOM almost immediately and start thrashing the swap file big time. For some it won't be noticeable for others it will be.

So there is at best 2GB available before you start doing anything significant with the machine. If you are fine relying on the Swap to handle it I am not saying it will be a poor experience but there is a difference between relying on Swap for the right reasons and depending on it because your device is almost permanently out of memory.

Go look at many of the reviewers on Youtube that gushed how great their 8GB M1 Mac Mini was at launch. A significant amount has already switched to 16GB as now they have everything installed, are trying to do video creation and other things, their 8GB machine was lagging. So I am not just talking for the sake of it, go look if you are not convinced.

As @Fishrrman has pointed out. Today is not so much the issue, but as time progresses developers and Apple will really start to make more use of what Apple has given them in terms of performance so their system requirements will increase.

 

[mckenzzzzie]

We have heard that the M1 systems use memory more efficiently, but I really don't think that means that apps like Photoshop get any better at using memory just because they are running on an M1. Photoshop wants to put all the pixels you are working on into RAM. If it can't, performance suffers. And you can't look at the size of a Photoshop file to estimate how much RAM it takes to load the working portion into memory.

On the Mac, there is a portion of the bottom of a Photoshop document window where you can get a readout of various statistics/info about your document. I would imagine on Windows there is probably the same thing. Click on that while you are working and check out the following categories: Document Sizes, Scratch Sizes, Efficiency, and Timing. Those all tell you something about how much RAM Photoshop needs for your particular document. For example, if the Efficiency is shown to be less than 100%.... you are bumping into the limit of your RAM.