Mixing ram

This has been discussed before and it should be fine, but the RAM will run slightly slower. If its any help you probably wont need any more than the 4Gb supplied with the Mini, unless your planning on doing lots of photo/video editing

 

It should work, but using RAM sticks of different sizes will result in that they work in single channel mode. Which leaves them with half the bandwidth of the dual channel mode you get when using two sticks of the same size/type.

So it really depends on what you are doing with your Mini. For "normal" use it will probably be perfectly fine (unless you hit the occasional compatibility issue - in that case just pull out the 2 GB module. 8 GB is plenty for most people).

 

I have done this exact thing. I have 10GB ram in my 2.3 mini, an 8GB crucial stick and one of the original 2GB sticks. No problems at all.

 

Computer will work, if that's what you ask!

 

Similar here: I asked the shop to install 4GB in my early 2009 base model Mini, which was getting slow on the original 1GB. It would not have been enough to run Mountain Lion. They simply added 4GB along side the existing 1GB. It works fine.