Should I buy 8 or 16 GB RAM?

[phrehdd]

16 GB for minimum. But if you change macs every couple years, the 8gb to get you buy. The M2 should be out early next year and hope apple maxes ram to 32GB. Remember, these arm processors use ram differently than conventional processors. The studio mini would be needed if your doing some serious video editing. The mid rage processor will work fine but you can get 64 go ram in it.

Why just "get by" for a couple of years when the difference between the two (8 v 16) is in fact, distinguishable quite often? You hope for 32gb which somewhat implies value for more RAM. As for how memory is uses, well recall that past Minis also included an option for on board video (Intel etc.) which did shared memory. M1 does also engage shared memory but with a different architecture and configuration. At least with the Intel Iris etc., we know how much of the memory might be used. Here, we are given nothing by Apple and we have seen very very odd situations of RAM being used up by browsers and more even if we were fairly static in use.

I have Safari, Word, TextEdit, and a VPN app open. Memory diag reports that I have about 7.3 percent of RAM available (out of 16 gigs). This is in my estimate, really bad management when apps and respective caches can get crazy large (Safari and other browsers cough cough).

 

[Ethosik]

Why just "get by" for a couple of years when the difference between the two (8 v 16) is in fact, distinguishable quite often? You hope for 32gb which somewhat implies value for more RAM. As for how memory is uses, well recall that past Minis also included an option for on board video (Intel etc.) which did shared memory. M1 does also engage shared memory but with a different architecture and configuration. At least with the Intel Iris etc., we know how much of the memory might be used. Here, we are given nothing by Apple and we have seen very very odd situations of RAM being used up by browsers and more even if we were fairly static in use.

I have Safari, Word, TextEdit, and a VPN app open. Memory diag reports that I have about 7.3 percent of RAM available (out of 16 gigs). This is in my estimate, really bad management when apps and respective caches can get crazy large (Safari and other browsers cough cough).

Its not really a mac thing. On my Windows 11 PC, I am getting Chrome to get up to 6GB of RAM usage with several tabs open. Like I keep saying, its not the 1990s anymore. Javascript is a killer for both CPU and RAM. Also, ads and multimedia.

 

[EugW]

Why just "get by" for a couple of years when the difference between the two (8 v 16) is in fact, distinguishable quite often? You hope for 32gb which somewhat implies value for more RAM. As for how memory is uses, well recall that past Minis also included an option for on board video (Intel etc.) which did shared memory. M1 does also engage shared memory but with a different architecture and configuration. At least with the Intel Iris etc., we know how much of the memory might be used. Here, we are given nothing by Apple and we have seen very very odd situations of RAM being used up by browsers and more even if we were fairly static in use.

I have Safari, Word, TextEdit, and a VPN app open. Memory diag reports that I have about 7.3 percent of RAM available (out of 16 gigs). This is in my estimate, really bad management when apps and respective caches can get crazy large (Safari and other browsers cough cough).

I have 8 GB machines and a 16 GB machine (and a 24 GB machine). With your type of usage listed, 8 GB should be more than fine. In some situations where I have a similar workload, on the 16 GB machine it may use well over 8 GB, but the same workload on the 8 GB machine will use less than 8 GB.

This is presumably partially because the OS uses memory compression. You'd think the memory compression causes a performance hit, but in real world usage it doesn't much, presumably because it's often being done on unused cores in a multi-core machine.

Furthermore, the fact you have only 7.3% of RAM available with that type of workload on a 16 GB machine suggests to me that a lot of that RAM is being used for application cache. That's good use of the memory, but it's not necessary for the running of actual applications. Basically, if you've exited an application, macOS will keep that application in RAM thereby "wasting" that RAM. Except that it's not actually really wasted. If you decide to relaunch the app, then it will launch immediately because it is already in RAM. OTOH, if you end up needing that RAM for something else, it will just purge the cache. The biggest performance hit here is that when you want to relaunch the app, you'll have to reload it off the SSD, which may take a few seconds of course.

So, to put it another way, it's kinda useless to use a 16 GB machine to gauge if 8 GB will work or not, because macOS will tailor the memory usage and memory compression to the amount of physical memory available. If you really want to know if 8 GB will work, you should try the workload on an 8 GB machine.

Note, in all of this, I have not mentioned the swap file, because that's a completely separate thing.

 

[specious]

If you're keeping it for 12 months and don't use a lot of tabs, 8 is fine. If you want to use it longer than that or like to run multiple applications at the same time, 16. I had the M1 Mac Mini with 8gb and regretted it. Eventually sold it and now have the Macbook M1 Pro w/16gb. I would get browser tabs crashing occasionally and while I didn't generally run "out" of memory swap was clearly doing overtime and sometimes apps would get squirrely (delayed, buggy, crash, etc). This is just with a couple of Office apps and a browser as well, for perspective, pushing a couple of monitors with full screen youtube running on one of them.

 

[phrehdd]

I have 8 GB machines and a 16 GB machine (and a 24 GB machine). With your type of usage listed, 8 GB should be more than fine. In some situations where I have a similar workload, on the 16 GB machine it may use well over 8 GB, but the same workload on the 8 GB machine will use less than 8 GB.

This is presumably partially because the OS uses memory compression. You'd think the memory compression causes a performance hit, but in real world usage it doesn't much, presumably because it's often being done on unused cores in a multi-core machine.

Furthermore, the fact you have only 7.3% of RAM available with that type of workload on a 16 GB machine suggests to me that a lot of that RAM is being used for application cache. That's good use of the memory, but it's not necessary for the running of actual applications. Basically, if you've exited an application, macOS will keep that application in RAM thereby "wasting" that RAM. Except that it's not actually really wasted. If you decide to relaunch the app, then it will launch immediately because it is already in RAM. OTOH, if you end up needing that RAM for something else, it will just purge the cache. The biggest performance hit here is that when you want to relaunch the app, you'll have to reload it off the SSD, which may take a few seconds of course.

So, to put it another way, it's kinda useless to use a 16 GB machine to gauge if 8 GB will work or not, because macOS will tailor the memory usage and memory compression to the amount of physical memory available. If you really want to know if 8 GB will work, you should try the workload on an 8 GB machine.

Note, in all of this, I have not mentioned the swap file, because that's a completely separate thing.

Sorry, we shall not see eye to eye on this. Memory allocation for decades has been an issue for many operating systems. Simply a free for all is not exactly comforting as it appears with M1/Monterey. Management would include clearing or flushing caches properly rather than haphazardly.

Your point about cache might seem okay if when new apps were open that a balance was achieved for caching etc. but we know it is hit and miss and others too have reported pauses, slowdowns, and odd activities occurring. Eug, I guess we will disagree based on some of the facts and also usage philosophies.

 

[phrehdd]

If you're keeping it for 12 months and don't use a lot of tabs, 8 is fine. If you want to use it longer than that or like to run multiple applications at the same time, 16. I had the M1 Mac Mini with 8gb and regretted it. Eventually sold it and now have the Macbook M1 Pro w/16gb. I would get browser tabs crashing occasionally and while I didn't generally run "out" of memory swap was clearly doing overtime and sometimes apps would get squirrely (delayed, buggy, crash, etc). This is just with a couple of Office apps and a browser as well, for perspective, pushing a couple of monitors with full screen youtube running on one of them.

I find it interesting that the scenario you gave would work just fine in the past yet not today as easily. That should be hint enough to be well prepared (including sufficient RAM for all these odd "exceptions.").

 

[PowerPCFan]

20 years ago, Apple didn't use fans and their computers were prone to overheating. Now they put tiny amounts of RAM in their computers, my Power Mac G5 with upgraded RAM has 5GB - almost as much as the base model Mac Studio.

 

[ZipZilla]

"I wish I would have bought less RAM."
-no one ever

The M1 Minis are the Core Solo of Apple Silicon. My advice would be to buy nothing and wait for what comes next. Barring that, absolutely max out the RAM.