Upgrade base 2018 Mac Mini to 16Gb? 32GB

[Osamede]

What’s the best value point for upgrading the base 2018 Mac Mini that comes with 8 GB of RAM ? Is it worth it upgrading to more than 16Gb?

Use case: a family machine (4 user accounts) in the home office with a 4K screen. Running a Plex server and Squeezebox server on it that serves the house. Kids use it mainly for homework and with . They also want to also begin playing around with making music on it.

 

[LeeW]

16gb would be fine for that but the more RAM you have the more it will get used buy the OS to manage files over and above anything you and family are doing.

If you are doing the upgrade yourself then I would recommend 32gb, you can get a kit from Crucial at £130/$160 which would ensure you have no need to upgrade again.

If you are going to Apple then anything over 16gb is prohibitive cost-wise.

 

[Osamede]

16gb would be fine for that but the more RAM you have the more it will get used buy the OS to manage files over and above anything you and family are doing.

If you are doing the upgrade yourself then I would recommend 32gb, you can get a kit from Crucial at £130/$160 which would ensure you have no need to upgrade again.

If you are going to Apple then anything over 16gb is prohibitive cost-wise.

Thanks - what do you mean by “manage files”?

 

[LeeW]

Thanks - what do you mean by “manage files”?

The SSD is fast but RAM is faster, if you go to your applications folder then open the Utilities folder and then open the activity monitor you will see something like the following under the Memory tab, I am on my MBP here.

Note the 'Cached Files'. Where you have RAM not being used the OS will start using it for other tasks to improve performance. Above it is using 5gb of RAM for this purpose as I am not using it for anything else.

So out of 16gb of total RAM, I am using 8.85gb for general system needs and applications that are running. The OS then starts using the remaining amount to improve performance. If your applications need more RAM though, the system will use less or if needed no RAM to Cache files for performance improvement.

Sometimes people think they are running out of RAM when they see the above but in reality, the Cached Files are just a temporary way of performance improvement but the OS will release that 5.16gb of RAM if you needed it for other tasks.

Thus the more RAM you have the more the system will use it to improve performance, whether you really notice that difference is something else though, I do.