How much RAM do I need for my Mac mini?

hi there,

soon I 'll get my own mac and yes it 'll be a mac mini

everyone is saying to me that the mac should have at least 1 GB of ram if i want to work without waiting.

is that tru?

well, i have a windows xp laptop and a win xp desktop computer.

both have an (older) celeron 1,3 GHz cpu.

laptop: 512 MB of ram (minus 32MB for grafikcard)

desktop: 1GB of ram (at least 300 to 400MB are always free!) and seperated 64MB grafikcard.

i must say that both computers are running fast.

what do i do? a little bit grafik (gimp, photoshop), webserver (apache) for php and html testing, musik (iTunes) and office (MS and openoffice), no big 3d games (no time to play).

everything of that is running on both machines.

ok, i can't open 40 pictures at once in photoshop for editing on the laptop. (who can edit 40 pics at the same time annyway? )

i want to give the desktop computer to my brother and i 'd like to use OS X in the future.

in school (university) we use iMacs (G4, 1Ghz, 512MB of ram) and i thing those machines are quite good (we use MS office, iTunes, firefox, Mail, some programming such java, prolog and others).

for that what i do (se above) is a mac mini with intel core duo 1,66 Ghz and 512 MB ram ok/enough?

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebO...?family=Macmini

(the litte one)

thanks for your an answers

#458386

The Mini is a nice little machine for a budget Mac, however there are a few niggles.

Personally I don't believe the Core Duo processor to be anything 'special'

The HD does throttle some of the speed like any machine running a 5200rpm HDD as appose to a 7200rpm.

Also 512mb of ram is the minimum I would be running Tiger on, Its the same with any machine throw as much RAM as you can afford at it, especially if your gonna be running PS which can be quite demanding on your systems resources.

Another point to raise is that the word on the grapevine is that the Mini is about to be dropped!? Now what that means in terms of.. are they launching something different or are they knocking it on the head, I can't say, but something to keep in mind.

#458388

Just a small note, a friend of mine bought a Macbook Pro with 512MB of RAM recently. He does Photoshop and all that good stuff, and he found it necessary to upgrade to 1GB.

Like Celticsun said, 512 would be your minimum. 1GB is recommended.

#458405

If you are running Tiger, period, upgrade to 1GB 'o RAM. I did and it could not have been more relieving. Once I opened a couple of tabs in Safari, it was sluggish. Forget about Dashboard and iTunes, just to switch to an application, you'll be staring at the lollipop for a minute or two. Now, it's a rare occurance (note that I run iTunes, Safari with at least 4 tabs, PhotoShop, TextMate, CSSEdit and Transmit simultaneously, constantly).

#458410

I'm running Tiger with 1Gb ram. I have iTunes continuously ( either net radio or audio cds). Also Adium continuously, then mail and safari then poss photoshop and a few desktop apps (Clock, album art, weather). I've had absolutely no probs with performance... everything is nice and smooth.

#458414

Just a little bit of news: Apple Insider is reporting that the Mac Mini may soon be going the way of the dodo.

Anyways... my iMac is running Tiger, and on any given day, I have:

- iTunes

- Adium

- Transmission

- Photoshop

- Safari

- Dreamweaver 8 (PPC app)

All of those apps open is barely enough for me to notice a drop in speed. Only 1GB RAM for me.

#458430

thank you for all your answers! i 'll think of it to put in 1 GB.

thanks again..

#458451

1 GB is critical, though I recommend 2.

Whatever you do, consider getting your ram from crucial.com and installing it yourself. Much cheaper.

#458453

Excellent point from Gnomexp... you do pay a premium for Apple memory.

I may be wrong but if you order the mini with the base 512MB of memory it comes in 2x256mb so when you upgrade you would need to buy a 1GB stick but it means you would have a spare 256mb as you only have 2 slots.

Would give you 1.25GB of Ram though. Put the other on ebay for a few pennies, better than a slap in the face I suppose.

#458492

thanks guys! but... to late..

i ordered the mac mini for a cuple of minutes ago.

1,66 Ghz, Core Duo, 1 GB ram, 60 GB HDD (thats enough 'couse i 've a 250GB hdd extern), CD-ComboDrive, OS X Tiger.

the mini will cost me about 6000 swedish krones (about 600 EURO), without my student rabatt about it will cost ~ 7000 SEK (~ 700 EUR).

next week the mini will arrive

*i can't wait*

#459079

thanks guys! but... to late..

i ordered the mac mini for a cuple of minutes ago.

1,66 Ghz, Core Duo, 1 GB ram, 60 GB HDD (thats enough 'couse i 've a 250GB hdd extern), CD-ComboDrive, OS X Tiger.

the mini will cost me about 6000 swedish krones (about 600 EURO), without my student rabatt about it will cost ~ 7000 SEK (~ 700 EUR).

next week the mini will arrive

*i can't wait*

congratulations to you are you from sweden?

#459095

acctually i am from germany, but i live (i study) the last 6 years in sweden.

sorry about my english

#459110

Your English is fine; congrats on the purchase!!

Just a note for others though; you really want to pair the RAM on intel Macs. The ONLY time that pairing doesn't make much of a difference is when you hit 3GB. Below that (1.25) is worse than a gig of paired 512 sticks.

#459198

If you have the cash, I would recommend 1 GB. I have an iMac with only half a gig of RAM, and I must say that it's very sluggish at times. To prevent yourself from some of those sluggish and irritating experiences, get as much RAM as possible.

#459394

If you have the cash, I would recommend 1 GB. I have an iMac with only half a gig of RAM, and I must say that it's very sluggish at times. To prevent yourself from some of those sluggish and irritating experiences, get as much RAM as possible.

at the university we work with imac's (g4 1ghz, 512 mb ram) and i must say that they are quite... okey i could only afford 1 gig of ram because of the student rabate (about 100 EURO) for a student a lot of money... >get as much RAM as possible yeah... need more moneeeeeeeeeey... lol and by the way: my laptop (512mb ram) loads the programs a bit faster as my current desktop computer (1 gig ram), because the ram of the laptop runs at 677mhz and the ram of the desktop comp runs at 133mhz.

#459406