M1 Mac Mini 8GB vs 16Gb RAM?

[msa028]

Hi,
I'm thinking about buying a M1 Mac Mini. At the moment I can't really decide if I should get the one with 8GB of RAM or the one with 16GB. I have heard alot of diffrent opinions on this through YouTube, especially in the context of the swapping issue some report. My usecase isn't really stressfull for a computer since I game mostly on my Switch or Playstation. I also have a Laptop so it would be just a desktop computer for uni (office, LaTeX, mabye some data analysis) and free time (web surfing and listening to music).
If someone has any advise I'd be greatful.

[BondiBlue]

For most general use the 8GB model should be fine, but I'm not certain about your use case. What sort of data analysis are you doing? Keep in mind that the RAM is not upgradeable down the line. If you need to pick between RAM and storage for cost reasons I'd say go for the RAM. It's super easy to add fast external storage to the computer. 

[Doug_Dangger]

I think for most users 8gb ram is enough.  If your workload will greatly benefit with double the ram then the extra $200 will seem worth it.  Example greatly cutting down rendering time.

 

But if you can do fine without double the ram, specially coming from a PC user, that $200 for another 8gb seems highway robbery.

[msa028]

3 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

What sort of data analysis are you doing?

I'm not doing any right now, but I think I will need to do some in the future. As for what typ: probably some simulation data via python.

[Spindel]

For most people 8 GB would be enough. But it all depends on what you do on your machine. Also the swapping is stupidly efficient so in most cases you really don’t notice that the machine is swapping. 
 

The SSD write issue is (according to me) a storm in a water glass and not a problem for the general user. But YMMV. 
 

I personally got a 16 GB M1 Mini but would probably do just fine with 8 GB. My bigger memory just makes MacOS grab more RAM because it can so looking on used numbers isn’t really that telling. MacOS memory pressure metric is better and I usually sit at 15-20%. 

But my system usually ”use” about 10 GB of my ram. 

 

The worst apps I run memory wise are OneDrive, that hog 2-3 GB unless I get the memory leak bug where it baloons in RAM (caught it once using 30 GB ram+swap). The second worst app is MS Teams that usually use around 2 GB. Both run under rosetta, the issue isn’t rosetta just those apps, in example AutoCAD also under rosetta don’t hog enormous amounts of ram. 
 

TL;DR

8 gb is enough for most, but you have to look at your use case. OneDrive and MS Teams are just pieces of shit software and a waste of code.