2012 Mac Mini RAM upgrade, how much of an improvement? Where is cheapest?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 585609
  • Start date
D

Deleted member 585609

Guest
I am thinking of upgrading my 2012 Mac Mini's RAM, how much of an improvement would I notice going from 4GB to 16GB?
Also where is cheapest? I know people here swear by Crucial, but I can't afford £103 for the upgrade right now :/
 
Has memory just escalated in price recently? I'm sure Crucial was much cheaper a few months ago :/
 
Yeah it seems more now than when I first looked 2 months ago
I used MrMemory for my old laptop, brilliant service, but same price as crucial :/
 
Open up Applications>Utilities>ActivityMonitor, select ActivityMonitor from the Window menu, and click on SystemMemory pane. Inspect the figure for PageOuts and it should be fairly small in the MByte range. Otherwise, the figure means that the OS is using the HDD as virtual RAM - thereby increasing HDD activity and incurring more latencies in executing code, etc. - and you will need more RAM to avoid this sort of RAM-swaps-to-HDD.
 
Try Ebuyer, I just got 16gb of ram for my MBP for £65.

Makes a huge difference. I thought 16gb would be overkill but I currently have under 6 gb free and aren't using any particularly monstrous programmes.
 
Christ I should have bought back when I opened this thread, prices have jumped even more since! £120 for 16GB!! That is ridiculous!
 
I'm sure I paid around £70 for 16GB from Crucial, although it was Nov last year
 
I've just checked and I bought 16gb in Dec last year for £61.19 for my Mini. Thats a heck of a price increase.
 
The RAMs came in and out of good "hands" - both original purchaser and I are long-time posters here on AVF and I've a soft copy of the receipt.
 
Open up Applications>Utilities>ActivityMonitor, select ActivityMonitor from the Window menu, and click on SystemMemory pane. Inspect the figure for PageOuts and it should be fairly small in the MByte range. Otherwise, the figure means that the OS is using the HDD as virtual RAM - thereby increasing HDD activity and incurring more latencies in executing code, etc. - and you will need more RAM to avoid this sort of RAM-swaps-to-HDD.


Camfire is spot on. If you aren't having page outs it won't be noticeable and a wast of money.
 
Especially with Mavericks better optimising use of RAM too. Try installing that first, and then think about it if getting PageOuts.
 
Hmm mavericks doesn't seem to show that now :/ any other way to check?

:)
 
So I did the Terminal method too see, and here is the results: Pageouts: 14660.
 
Tested mine on Mavericks and showing 0 PageOuts. Been converting video files all day too. I have 16GB installed mind you. Using ML on the standard 4GB I used to get loads of PageOuts. It certainly appears like you may see a benefit to upgrading the RAM a little.

In saying that, your PageOuts figure is very small. It's your call fella.
 
The integrated GPU uses system RAM for holding graphics data and any paging in/out can cause a flurry of memory accesses which don't just hold up the OS but also impact the GPU - a reason why some people shunned such systems and insist on nVidia GPUs. While page in's are un-avoidable, page out's are.
 
Got to just over 30,000 earlier ... this is obviously while using the mac, not at sitting idle ...
 
Hmm mavericks doesn't seem to show that now :/ any other way to check?

:)

Still there, just called differently :smashing:

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • Activity_Monitor__All_Processes_.png
    Activity_Monitor__All_Processes_.png
    17.4 KB · Views: 76

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom