Need help deciding

[gino4lyfe94]

First post here

Hey everybody, I need some help deciding on what Mac mini to get. So I do have a 2017 MacBook Air and it works fine and I will still be using it. However I’m looking to get a Mac mini for light gaming such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and browsing and also music/TV Movies. I’ve done some research and I’ve saw people say get the 16 GB ram however I don’t know if that would be overkill for my needs. Do I get the M2 8 gigabyte or do I also wait if they announce a new Mac mini and see if I get that one or wait for a price drop. Opinions would be recommended. Also mention I’m in Canada so the Mac mini 8 gigabyte of ram goes for $799, with 16gb ram is an extra $200

Much appreciated!

 

[Thirio2]

I bought a 16/256 m2 mini and installed a 2Tb external drive with aTB4 enclosure. I boot from the external. If I had it to do over I would have gotten a 16/256 minimum spec. There were times I saw the m2 pro with that spec for not too much more. My opinion is that 16G ram is necessary and 256Gb fills up fast. There are plenty of others on this forum that think 8/256 is perfectly adequate. I should mention that I keep using my computer until it fails instead of upgrading every year or two. In the end, only you can decide which configuration makes economic sense for you.

 

[gino4lyfe94]

I bought a 16/256 m2 mini and installed a 2Tb external drive with aTB4 enclosure. I boot from the external. If I had it to do over I would have gotten a 16/256 minimum spec. There were times I saw the m2 pro with that spec for not too much more. My opinion is that 16G ram is necessary and 256Gb fills up fast. There are plenty of others on this forum that think 8/256 is perfectly adequate. I should mention that I keep using my computer until it fails instead of upgrading every year or two. In the end, only you can decide which configuration makes economic sense for you.

I mean the storage isn’t a issue as I’ll have external hdd/ssd connected
It’s just a matter of ram is the issue
Many say upgrade but I wanna think 8gb would be sufficient given I’ll still be using the MacBook Air along side it

 

[Fishrrman]

Get 16gb of RAM.

If you get only 8, you may come to regret it sooner rather than later.

 

[Paul Deemer]

Don't do the 8gb of Ram or you are going to regret it bigly! Just pay the $200.00 to upgrade to 16gb. The reason you will regret 8 gb is when it starts using your ssd for more ram because it doesn't have enough. Not only does this wear your ssd down with swap files but it also is going to bottleneck and slow down the rest of the system. 16gb is a minimum you want on todays apple silicon. There are tons of articles on this on web and quick search will confirm what everyone is saying about 8gb not being enough.