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I will check back into this thread later today, I only see 2 posts so far. I guess this 24gb model is for more POWER users. I did watch some videos the last week or so on YOUTUBE and some were comparing 24gb's vs 16gb version. I am a very casual mac user, so 16gb seems good for me, but I know some people on slickdeals were looking for the 24gb model. I did pick up my second mac mini m4 last week for 450 dollars. .... so for 200 dollars I go from 16gb ram to 24gb ram, but the base 256gb SSD is the same. So 200 dollars for 8gb of ram. Maybe share how much better you mac mini m4 works with the extra ram. And other's I'm sure would be interested too.
Thanks OP for posting this ONE minute after mid-night.
UPDATE: I did find the youtube video where the guy goes into great detail with the 16gb vs 24gb mac mini m4. Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuc3Qp0hJuI
this video is 9 days old.
Last edited by AquaGalley8616 November 27, 2025 at 03:45 AM.
I will check back into this thread later today, I only see 2 posts so far. I guess this 24gb model is for more POWER users. I did watch some videos the last week or so on YOUTUBE and some were comparing 24gb's vs 16gb version. I am a very casual mac user, so 16gb seems good for me, but I know some people on slickdeals were looking for the 24gb model. I did pick up my second mac mini m4 last week for 450 dollars. .... so for 200 dollars I go from 16gb ram to 24gb ram, but the base 256gb SSD is the same. So 200 dollars for 8gb of ram. Maybe share how much better you mac mini m4 works with the extra ram. And other's I'm sure would be interested too.
Thanks OP for posting this ONE minute after mid-night.
UPDATE: I did find the youtube video where the guy goes into great detail with the 16gb vs 24gb mac mini m4. Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuc3Qp0hJuI
this video is 9 days old.
yeah, the guy making the video had the 24gb model for about 9 months, and when he made the NEW video just 9 days ago, he was very knowledgeable about the difference.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
Last edited by AquaGalley8616 November 27, 2025 at 04:03 AM.
yeah, the guy making the video had the 24gb model for about 9 months, and when he made the NEW video just 9 days ago, he was very knowledgeable about the difference.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
MACs have unified memory. This is both your video ram and your system ram. So your already below 16 GB just from the start. I would love to be able to add more ram to Macs. I do find 24 GB helps simply because now you are truly above 16 GB as likely you are using less than 8 GB of video ram. I would be pretty happy with MACs if Apple simply doubled amount of ram upgraded per 200 dollars to 16GB. OF course with AI price increase this is less likely then I would like.
Maybe it's more about what that additional 8mb gets in you in your everyday use case OR longevity vs being able to say just "I have xx amount of ram".
... yeah ... it does depend on what a person is considering doing with their mac mini m4. That is why I am recommending watching the youtube video I posted where guy that owns both 16gb model and the 24gb model says, he shows graphics and info as he adds many apps and programs, and how it looks and how MAC responds. If you post without at least watching the video, ... the guy talks about how he went about testing the difference in real world use. Also people that do have the 24gb model can share their experiences too. Now if it was both 24 gb ram and 516gb Storage for 200 dollars ... that sounds reasonable , but I probably would still get the base model and just use NVMe or get thunderbolt speeds (if I neeed that).
... yeah ... it does depend on what a person is considering doing with their mac mini m4. That is why I am recommending watching the youtube video I posted where guy that owns both 16gb model and the 24gb model says, he shows graphics and info as he adds many apps and programs, and how it looks and how MAC responds. If you post without at least watching the video, ... the guy talks about how he went about testing the difference in real world use. Also people that do have the 24gb model can share their experiences too. Now if it was both 24 gb ram and 516gb Storage for 200 dollars ... that sounds reasonable , but I probably would still get the base model and just use NVMe or get thunderbolt speeds (if I neeed that).
I got the 512gb ssd 32gb ram model for $1187 after tax from b&h a while ago now and use an external nvme ssd with it. The external nvme is marginally faster than the internal ssd (3250mb/s vs 3100mb/s) via tb4.
The 32gb version lets me run 12b (4bit quant) local llms with 100k context (with no ssd swap) and get ~15-20tok/sec depending on the model. I can even run 70b (2 bit) models on it (but only at a miserably slow 2-3 tok/sec though).
I also use crossover/sikarugir/wine and get way better gaming performance on it than my ryzen 7 7735hs 32gb ram minipc (steady 4k@30fps using fsr quality for path of exile 2 at medium/high settings). The minipc can only run poe2 at 1080p @ 30 or so fps for comparison.
If all you're wanting is casual use, browsing, productivity, etc., then the 24gb will more than be enough. If you're wanting to do heavy 3D/video editing or run local llms with longer contexts, then obviously 24gb probably isn't the best choice. Personally I wouldn't bother modding the internal ssd for storage—just use an external nvme via tb4. Tb4 will be the bottleneck for speed (approx. 3250mb/s). Hope this helps.
yeah, the guy making the video had the 24gb model for about 9 months, and when he made the NEW video just 9 days ago, he was very knowledgeable about the difference.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
I think for normal use the model with the 512 GB hard drive would be more important since that's much faster storage
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$250 more for a mere 8gb of ram. Major yikes, Apple.
It's one of the drawbacks with their newer M series processors with unified memory (soldered LPDDR). No more buying the lower end models and upgrading the RAM yourself to save money. They claim the newer design boosts performance and lowers power consumption, but my conspiracy is they did it to force you to pay the Apple price.
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Thanks OP for posting this ONE minute after mid-night.
UPDATE: I did find the youtube video where the guy goes into great detail with the 16gb vs 24gb mac mini m4. Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuc3Qp0
this video is 9 days old.
Thanks OP for posting this ONE minute after mid-night.
UPDATE: I did find the youtube video where the guy goes into great detail with the 16gb vs 24gb mac mini m4. Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fuc3Qp0
this video is 9 days old.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
The 32gb version lets me run 12b (4bit quant) local llms with 100k context (with no ssd swap) and get ~15-20tok/sec depending on the model. I can even run 70b (2 bit) models on it (but only at a miserably slow 2-3 tok/sec though).
I also use crossover/sikarugir/wine and get way better gaming performance on it than my ryzen 7 7735hs 32gb ram minipc (steady 4k@30fps using fsr quality for path of exile 2 at medium/high settings). The minipc can only run poe2 at 1080p @ 30 or so fps for comparison.
If all you're wanting is casual use, browsing, productivity, etc., then the 24gb will more than be enough. If you're wanting to do heavy 3D/video editing or run local llms with longer contexts, then obviously 24gb probably isn't the best choice. Personally I wouldn't bother modding the internal ssd for storage—just use an external nvme via tb4. Tb4 will be the bottleneck for speed (approx. 3250mb/s). Hope this helps.
At end of video he said the basic 16gb model is good for most people because this mac makes good use of how it uses memory, device has 8gb of swap memory, plus it can tap into the SSD card to help too. The guy has both the 16gb ram and 24gb models ... he didn't notice hardly any difference. BUT if some guys do things where is can help, I guess get the 24gb model. JUST watch the video first. And comment in this thread and share with the fellow slickdealers.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Join The Conversation
Share your experience with the Slickdeals community
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!