Running Catalina on a Late 2014 Mac Mini with 4GB RAM and SSD

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Level 1

4 points

Running Catalina on a Late 2014 Mac Mini with 4GB RAM and SSD

Hello

About a little more than a year ago, I replaced the internal HDD in my mother's 2014 Mac Mini with an SSD in order to increase performance, and it has been working fine with High Sierra and later, Mojave. For informational purposes, this is the low-end of the 2014 Mac Mini systems with a 1.4 Ghz Dual-core Intel Core i5. I've been thinking about upgrading her Mini to Catalina, but I noticed that the RAM requirements for this OS have increased to 4GB and that's the same amount of RAM currently in her Mac Mini. In a normal situation, I would go ahead and do a memory upgrade to 8GB, but Apple made the 2014 Mac Mini unique and the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard. I'm hesitant to install Catalina as I worry about the performance after the upgrade.

If you have a similar system to this Mac Mini, with an SSD upgrade and only 4GB of RAM, and you upgraded to Catalina, I would like to know how well it performs for you. If you don't, I appreciate your thoughts as well.

Thanks,

Posted on Jun 24, 2020 3:15 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

samtenor

Level 4

2,074 points

Jun 24, 2020 6:40 PM in response to yorksa10

I was given then fixed a 2014 Mac Mini, the base model (4gb memory) with SSD. (TRIM enabled)

For what the specs and actual usage, I found it was quite capable for day-to-day tasks (email, web browsing and office productivity). I would not put any graphic/photo editing software on this machine nor trying to do iMovie on it.

Oh, avoid Google Chrome -- if really in need of Chrome - just do not open too many tabs at the same time.

I later donated to a needed high school student - it was put in good use.

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Answer 2

Jun 25, 2020 5:55 AM in response to yorksa10

Mine is a late 2014 as well and I reverted back to Mojave for application reasons. But did not find Catalina a significant increase in RAM use over previous versions.

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Answer 3

Jun 25, 2020 1:51 PM in response to bp426

Some of those apps like Elements 12 probably are not supported possibly 32 bit apps which Apple dropped support for in Catalina. Your options are limited either upgrade apps that work with Catalina or backup and do fresh install of Mojave or restore a backup if you made one before upgrade. Sadly many did not check to see if their apps were compatible for the Catalina upgrade. Moving forward those apps will eventually have to be upgraded to current versions.

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Answer 4

bp426

Level 1

9 points

Jun 25, 2020 12:47 PM in response to yorksa10

I have a mac mini late 2014, 3GHZ dual-core processor with 16 GB RAM memory. I upgraded to Catalina and now I am unable to use Creative Suite which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, and In-Design. Also have Photoshop Elements 12. Creative Suite will not open so I cannot access my photo files. Photoshop Elements will either open and crash or not open at all. What are my options to get this problem fixed? I am a retired photographer and have thousands of photos.

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Running Catalina on a Late 2014 Mac Mini with 4GB RAM and SSD

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