16gb ram in mac mini i5 2.5?

capaho wrote:

You can't use more RAM than the maximum the system is designed for. In any case, what are you using that needs 16 GB of RAM?

Sheesh, I started going beyond Apple's rated RAM limit in 2000 when I put 1GB RAM in a PowerBook G3 rated for 512MB. It was tested, it was verified, I was happy.

12 years later and I am running 10GB RAM (stock 2GB + 8GB OWC chip) in a system Apple says takes 8GB.

As for what 16GB RAM can do, this chart should make it blazingly obvious...

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2011/20110309_3-Photoshop-MBP-16GB--news.htm l

It can push a small Mac into Mac Pro territory.

Yes, OSX is a RAM hog, not to mention othe APPS... & once it gets low it starts using VM, which really slows it down, thanks for the link! 🙂

PS. I'd not buy a Mac with today's OSX that couldn't use 16 GB of RAM, & I highly suspect that won't be enogh shortly. 😟

quitsayingmetoo

what spec mac mini's do you have?

Are they servers? I have been told the quad core processor makes good useage of 16gig.

If you have the same as mine 2.7 dual core i didnt see any difference in performance between 8 and 16gig of ram.

Though a friend told me if i stuck a SSD inside it would make use of the extra ram.

What do you think?

I'd love to have my 2.7 i7 Macmini faster as i run Logic pro with 3rd party plug ins and i often get close to maxing out the system.

I am very happy with the Mac mini, i work within its capacity but my work flow would benifite from more speed.

It has happened in the past on certain machines

quitsayingmetoo, and I did not say that Mountain Lion

or whatever is down the pike will render the unsupported

RAM useless, just that it could. It may never happen.

Also from your other post:

"RIght now as I write I have 5 Virtual systems running on my 27" imac..."

Well, all iMacs since 2009 have "officially" supported 16 gig.

My i5 2.3 mac mini has 16gig's of ram most comfortable... If you running a multimedia programs then you need to run your projetcs off of an external drive. that way you don't tax your system drive. 16Gigs of Ram works for me with no issues!

and 2x16GB witn Mac Mini Server last generation it's possible ? 😐

I doubt you are going to notice an major speed unless you are doing hug photoshop or video where there are needs for lots of swappoing. We have 2 and 4 mac minis and everything else between. The 16gb (over 8gb) really comes in hand for running virtual systems and big photoshop type stuff.

If you really want to see a speed increase stay at 8gb and a 256mb SSD...that is what my MPB 15" I use 24/7 runs and it silly fast (2.0ghz) compared to all other systems we use. I've got faster processors with more memory but the SSD is the real speed solution for daily use.

I use xGrid and My SSD are out after 2 week too many in out

Now I want juste use this Mac Mini Server with RAID 0 for make an cluster manager with 8GB don't work system and SQL use 4GB after 1 week with 16GB I can restart each month Mac an don t lost my all jobs work

I dream Add 32GB with my other server form supermicro I have 96GB of RAM...

It's all about understanding the bottleneck in the system. More RAM can be a huge impact, or it can do nothing, depending on where you're bottlenecked based on the work you're doing. Same with CPU, SSD, etc. The best thing is to try the app you want to run before you buy more hardware, and see how it runs. If it's not running as fast as you'd like, an easy first step is to open Activity Monitor and check out the CPU, System Memory, and Disk Activity tabs at the bottom of the window. If the CPU is running at 100%, you need a faster CPU (time for a new mac). If the memory is 100% in use, more RAM will probably help. If the disk activity is high (a typical spinning disk can handle ~80 operations/sec), an SSD can be a great fix.

Personally, I use Aperture and a couple VMs on my i7 Mini. I found that the combination of 8GB of RAM (the mac came with 4GB) and a 750GB Seagate Hybrid Drive (combo SSD/spinning disk) gave me a good combination of usable space and plenty of RAM for my apps. Your mileage may vary.

Ok my ask are mac mini support 16 Gb of RAM for application QMaster

I use Mac OS X Server 10.6.8

after 2 week I have kill an MLC SSD

Your Segate are not compatible with RAID 0 Solutions

xGrid use 4 GB after 1 week and time for make full job are 4 week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8iiVV3_D7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-eVfFdLLGY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvwyCRvYwJ4&feature=related

I don't know much about QMaster. The mac will support 16GB of RAM, but you need to check out your usage in Acitivity Monitor to understand if more RAM will help your particular use case. Some applications just read/write from the drives a lot - RAM will help with read rates due to caching, but will not really help with writes. If you need RAID0 levels of disk performance, either a high-quality SSD (which you won't kill after a week) or an external RAID of 3.5" drives is the best bet. When I build systems with SSDs, I only use Intel 320 SSD products, as their SSD wear leveling and endurance is much better than cheaper OCZ or Kingston units in my experience. I've run them in RAID arrays for mail servers in the past, and they run for years with high disk write rates and no problems. If you want to avoid SSDs, the Promise Thunderbolt RAID systems might be a good option for you. I haven't used one myself.

I thinks you don't understand my request

xGrid

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/01/06Apple-Previews-Xgrid-Technology.html

xSAN

http://www.apple.com/fr/xsan/

you talk me like an vendor, I'm not intrested by your promise solutions when I have Fibre Channel network with xSAN. You write high-quality SSD it's impossible I suggest your search more information about SSD and why are not safe solution.

MLC vs SLC

http://www.supertalent.com/datasheets/SLC_vs_MLC%20whitepaper.pdf

http://www.syslogic-group.ch/files/Application_Note_SLC_vs_MLC.pdf

if Mac Mini haved 3 HDD + RAID 3 it's intresting use one SSD for parity.

But I use RAID 70 with my Servers Windows, RAID 50 with OS X all inside xSAN…

mac Mini are only for Cluster xCPU abnd 8Gb of RAM it's too low.

Server Supermicro 768GB of RAM !!!

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DRW-3TF_.cfm

With your i7 dual core you have virtually 4 cores because it is an hyperthreaded CPU. The Mac Mini servers are quad-core but the CPU frequency go down to 2GHz.

I am alwayys astonished and chocked by the arrogant and pedantic tone of some comments... As:

"if you need 16GB of memory, the Mac Mini is the wrong machine for your purpose"

Some people are powerfull Gods who know every application in the entire world.

One example, which is "my" reason to upgrade to 16 GB, and there are many others:

Mac Mini is the perfect computer to be a Audio High Definition Server, with Audio Tracks on 24bit/ 96 to 192 KHz. RAM play is mandatory to minimize jitter. One standard track of 24/192 music is about 1GB. And good softwares as Pure Music or Audivarna put "all they can" in RAM from an album to minimize Hard Drive reads.

I am an Apple fan, except for iTunes Music Store, that has "down educated" the ears of an entire generation with Bull S*** MP3

And yes, mid 2011 Mac Mini can be upgraded to 16 GB of Ram.

I cannot disagree with your sediments about many having a "know it all" mentality but I would have to agree that under 97.2% of the time most who run a mac mini don't need 16gb unless there are specific applications that require such heavy read/writes. For most users there are some rules of thumb here that work...and all the nerd talk above if for extremely high end applications, that are most likely over kill. I know 1/2 my systems are over kill...but my job can afford it.

For most I still recommend 256 SSD with 8RAM over 16RAM.

Now as far as audio quality I don't think I've heard an audio "skip" or "jitter" in a decade...even when I was running a 4gb machine and editing video while listening to music at 320kb! What damage does hard drive reads do when accessing music when it's buffered way ahead even with low ram...even when saving a huge file. Of course I always have my itunes library on a different FW800 drive then my scratch and data drives.

Since the cost of memory is very affordable now why not go big...cannot hurt under most applications. Only a few years ago 16gb of ram would have cost as much as the machine.