16gb ram in mac mini i5 2.5?

sounds like it turned out great!

I Think i got the answer .....

i dont know why apple says a MAC MINI SERVER (MID 2011) can support only upto 8GB of RAM...NOT 16GB...i had to start research whether it support 16 GB of RAM or NOT. Because i used to work on LOGIC PRO X on my MAC MINI SERVER. which is a RAM hungry application...First i found the name of processor used in MAC MINI SERVER (MID 2011) - Intel Core i7 (2635QM) ("Sandy Bridge") Through the program MACTRACKER V 7.1.5..Then i went through the technical details of this processor in INTEL site,

http://ark.intel.com/products/53463/

it clearly shows that my computer can support 16 GB of ram with no doubt ......

Hey Franc, I have done exactly the same, except for instead of Fusion drive, just two separate drives.

That works fine, and so did the 16GB (from OWC) help a lot. I have parallels with Windows 8.1 on it.

However, opening just VLC, Chrome and a few other small programs in the background such as Drive, Dropbox, AirDisplay and foremost - and I think that's the problem - Time Machine (I have a Time Capsule). I am totally at the top of my RAM, 15.99GB!

Can you let me know whether you have ever reached the limit and when? What kind of programs do you have running?

I'm amazed people are saying you shouldn't need more than 8 GB on the Mac Mini. I regularly run out of memory just using the browser mostly. I've had this Mac about 2 years. Tried everything I could think of to improve the performance. Don't understand it. Previously had Windows machine with the same or less memory and less processing power, that had much better performance. But I'd love to have 16 GBs of memory. And its sounds like I can though Apple doesn't officially support it.

My thoughts exactly on some of the comments here and on Apple discussions in general. I almost laughed when multiple people noted that the OP probably doesn't need that much ram. So typical, I've read, literally hundreds of times, "smart" posters letting "lesser"(in the smart guys eyes) posters know that theres no chance they tax their machine enough with "CPU intensive software" like they the "power user" does.

you need a SSD if you don't have one, in the mid 2011 mac mini you can add an SSD next to the hard drive you already have, reinstall OS X on the SSD, use the original hard drive for file storage. It will improve the performance of the Mac Mini 2011 immensely, assuming you already have 8gb of ram. But the way your problem sounds, do you even have a 2011 mac mini? Because if you have a mid 2011 mac mini with 8gb of ram there is absolutely no way you should be slowing down while just browsing the web. Might want to do a clean install.

I don't think he was saying the audio literally skipped, I think he was saying the computer itself behaved jittery making it a drag on his setup.

Thierry Nkaoua wrote:

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.

BUG thanks for this posting!

I want to upgrade a Mac mini 2011 to 16 GB as well. The reason is as follows:

1. I need a Mac that runs 10.6.8 natively. And the Mid-2011 Mac mini can run 10.6.8 unofficially by using a bundled 10.6.7 from a MacBoo Pro and upgrading it to 10.6.8. Obviously you need a second pre-2011 Mac for that. See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209335?start=660&tstart=0
2. I use a tripple boot system. I will install Linux which is my primary system. On my Linux setup a lot of disk i/o is transferred to a tmpfs mountpoint which is essentially a ramdisk. 16 GB make a lot of sense in such a scenario. It speeds up disk access and it reduces fragmentation on the HDD. On a SSD it reduces the amount of write access thereby prolonging the lifetime of the SSD. Obviously if you really need 16GB of memory greatly depends on what you do on a Linux system. (I have used 16 GB on my Power Mac G5 from 2005 before, also with Linux.)
3. Windows will detect and use 16 GB of memory when in 64-bit mode, regardless of CSM "BIOS" mode (will use MBR partition) or EFI mode (GPT partition, preferable). I'm still hoping it will somehow be possible to install Windows in UEFI mode...
4. Mac OS X 10.6.8 is the big question. Will it correctly detect and use 16 GB or memory?

This is kind of a backstep. On my Power Mac G5, Mac OS X 10.4 was able to use 16 GB of memory. Only, since almost 100% of the applications were 32-bit, the application limit was 4 GB anyways. But it was possible to run more than one application and each would be able to use 4 GB. I know that on 10.4 this (back then) "huge" amount of memory was not really useful. But Mac OS X was capable of managing it. So along comes 10.5/Intel and 10.6, and I am reading all these thread postings about a 8 GB limit in Mac OS X 10.6. But why?

Can anyone confirm that 10.6.8 will detect and use 16 GB of memory on a Mac mini Mid-2011?

i am from the future... use 16 for streaming video.