New Mac Mini: Which CPU and how much RAM for Photoshop in 2018

I'm about to roll out 32GB RAM standard to all the users I support here for PS 2019. 16GB; especially when muti-tasking with the rest of the suite is getting very tight very quick; but we do a lot of high-res print here. You're SSD is not going thrash anywhere nearly as bad as an HDD but paging is best avoided. The Mini uses 2666MHz. RAM so it should be very responsive.

I've never used a quad i3, I don't know much about it but PS appears to like i7's and for $300 it may add years of production value if not better resale to that mini, and it's going to have an edge over the i5. TurboBoot is nonsense; it's a package of cookies with a label that says "improved taste"; it's a theoretic speed and not always able to come near that number.

It looks like Apple dumped the "cheap" from the Mini and gave it some much needed muscle. I might put this on my Christmas list but Fender will let me custom design a Stratocaster!

Only the six-core, Coffee Lake Core i7 CPU are hyperthreaded, and that may prove beneficial to Photoshop workflows. I would recommend 32GB RAM as a minimum, both for Photoshop and future planning. It shouldn't take iFixit too long before they have one of these torn apart for additional revelation.

Apple is introducing a new thermal management system in the 2018 mini with redesigned, higher capacity fan.

Photoshop’s RAM requirements depends somewhat on how many layers and what size your files are. 32gb is a safe bet for most users but if you do high count layer work and focus stacking and have other programs open consider 64gb. Photoshop nor lightroom require an advanced gpu so the built in Intel one should be ok. Neither lightroom nor Photoshop makes use of cores beyond 3 or 4 in most instances but both are dependent on clock speed so pay attention to the highest turbo boost speeds with one caveat. When the mini cpu reaches its thermal limits the cpu throttles back from turbo boost speeds. This means Apple’s design for cooling will be critical to keep the units thermals under control. As was pointed out in the unveiling the mini has an all new internal cooling system. Suggest you look at Macperformanceguide.com for review coming soon. He also details which filters take advantage of cores and hyperthreading.

Supposedly the RAM is upgradeable. I suggest waiting for a bit. Once people post some tears downs and run some tests, we will know just how upgradeable this machine really is. Also, it has been years since Apple has made a machine that didn't have thermal problems. I'm pretty skeptical of a 6-core chip in that little box.

Otherwise, or if you can't wait, standard rules apply. How much money do you have? Buy everything you can afford because you may not be able to upgrade. Don't forget to budget for Apple Care. This is a brand new machine.

I'm with Etresoft - I've put this mini on my Christmas list and maybe I'll even wait a little longer than that to let things shake out. It looks like there are two slots for RAM so as has been so true of the past, we won't be able to just add another DIMM, we'll have to replace 2 perfectly good sticks to upgrade. Photoshop is a hog and my current system which has 16GB is beginning to feel cramped. If I were still in the Photoshop ecosystem I'd jump to 32GB. Used to be I purchased AppleCare just for notebooks - recently I've been buying it for desktops too.

Photoshop and Lightroom are both memory hogs. Since RAM is

upgradable, get it from OWC, it will be cheaper and get as much as

you can afford.

As far as what processor, once again, buy as much horsepower as

you can afford. Also, many Photoshop and Lightroom operations

leverage GPU and not sure how good the Intel UHD 630 graphics are.

Aside from what others caution, before laying out a bunch of cash,

you may wait to see what sort of test results the photo community get

from using the new Mini, if they even consider it.

In addition to needing adequate RAM, the versions of Photoshop (and InDesign) that I have used all work best with plenty of free drive space for caches/scratch disk use. I have not used any of the CC versions, and probably never will, so maybe things have changed. But that seems unlikely. So at least one large, fast hard drive would be a good addition to your setup.

Another vote for wait a couple of months. Aside from the possible hardware issues, Mojave is a new OS, with only one update so far, and it forces you to rely on a new file system which may or may not prove to be reliable. Factor in the cost of external drives, and probably a Thunderbolt dock that would allow you to use whatever important existing hardware that you may have.

I’m intrigued by this new Mini, also, but not enough to jump right in, or to abandon my wonderful silver Mac Pro, which still is fine for what I do with Photoshop or film scanning.

You would also need to be certain that your film scanner’s software and your printer will work with Mojave. If you rely on stable older OS versions for anything (I do), you would have to run those in virtual machines (add the cost of Parallels or VMware).

That's an important plot point these days. I have seen cases where people have a small boot drive but lots of RAM. Even if you have an SSD, if you run out of disk space, you are going to be dead in the water. Sometimes people who buy those small SSDs can get to a point where they have more RAM than free hard drive space. But the operating system can't turn off VM, so it is going to lock up and become virtually unusable at that point. It is best to have at least 50 GB of free space at all times. If you get to 20 GB of free space, it is time to get a new hard drive. Any less than that and the system will start having problems.

Yes. One reason that InDesign was good at recovering from crashes, at least in the old days of the classic Mac OS, was the constant saving to caches. You lost very little work, even if you hadn’t saved your work for a bit. With Photoshop, if you are working on a large file, and have 25+ history states, that can require a big chunk of space.

The storage defaults for the new Mini are pretty skimpy, and the pricing is hard to stomach. It may be fine for some purposes, though.

Silverfast is good but very expensive. One reason that I keep a working Snow Leopard system going is that the Silverfast software for my old but good Polaroid Sprintscan hasn’t been upgraded in years, and never will be.

Any version of Vuescan works with many scanners, while Silverfast is scanner-specific. (The Silverfast for my Plustek will not work with the Polaroid scanner.)

Apple hasn't updated this support document yet (Use an external graphics processor with your Mac - Apple Support) but hopefully you could use an eGPU with the new Mac mini.

But only if it is an American Professional Stratocaster... 😉

Other options for an older scanner are VueScan and SilverFast. VueScan particularly is inexpensive.