momopi
Well-known member
Apple sells the M1 Mac Mini with baseline 8GB RAM/250 GB SSD config -- you can buy this for $650 on Amazon or $670 at Costco. Note that although Costco cost $20 more, you get Costco's 2 year warranty from date of purchase. In comparison, AppleCare's 3 year extended warranty from date of purchase cost $99. So $20 for the Costco warranty isn't bad.
However, I didn't buy from Costco because they only sold the base 8 GB RAM model. The reason is because on the M1 Mac running Big Sur, it can easily consume ~10 GB RAM running just a single application. I've observed running Safari + Sys Info + Activity Monitor that it ran up to 9.5 GB used. On the M1 Mac the SSD performance is very good, so writing 2 GB swap file to the SSD doesn't cause noticeable performance impact to most users. The issue is that NAND flash memory chips on SSD have limited lifespan in write cycles. So if your Mac is constantly writing GB's and GB's to the swap file, this will eventually impact the SSD lifespan. The impact is larger on smaller SSD's vs larger SSD's by % of the disk being used.
There are many user reports of premature/excessive SSD wear on the M1 Mac's, you can google the articles and blog posts. At this time we're still not 100% certain if the issue is real excessive wear or incorrect reporting, but considering the M1 Mac SSD is not user replaceable, it is a risk. You can mitigate the risk by purchasing the 16 GB RAM model, which is what I did. With enough RAM it doesn't need to write to swap file.
For casual users, the baseline model should be OK. But if you are planning to do a lot of photo and video editing, IMO you should either wait for v2 (or at least wait and see how apple resolves these issues), or buy 16 GB model with at least 500 GB SSD. Alternatively, used Intel Mac at 1/3 to 1/2 of the price vs new for immediate use, but knowing that it'd be rendered obsolete within few years with future OS X releases.
However, I didn't buy from Costco because they only sold the base 8 GB RAM model. The reason is because on the M1 Mac running Big Sur, it can easily consume ~10 GB RAM running just a single application. I've observed running Safari + Sys Info + Activity Monitor that it ran up to 9.5 GB used. On the M1 Mac the SSD performance is very good, so writing 2 GB swap file to the SSD doesn't cause noticeable performance impact to most users. The issue is that NAND flash memory chips on SSD have limited lifespan in write cycles. So if your Mac is constantly writing GB's and GB's to the swap file, this will eventually impact the SSD lifespan. The impact is larger on smaller SSD's vs larger SSD's by % of the disk being used.
There are many user reports of premature/excessive SSD wear on the M1 Mac's, you can google the articles and blog posts. At this time we're still not 100% certain if the issue is real excessive wear or incorrect reporting, but considering the M1 Mac SSD is not user replaceable, it is a risk. You can mitigate the risk by purchasing the 16 GB RAM model, which is what I did. With enough RAM it doesn't need to write to swap file.
For casual users, the baseline model should be OK. But if you are planning to do a lot of photo and video editing, IMO you should either wait for v2 (or at least wait and see how apple resolves these issues), or buy 16 GB model with at least 500 GB SSD. Alternatively, used Intel Mac at 1/3 to 1/2 of the price vs new for immediate use, but knowing that it'd be rendered obsolete within few years with future OS X releases.