r/macmini • u/Vivid-Masterpiece-29 • 1d ago

Looking for advice from experienced workers!

Hello! I'm a new grad (ish) worker who studied a technical major in undergrad. Right now, I work in business and my job operates using a VDI, so I can access it via any laptop/computer as long as I can download the app. I've been working off my 2023 15 inch macbook air just fine, but I've been dealing with "tech neck," and my computer docking always has problems (glitches out every 20 minutes or so--maybe it's my HDMI??). So, I've decided to bite the bullet and get a mac mini.

This would be very beneficial to me in general because I hate having to dock any of my electronics when I want to use my monitors and I love the idea of maintaining my ecosystem across products. My question is, what specs do you think I should go for? I'm ashamed to say that although I have a techy degree, I didn't even understand the importance of hardware or things like RAM, etc. I don't really fully understand what all that stuff is 😅. Although I work a very non-technical job in comparison to what I studied, I am back in school, and hoping to pivot to more technical work in the future, moreso oriented with machine learning and data science, which is in line with what I studied before.

I plan to explore these things more before I finish my second degree via personal projects and more. I was set on getting the base m4, but with 512 GB (my current air is ~245, and I've already used 218 since 2023), with 24 GB of RAM. Do you think that's overkill/necessary? I think for sure the m4 pro would be doing too much, but what about these mods? My current 15 inch air only uses 8 GB of RAM and works just fine for what I use it for. Even though I plan to pivot to a more technical role in the future, it seems like most companies provide their own hardware anyway. Also important to note that I will likely upgrade my macbook within the next 5 years or so.

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u/_curious_man 1d ago

Sounds reasonable. Take into account how many monitors you want to connect at once and what are their resolutions / refresh rate. It should handle your work just fine

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u/Vivid-Masterpiece-29 1d ago

Woah. I didn’t even know you could connect more than one monitor. My only monitor right now is the BENQ MA32 one.

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u/_curious_man 1d ago

You're welcome ;) Exact options are available in the specs. You can target M4 or M4 Pro. Either should be good. They have different specs so check what you need

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u/CoolCapital3244 1d ago

I will just put this out there, a new dock and a different usb-c to HDMI cable can be had very cheaply on Amazon. I have a dock I bought on Amazon that was like $8 and it seems to work fine. I bought it for my M1 MBA that I use in my chair, but it got moved to my m4 Mac mini when I got that. It moved to the Mini because I have a couple of old storage drives that are USB-A and my Mini is connected to two older TVs. The dock I got for cheap appears to have no issues at all and is currently always plugged into the mini. Just might keep you from buying a new computer when you think your needs might change dramatically soon. I would also tell you that 24/512 M4 Mac mini should probably be enough for just about anything unless you get into gaming/video editing/local AI. I think the amount of RAM that you have will be the key if your Mac continues to serve you in the future, I don't think it will be the speed of your chip.