Can you run macOS 14 Sonoma with 2 GB of RAM?

I recently bought the cheapest Mac Mini I could find on eBay. It was purchasable as is, no specs listed, and said it had a boot chime but was untested. Basically it was a series of red flags so I had to buy it.

Crucial MX500 SATA SSD

Film locations:
Mac Mini - Maupin, Oregon, Mt Hood, Oregon, Criterion, Oregon
Mac Pro 2019 - Cascade Locks, Oregon
PowerMac G4 - Bandon, Oregon

[dmug]

Sequel video is out! - $50 Mac vs macOS 15 Sequoia

[techtipsuk]

Love your little corner of YouTube, esoteric content that I thoroughly enjoy.

[ThatsWert]

to be honest, I thought you had at least 100k followers, such a good quality!

[gavinendsley]

If you have a small amount of RAM, having an SSD largely bumps up performance because when it runs out of RAM, it throws things onto the drive as cache, and so if your cache drive is spinning rust, the slowness effect basically gets multiplied, lol.

[florider_hd]

please dont….the skibidi mac mini….imma go kill myself 😂

[aaronryck]

I'm so glad you will be doing a follow up video when you get the 16GB of RAM 😂

[TechnologyNToys]

I- I understood *some* of those words, I think…

[kaangirginer]

I installed 4gb 2010 server version without using SSD... Works? Yes. Slow? Hell yeah

[harshitgupta]

3:03 had no idea aliexpress is that cheap for ddr3 ram, will definitely take advantage of that in future

[starltelife]

the gen alpha calling out was so funny LOL

[lukchem]

I found it quite interesting that you can officially run iPadOS 17 on 2GB of RAM. And its even kind of usable. But iPadOS 18 sadly wont be able to run on 2GB RAM, 3GB is the minimum.

[TheOriginalCollectorA]

The way it is right now would be great for Snow Leopard. Old Mac OS is great with resources and still manages to feel fast even on a hard drive. Anything newer though and you can see how it’ll work better with some upgrades. If my 2012 Mac Mini didn’t have an SSD and 16GB of RAM, there’s no way it would run as smooth as it does now. As cool as it is to see modern macOS on this, it seems like a great system for some older installs also.

[Bee-ne]

I would boot an SSD via usb 3.0 / the power supply is a pain to put back into enclosure/ I missed missed placed my Sata connector for Mac mini/ I went on using a mac5, 1 (2009) as my NAS Mac for now

[CarlosStorms]

I am running a 2014 Mac Mini with an Apple SSD and a SATA SSD, with Sonoma installed and 8 GB of RAM and it runs fine for web browsing and such. Haven’t installed Adobe Photoshop yet but I bet I’ll run ok. Yes, planned obsolescence, I know

[Madrrrrrrrrrrr]

Those 2 cushions on the bottom is so you can put 2 fingers in the 2 'holes' in the bottom to twist and open it.

[Itsalekss]

ok but why did this Mac mini travel more than me

[Bushidounohana]

I’m curious to see just how much the RAM is the limiting factor here. I did this to a 2009 Mac Mini that I upgraded to 8GB of RAM, and Big Sur was only marginally less painful than you describe.

[Space_US]

that genz lingo threw me for a loop LOL

[Bee-ne]

I love this model especially quad core ones on intel Mac mini/ the make great HD players for media players so you can connect home library and play vlc files make folder as a playlist can send to vlc play it for family members in household and control data usage especially before we had unlimited no data cap package

[Bee-ne]

Sometimes I will use other ram temporarily install especially if working on old Mac mini’s love the 2010 model