Is the M5 base chip 32GB RAM suitable for me?
Hi guys. I plan to buy a MacBook Pro. I’m a college student. I tried a used MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip, 48GB RAM and 1TB storage a few days ago. I noticed its memory usage reached around 30GB when I ran my daily apps, while CPU usage was only about 15%. GPU usage hit nearly 90% when I ran local AI models.
I was always worried about damaging its display, and I couldn’t add AppleCare to it afterward. That’s why I had to sell it.
I’m not a heavy local AI user. I usually keep 5–10 browser tabs open, along with messaging apps, music apps, VS Code, and Final Cut Pro (2–4 tracks of 4K 60fps footage for 20–30 minute projects). I’ve also started trying out LLMs like Qwen 3.6 32B A3B mxfp4 and Gemma 4 26B A4B mxfp4 lately, but I don’t really depend on them. So, is the base M5 chip model with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage a good option for me?🤔