What's minimum RAM required for Premiere (4k editing, long timelines) on a new MacBook Pro M4?

There are specific reasons why I think you should not order less memory next time, but first, it would be best to get a better insight into what’s causing the Intel MBP to choke and crash.

1. Open Activity Monitor, it comes with your Mac and is in the Utilities folder.

2. In Activity Monitor, click the Memory tab.

3. Notice the Memory Pressure tab. Check it over time as you work in Premiere Pro.

• If Memory Pressure is always green, what you have in your Mac is enough. 
• If Memory Pressure is sometimes orange but not often, your next Mac might need more memory but the current amount is usually OK. 
• If Memory Pressure is usually orange or even red, the current amount of memory is not enough, but I doubt you’ll see this because 64GB is a nice amount. 

Next, check the CPU tab when Premiere Pro is busy. If CPU usage is high (several hundred percent, meaning several CPU cores are maxed out), and the laptop is hot, and the fans are loud, then the problem is that the 2019 Intel processor can’t keep up. An Apple Silicon procesor is much more efficient than a 2019 Intel CPU, so it can handle Premiere Pro using much less power, causing less thermal throttling, less fan noise, and longer battery life. 

If Memory Pressure is green then memory was never the problem, and your next Mac can be 64GB. If Memory Pressure is always green and you never see orange, maybe your next Mac could be one step down from 64GB…however…here are the reasons why I don’t think new Macs need less RAM, and might need a little more:

Graphics memory. Your Intel Mac probably has separate discrete graphics hardware (AMD Radeon), which is good. Discrete graphics has its own graphics memory, so GPU acceleration doesn’t take away from RAM. On Apple Silicon Macs (M1 through M4), the graphics hardware is integrated with the CPU and shares its memory. That means graphics memory comes out of system memory, leaving a little less for the OS. So, if for example you want your next Mac to have 36GB and provide for the graphics have access to several gigabytes beyond that to fully use the GPU, you should bump up memory to the next level which might be 48GB. This, by the way, is why Apple calls Apple Silicon working memory Unified Memory, not RAM. They want to make it clear that the OS and graphics have full access to that shared memory (it isn’t partitioned, but dynamically allocated), so you should order enough memory to keep both fed.

Apple Intelligence. macOS 15 just added Apple Intelligence features, which is Apple AI. These AI features need a little more memory just as they do in Adobe apps, and so it is widely suspected that the introduction of Apple Intelligence is why Apple finally raised the lowest memory configuration on the cheapest Macs from 8GB to 16GB. Many see that change as a clue that macOS memory requirements just went up.

Future requirements. As apps including Premiere Pro add more advanced features, more GPU-accelerated features, and more AI-powered features (usually powered by the GPU), memory requirements aren’t going down and will probably go up. So I wouldn’t cut back on memory on my next Mac.

It is possible that what you heard is something about Apple Silicon using memory somewhat more efficiently and dynamically than Intel. And there is probably some truth to that. But I think that the reasons why Macs (and PCs) are going to use more memory in the future outweigh that.

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