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4 GB of ram...questions.

J

-Josh-

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 21, 2007
229
0
Hey everyone.
I'm new to upgrading, can a total newb upgrade the ram himself on a Macbook? also, where is a good place to find cheap ram? any links would be appreciated.

It comes down to this:
Upgrade to 2 GB when I buy it from apple, or, buy up to 4 GB somewhere online.

Thanks,

Josh
 
Check out Newegg, $130 Shipped for 2x2GB SODIMMs.

I have them ordered for my new SR macbook.

~Thursday
 
do any of you guys know the cheapest place to upgrade ram and hdd in the uk?
 
I can give a little insight here, not to his question but maybe to what you might be able to use 4gb of ram for...

I have a 2.4gzh SR MBP 15' matte with 160gb 7200rpm drive and 4gb of ram. My dad has the exact same machine minus the 7200rpm drive and 'only' 2gb of ram.

Using os x I notice NO differences between the two machines for just things like running apps that require 'rosetta' (ie PPC only apps like word), exporting photos from iPhoto, running onyx to clean things up, whatever. I do run parallels and XP from a boot camp partition so that I can work on SAS (which has no OS X modern equivalent). When I want to get really fancy I run 2gb of ram to XP (leaving 2 for me on OSX). I notice no slowdown in os x doing this.

Doing the same from the 2gb of ram from my dads machine does have a moderate slowdown, but nothing HUGE. My advice, to anybody asking for it, though they aren't here, lol, would be that if you can afford it, go for it. If you are scrounging for the money, forget it for now, and wait for it.

joneSi
 
Mindflux said:
Yeah I found that, but.

a) I don't trust that brand name (not that they're bad, never had experience)
and
b) EXPERIENCE tells me getting a 2x2GB (matched pair) is better compatibility wise, than two single 2GB sticks (It shouldn't be, but I've seen it be an issue in the past).

:apple:
Click to expand...

In my experience, most RAM is made in the same factory, and then just slapped with a company's logo. And if I have issues, I sort them out with Newegg. So I figured it was worth the 20ish dollar gamble.

~Thursday
 
Mindflux said:
Yeah I found that, but.

a) I don't trust that brand name (not that they're bad, never had experience)
and
b) EXPERIENCE tells me getting a 2x2GB (matched pair) is better compatibility wise, than two single 2GB sticks (It shouldn't be, but I've seen it be an issue in the past).

:apple:
Click to expand...

What is a matched pair? Because they both came in the same box? Or, they've been tested and found to work better together?
 
bbarnhart said:
What is a matched pair? Because they both came in the same box? Or, they've been tested and found to work better together?
Click to expand...


Supposedly a matched pair is ram that was tested to work together. Whether or not there's truth to that or two sticks of ram are just jammed in a box together I don't know. Manufacturing isn't an exact science, so it could just be that they come out of the same 'batch', thus giving the tolerances between the ram the best likelihood to match.
 
Oh well. I'm going to take a chance with that PQI memory. For 126.67 shipped, less 2% from Fatwallet (2.4 dollars) makes it a steal.
 
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