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Buy my iMac with RAM or add it later?

Calbretto

Calbretto

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 1, 2011
50
1
Toronto
I'm almost ready to buy myself an iMac (I'm finally converting over from a PC) and I was planning on upgrading the RAM to 8GB. A friend of mine at work has suggested that I just get 4GB and upgrade it myself later on.

Is this a good idea? It's only $200 to upgrade the RAM directly from Apple (or cheaper with my wife's work discount), so is it worth trying to save a few bucks or am I just asking for trouble down the road with compatibility problems or something like that.

How many memory slots does the iMac come with? I'm also worried that if I get 4GB and it will be two 2GB cards taking up the two slots so I'd end up having to purchase two 4GB cards or an 8GB.
 
I got 8 gigs from macsales.com for $130 - it's cheaper and uses the same ram as apple does
 
New iMacs have 4 ram slots capable of 4gbs each. Buy it with the lowest, get on newegg and get ram. You can get 16gbs for around 160$ way cheaper than apple. Ram is ram.
 
Upgrade yourself and save money. If you don't need the extra ram you will even save more money

you can then use the ram from the imac to upgrade a friends computer form 2 GB to 4 GB. Or sell it, not worth much though.
 
get it from apple , its only money a bit more or less what difference does it make ;)

of course add it later from the cheapest source

having said that , isn't it the case that if you get the ram from apple its covered by apples warranty and apple care , so any problem and the genius bar will sort it

on the other hand i have computers since over 20 years and only once ram failed and crucial send me replacement ram without fuzz,
ok get it from the cheapest source but branded ram , i stick to crucial ,never got disappointed from them, i even bought good ram of ebay form a company called GLOBAL memory , and they are great too
 
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Apple did in fact lower their ram and hdd upgrade prices just recently, but most places still undercut them. If it was a matter of $50-$100, I would say just get it from Apple.

But if you're gonna be going for an 8-16gb upgrade, it is probably better to shop around as everyone else has already said.
 
I got my iMac 27 Ulti with 8 GB of ram from Apple with the intend of adding an extra 8 GB ram from other vendor.

If it doesn't work - I still have the 8 Gb ram from Apple with Apple Care Protection Plan, if it does work I have 8 extra GB's of ram, adding up to a total af 16 GB ram, which means I can have more than 100 browser windows open at the same time, while playing music, writing in Pages, editing in Coda/Espresso and doing work in Aperture all at the same time :)

I often have 50+ windows open in Chrome, when I search for info on a special type of subject on Google or in forums - and I can drain 4-8 GB of ram pretty fast that way.

16 GB ram lets you do this without any delays or HDD paging.

My next iMac will probaly have at least 24 GB ram :p
 
Get the iMac with 4Gb then buy 2 x4Gb sticks for about $120 and add that to the extra DIMM slots giving you a total of 12gb of RAM. That is the best deal and it only takes about 10 minutes to add the RAM. Much better than paying Apple more money for only 8gb
 
Please excuse my ignorance, and sorry if this feels like a thread hijack.

I have an 09 27" iMac, its the base model 3.06 Duo. I've loved it ever since setting it up, still do. Still does almost everything great for me. However I'm noticing beach balls more and more. Would upgrading to 12GB of ram help solve this problem or what does the ram even do? I found that crucial sells two 4GB chips for about $100...

Also is it very hard to install? I've never been scared to open up my old windows PC's but there's much more room inside those...

Thanks,

Heath
 
xplnusa said:
Please excuse my ignorance, and sorry if this feels like a thread hijack.

I have an 09 27" iMac, its the base model 3.06 Duo. I've loved it ever since setting it up, still do. Still does almost everything great for me. However I'm noticing beach balls more and more. Would upgrading to 12GB of ram help solve this problem or what does the ram even do? I found that crucial sells two 4GB chips for about $100...

Also is it very hard to install? I've never been scared to open up my old windows PC's but there's much more room inside those...

Thanks,

Heath
Click to expand...

spinning balls *when*? surfing the web? opening a 500 gig photoshop file? importing 200 RAW photos?

adding ram probably will not help if this is a continuos thing, its something bigger.

I think my 6 year old daughter could put ram in your iMac, the instructions are printed on the bottom of the foot of your iMac. 2 screws.
 
xplnusa said:
Usually it's when I'm jumping from one thing to another quickly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, still not sure what that really means.

If you get spinning beach balls, you arent jumping from anything to anything quickly...

You need to start back at the beginning, sounds like something OS related not, hardware
 
gr8whtd0pe said:
... Ram is ram.
Click to expand...

Don't believe that—there is shoddy memory available—see the MacRumors RAM Buying Guide. That's the best advice I can give.

My own rule of thumb is to back down one notch from Apple's top RAM offering, and add it later if I need it. Also, if you pay Apple extra for their high-priced RAM, the RAM's warranty expires with your Mac's warranty or AppleCare. I buy RAM from MacRamDirect.com—on MacRumors' advice—and it costs less, and comes with a lifetime warranty. A lot of RAM shops don't know Mac—something to keep in mind (I could tell a story...).

A question to ask yourself: How much RAM do you really need? If you're not sure, see how well you get by with less RAM and more cash.

Have fun, and good luck,
skinny*k
 
xplnusa said:
Please excuse my ignorance, and sorry if this feels like a thread hijack.

I have an 09 27" iMac, its the base model 3.06 Duo. I've loved it ever since setting it up, still do. Still does almost everything great for me. However I'm noticing beach balls more and more. Would upgrading to 12GB of ram help solve this problem or what does the ram even do? I found that crucial sells two 4GB chips for about $100...

Also is it very hard to install? I've never been scared to open up my old windows PC's but there's much more room inside those...

Thanks,

Heath
Click to expand...

I had the 2009 base model with 3.06 C2D (now use a 15" MBP and external monitor since the high resolution hurt my eyes) but I did add more ram. Installing extra ram is very simple and requires only a small screwdriver and about 10 minutes - places like OWC not only sell ram but also have installation videos.

More ram may help with the spinning beachballs but it sounds like you haven another problem - try using 'repair disk permissions' in Disk Utilities in the Utilities folder in Applications - that has helped me a few times. Also, for Safari you might want to click under 'Safari' and empty cache and also reset Safari if that is causing trouble. Good luck!!!
 
gr8whtd0pe said:
Well yeah, but I was referring to how newegg has laptop/desktop memory and then apple memory at a mark up. Its the same thing with a bigger price tag. Just like when apple sells it to you.

Sorry should have been more clear.
Click to expand...

With that clarification, I agree; Apple's memory is no better than what can be had elsewhere for less.

OP
If saving money is your objective, buy the Mac based on processor speed. If you can get by on less than the max memory, memory prices will generally fall, for a given board, over time. I don't think anyone can give you an absolute answer—only you know what you need. Again, my best advice is to check out the link in my post above.

Have fun,
skinny*k
 
i got my imac 21.5" with 2x2gb sticks and got another set of 2x2gb sticks making my total 8gb...

this was the first thing i did opened the box - didnt even remove the film just took a screwdriver and stuck in the extra ram...

i am eventually gonna swap all of them out for 4gb sticks but thats prob just cos i can :D

if i knew what cpu would go in to the socket on the imacs - ifixit it looks like a standard i3 cpu - then i would be so tempted to gently open the mac and swap the cpu out :D

think i'll wait till after warranty to have a go at that :D
 
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