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Crucial memory versus Apple memory...

Icaras

Icaras

macrumors 603
Original poster
Mar 18, 2008
6,348
3,396
Hi there. New here! Anyway, I can't wait till Apple finally updates the imac (hopefully this spring), so I've been finding myself more and more obsessively playing around with the imac configurations at the online store lately.

Anyway, I noticed to add 4gigs of ram, you have to add $500 to your order. Now I already own a G5, and I have bought ram from crucial a few years ago and I've had no problems since. I went to crucial to look at Ram prices and they have 4gigs listed at about $100 for the imac!

Maybe its just been a while since I've compared prices, but a $400 difference sounds almost ridiculous. And if the quality of RAM between apple and crucial is still as good as when I had gotten mine, then this just sounds like absolute robbery from Apple.

So I'm just wondering then if this is why I read how many users on this board like to buy the base ram and then just simply upgrade and add later, because I sure as hell would like to save $400 on RAM. :D
 
There's no reason to buy RAM from Apple unless someone else is paying for it who doesn't care how much it costs and you want the simplicity of everything being covered by Apple's warranty.

Buy from a trusted third-party vendor like OWC or Data Memory Systems and save yourself hundreds of dollars. Crucial makes good RAM as well, but there are a number of people here (myself included) who don't patronize them anymore due to some shady business practices. They also are frequently more expensive than the other good dealers, although prices fluctuate so much that it's not always true.
 
I've been very happy with Crucial over the years. I ordered my 4GB this weekend. Yea, sometimes they get it wrong but that is happening less and less these days.

Part of Apple's cost is that they have to pull your iMac off the assembly line and manually add the memory upgrade. That's why it will take a day or two longer to get one from Apple if you order it with a custom upgrade. No, it isn't worth $400, but one of the reasons to price something off the reality scale is to disuade anyone from buying it. Given how FAR away from reality that memory price is I'm possitive Apple would rather you do it. It's one thing you can do that won't invalidate your warranty.

I paid Staples to upgrade memory in an HP laptop I own. Their flat fee for the memory upgrade labor was $29.99, but once they saw how hard it would be on my particular laptop they upped their estimate on me. That leads me to think a "real" charge for factory memory upgrades should only be $30 to $50 above the average cost of the RAM itself.

4D
 
Great memory deal

So I just bought one of the newly listed mac mini refurbs with 1gb ram...I was looking around for a good deal on some crucial ram to bring it up to 2gb total. I was hunting around the frys specials page, and through today, they have 2 gb total (2x1gb) ram for the mini's and macbooks...normally the ram is $62 or so and through frys its $36 with a $16 rebate for a total of $19.99.....good deal for me!
 
Atlasland said:
Could someone elaborate?
Click to expand...

There have been a couple of instances over the years. One involved a practice in which RAM was priced differently based on what machine you told them you had. For instance, if you input a black MacBook into their memory wizard it would direct you to the exact same RAM as if you'd input a white MacBook, but it would have a different part number and a slightly higher price. Same if you input a MacBook Pro, which took the exact same RAM as the MacBook. I guess their theory was that if you can afford a more expensive machine, you can afford to pay a bit more for your RAM.

A sneakier version of this involved dynamic pricing: using cookies to track your OS/browser and what you looked at on their site and then offering you a variable price for the exact same item.

See this thread and this thread for discussion on the incidents. I don't know if they've stopped these games, as I don't bother looking at their site any more. OWC and DMS are great vendors who don't play games, and that's what I'm looking for.
 
WildCowboy said:
There have been a couple of instances over the years. One involved a practice in which RAM was priced differently based on what machine you told them you had. For instance, if you input a black MacBook into their memory wizard it would direct you to the exact same RAM as if you'd input a white MacBook, but it would have a different part number and a slightly higher price. Same if you input a MacBook Pro, which took the exact same RAM as the MacBook. I guess their theory was that if you can afford a more expensive machine, you can afford to pay a bit more for your RAM.

A sneakier version of this involved dynamic pricing: using cookies to track your OS/browser and what you looked at on their site and then offering you a variable price for the exact same item.

See this thread and this thread for discussion on the incidents. I don't know if they've stopped these games, as I don't bother looking at their site any more. OWC and DMS are great vendors who don't play games, and that's what I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

Thanks for ther info

Yeah - that does sound pretty dodgy. Worth bearing in mind
 
4DThinker said:
I've been very happy with Crucial over the years. I ordered my 4GB this weekend. Yea, sometimes they get it wrong but that is happening less and less these days.

Part of Apple's cost is that they have to pull your iMac off the assembly line and manually add the memory upgrade. That's why it will take a day or two longer to get one from Apple if you order it with a custom upgrade. No, it isn't worth $400, but one of the reasons to price something off the reality scale is to disuade anyone from buying it. Given how FAR away from reality that memory price is I'm possitive Apple would rather you do it. It's one thing you can do that won't invalidate your warranty.

I paid Staples to upgrade memory in an HP laptop I own. Their flat fee for the memory upgrade labor was $29.99, but once they saw how hard it would be on my particular laptop they upped their estimate on me. That leads me to think a "real" charge for factory memory upgrades should only be $30 to $50 above the average cost of the RAM itself.

4D
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's not true. Installing RAM in ANYTHING is a 5 minute open and close job. I can't imagine how Apple justifies their pricing. I don't think it's priced like that for people who know what their talking about. People who know what's what know to buy elsewhere. When I bought my iMac in Christmas 2004, I bought a 512MB DDR stick from Apple. The price was $150, and we thought it was expensive, but didn't think to look anywhere else. I'd bet that's how most of their RAM revenue comes in.

I used to buy RAM and have it installed. "Come back tomorrow, we'll have it ready for you". What a joke. In addition to paying $30 or $50, I'm also a night and day without my computer, for a work order that might take 15 minutes if the technician has cerebral palsy :p
 
i got my imac 2.8ghz with 1gb ram (got the 2.4 and added 2.8 an an upgrade) Im not worried about the 100 odd gb difference in HDD space 320 is fine esp. as i have a 250gb external hdd

I went straight out and bought 4gb of ram from crucial, its been blistering fast since! saved myself a packet.. 4gb ram cost me £60, 4gb ram from apple.. £400+

It makes sence.

Plus changing the ram does not void your apple warranty i believe :)
 
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