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If you buy an 8GB iMac, can you still potentially upgrade to 32GB on your own?

A

Amnesiac1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 11, 2010
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Will there still be enough slots left to upgrade to 12, 16 or 32GB?

I was going to buy 16GB from Apple, but everyone has been telling me not to do this. I think I'm going to heed the nearly unanimous advice and simply go for 8GB and see how it is. However, I want to ensure that I can switch to 12, 16 or even 32 if I feel that I need to (however unlikely that is).
 
The 27" iMac has 4 memory slots total. Since you have 8 GB now, you have 2 additional slots still open. 4 modules of 4 GB each will get you 16 GB, so if you want 32 you'll need to find 4 modules of 8 GB each. 8 GB SO-DIMMs are very expensive and not very common (I don't think Newegg.com carries them, the most they have is 8 GB kits of 2 x 4GB).

When they do show up, definitely get them from Newegg or a similar third-party site. The advice you got was sound, Apple's prices are insane.
 
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You can always upgrade to 32GB but that will require you to replace all the modules with 8GB modules as iMacs have only four RAM slots. Get the stock 2x2GB and buy 1x4GB from aftermarket. That leaves you one empty slot so you can easily increase it to 12GB.
 
Go with the standard 4GB (two 2GB) and upgrade to 8GB (two 4GB) or 16GB (four 4GB) yourself.

32GB right now costs $3,200 at most places. I would only go with this configuration once it costs $200-400.
 
Hellhammer said:
You can always upgrade to 32GB but that will require you to replace all the modules with 8GB modules as iMacs have only four RAM slots. Get the stock 2x2GB and buy 1x4GB from aftermarket. That leaves you one empty slot so you can easily increase it to 12GB.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure you need matched sets. You can't do three modules.
 
MythicFrost said:
I'm pretty sure you need matched sets. You can't do three modules.
Click to expand...

i5 and i7 Quad Core iMac computers come with both top memory slots populated. These computers will not start up if only a single DIMM is installed in any bottom slot; these computers should operate normally with a single DIMM installed in any top slot. Core Duo iMac computers should operate normally with a single DIMM installed in any slot, top or bottom. ("Top" and "bottom" slots refer to the orientation of the slots in the pictures below. "Top" refers to the slots closest to the display; "bottom" refers to the slots closest to the stand).
Click to expand...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3918

You don't have to use matched pairs. It's not 2000 anymore ;)
 
I think he just wants to max out the memory and not worry about upgrading until much much later. :p

If parts were cheap I'd do the very same thing.

No computer is ever fast enough.

If it wasnt so much i'd also slap in a 3TB myself and 240GB Vertex 3 SSD.
 
cube said:
Do you really need more than 4GiB now?
Click to expand...

Well I certainly need more than 4gb. My iMac chokes on 4gb... and I was getting Kernel Panics when I had 12gb (2X2gb + 2X4gb) so I took out the two 4gb cards and am down to 4gb total but it's choking badly on video rendering or converting to iPad/Atv2 format.

But 32gb is really really excessive... I don't think there is anything you could possibly run that could get close to needing 32gb of RAM.
 
MrXiro said:
Well I certainly need more than 4gb. My iMac chokes on 4gb... and I was getting Kernel Panics when I had 12gb (2X2gb + 2X4gb) so I took out the two 4gb cards and am down to 4gb total but it's choking badly on video rendering or converting to iPad/Atv2 format.

But 32gb is really really excessive... I don't think there is anything you could possibly run that could get close to needing 32gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

It all depends on what you use the computer for.
 
MrXiro said:
Well I certainly need more than 4gb. My iMac chokes on 4gb... and I was getting Kernel Panics when I had 12gb (2X2gb + 2X4gb) so I took out the two 4gb cards and am down to 4gb total but it's choking badly on video rendering or converting to iPad/Atv2 format.

But 32gb is really really excessive... I don't think there is anything you could possibly run that could get close to needing 32gb of RAM.
Click to expand...

Development.

Want to work on a website backed by a decently-sized database, and have the web servers and development servers all running in emulation locally for testing, before you push to your live environment? You can obliterate 32GB of memory pretty quickly.
 
mrfoof82 said:
Development.

Want to work on a website backed by a decently-sized database, and have the web servers and development servers all running in emulation locally for testing, before you push to your live environment? You can obliterate 32GB of memory pretty quickly.
Click to expand...
Seriously, even the base iMac will do fine for that purpose.
If you run the server in a virtual machine, just add 2x4gb yourself and you'll be fine, unless you want to run your database in a RAM drive.
 
sth said:
Seriously, even the base iMac will do fine for that purpose.
Click to expand...

Not if you run a massive website. Or if you do what I do for a living -- data warehousing consultant (where dev servers have a lot more than 32GB, or are shared-nothing MPP clusters). Very typical for analysts running MATLab, Stata or SAS to have all the DIMM slots in their workstations filled -- which is anywhere from 16 to 64GB of memory.

In 4GB densities, memory is $10/GB. There's no reason to not get as much as you can if you will use it. If 8GB SO-DIMM densities weren't close to $100/GB, I'd have 32GB sitting in front of me right now for my ordered iMac instead of 16GB.
 
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Do you want to use the iMac for development or use it as a development server for a whole workgroup?

If you run a server which is accessed by multiple users at once, you want massive amounts of RAM so the database system can cache the whole db in memory for optimum performance.

If you're only a single developer using the machine, it doesn't really matter much because there's simply no workload for the DB server most of the time.
 
cube said:
Do you really need more than 4GiB now?
Click to expand...

I have issues with the 6GB in my current iMac. Mainly it is when I have a Windows Parallels virt running. It is nice to give those virts enough space to operate but then that leaves no space for my other memory hungry apps like Firefox (what a hog!), iPhoto, and iTunes. If I don't shut a bunch of native mac apps down during a Parallels session my computer starts paging like crazy. I ordered 8GB in my new Mac which I think is a good base, but I will upgrade that.
 
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