iMac 2017: Warning to those adding their own RAM?

[haruhiko]

Choose the SSD. Don't pay today's money for 2011 performance.

 

[Brian Y]

Whoa! There is no guarantee whatsoever that any of this advice will apply to the hypothetical 2018/9 iMac. The current 27”s easily upgraded RAM is already an aberration in Apple’s range and it’s probably time for the non-SSD options to disappear, too. Nobody knows if/when the new models will arrive or how different they will be.

By all means wait if you don’t need a new system urgently - the new intel processors with more cores could be worth waiting for - but don’t expect your plans to be relevant to any new models.

Also, there’s already no HD-only model and friends don’t let friends buy the 1TB fusion drive model. It has a pitifully small SSD component and many people here have reported lacklustre performance - at the very least get the 2TB fusion, which has a bigger SSD but, really, there’s no place for spinning rust in an iMac.

The stupid thing is that fusion drives weren't so bad when they came with a reasonable SSD and you could split them.

Now, you can still do that with the 2TB, but for the cost of upgrading to the 2TB on the low/mid range models, you could get a 256GB (so double) SSD, a 4/5TB external drive, and have change left over for a coffee.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Thanks again for all the advice. I noticed that the Crucial SSDs are a lot cheaper than OWC/Macsales SSDs, somewhere around $50.00 difference. I have both Crucial and OWC/Macsales RAM in a couple of different Macs, and haven't had any problems with either one.

Thanks again.

 

[LTMstudios_Andy]

I get the same kernel panics when mix matching ram sizes using Corsair Vengeance proper spec’d ram for 2017 5K iMac (ddr4 2400mhz PC-19200 260pin sodimm). I ran into error testings when using 48gb (pair of 8’s in slots 1-3 and pair of 16’s in 2-4) but it runs flawlessly when I use 32gb (4x 8gb sticks). I ran my iMac with 32gb for past few months with no issues. With the 48gb configuration it would boot up fine but would crash under heavy workloads. I ran apple hardware tests and it didn’t detect an issue but with Rember it fails to test. So I ran back to back testings on all of my pairs of ram separately and all of them passed. None of them were faulty. If anyone is using 3rd party unofficial iMac ram I advise to use all same size ram in all 4 slots.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Yep Andy looks 4x8GB or 4x16GB.