Mac mini (mid 2010) keep crashing after RAM upgrade

[WaelT]

I used my laptop RAM (Samsung 4+2 GB DDR3) to upgrade my Mac Mini memory. At first boot I was able to work with no issue on the mac, but after I restarted the mac. It kept crashing until I put back the old ones. I'm pretty sure that the RAM I used was OK and functional. I have mid 2010 mac mini and current OS is 10.7.4 Yes it is kind of old. Does upgrading the OS help preventing from this matter?
Thank you.

 

[California]

I used my laptop RAM (Samsung 4+2 GB DDR3) to upgrade my Mac Mini memory. At first boot I was able to work with no issue on the mac, but after I restarted the mac. It kept crashing until I put back the old ones. I'm pretty sure that the RAM I used was OK and functional. I have mid 2010 mac mini and current OS is 10.7.4 Yes it is kind of old. Does upgrading the OS help preventing from this matter?
Thank you.

Uh, yes, the 2010 Mac Mini (and the 2010 Macbook Pro) is very picky about ram. It must be Apple certified. The OS doesn't matter, though some sites will tell you Snow Leopard will not take the full 16gb upgrade on your Mini. (That is wrong, it will work with it; I know because I have put 16gbs of ram in three separate 2010 Mac Minis on Snow Leopard.)

 

[Weaselboy]

I used my laptop RAM (Samsung 4+2 GB DDR3) to upgrade my Mac Mini memory. At first boot I was able to work with no issue on the mac, but after I restarted the mac. It kept crashing until I put back the old ones. I'm pretty sure that the RAM I used was OK and functional. I have mid 2010 mac mini and current OS is 10.7.4 Yes it is kind of old. Does upgrading the OS help preventing from this matter?
Thank you.

No, updating the OS will not fix this. If it works with the old RAM and does not work with the new RAM, that would seem to prove it is the RAM at fault.

 

[D.T.]

That's a 2.4GHz C2D machine with a 320M GPU, right?

The 13" MBP and MB of that generation with the same CPU/GPU would not correctly clock down RAM (and I believe the Mini has roughly the same, if physically reconfigured, motherboard), so it had to be 1066MHz. I ran into this (and researched it extensively) when I tried to use the 8GB 1333 RAM from my 15" 2011 machine in my wife's 2010 machine. The RAM was without question, known, perfectly working for a couple of years (then continued to work when I reinstalled it in my 15").

Funny enough, if you used a single 1066 DIMM combined with a 1333 DIMM it ran fine, apparently the 1066 RAM would cause the system to forcibly clock down (I ran her machine with one of each 2 + 4GB DIMMs and it ran perfect at 6GB total, 1066MHz).

Some RAM has an unlocked, programmable clock, so with some voodoo and command line apps on a PC you can change it, but that's generally not for civilians

 

[California]

That's a 2.4GHz C2D machine with a 320M GPU, right?

The 13" MBP and MB of that generation with the same CPU/GPU would not correctly clock down RAM (and I believe the Mini has roughly the same, if physically reconfigured, motherboard), so it had to be 1066MHz. I ran into this (and researched it extensively) when I tried to use the 8GB 1333 RAM from my 15" 2011 machine in my wife's 2010 machine. The RAM was without question, known, perfectly working for a couple of years (then continued to work when I reinstalled it in my 15").

Funny enough, if you used a single 1066 DIMM combined with a 1333 DIMM it ran fine, apparently the 1066 RAM would cause the system to forcibly clock down (I ran her machine with one of each 2 + 4GB DIMMs and it ran perfect at 6GB total, 1066MHz).

Some RAM has an unlocked, programmable clock, so with some voodoo and command line apps on a PC you can change it, but that's generally not for civilians

I had my 2010's (both mini's and MacBook Pro 13" machines) running 16gbs (8x2) of Mushkin 1067 "a" ram. "A" as in for "Apple".

Do you think there is any dual channel benefit to having matching pairs of ram in these machines? I'm always scared with the clock down that I'd be losing some speed.