MacPro 4,1 RAM upgrade

[Andy800]

I was wanting to upgrade my MacPro 4,1 which is currently running 8GB RAM(4x2).

Early 2009 2.66 Quad core x1 Nehalem

My reason for wanting to upgrade was to give PsCS5/6 more ram to tile render as I do some quite large composite and multi-layered smart object work in Photoshop.

I am also a complete Numpty when it comes to Mac architecture!

Crucial & MacUpgrades seem to want to cap my ram at 16GB but then I find that the machine will support 32GB and 48GB.

At present my activity monitor reportsnot that I know what any of it means!)

VM size: 162GB (av)
Page ins: 2.32GB
Page outs: 1.26GB
Swap used: 610.5MB

Would my machine have any problems if I exceed the 16GB max recommendation?

Also, would it be possible to put 3x8GB in the machine without it causing problems, and where's a good place for quality Mac ram in the UK?

Best Regards
Andy

 

[Matek]

You can go to 32 GB with 4 x 8GB modules, it's just not officially announced, since the quad core has 4 memory slots and they didn't consider modules larger than 4 GB being available when specifying max memory. The 8GB modules appeared relatively recently and I'm guessing they didn't go and update information for a machine from 2009.

People all over the internet report success with 4x 8GB modules.

 

[joken]

Here you need to upgrade information.

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-OWC-16GB-MacPro.html

I was wanting to upgrade my MacPro 4,1 which is currently running 8GB RAM(4x2).

Early 2009 2.66 Quad core x1 Nehalem

My reason for wanting to upgrade was to give PsCS5/6 more ram to tile render as I do some quite large composite and multi-layered smart object work in Photoshop.

I am also a complete Numpty when it comes to Mac architecture!

Crucial & MacUpgrades seem to want to cap my ram at 16GB but then I find that the machine will support 32GB and 48GB.

At present my activity monitor reportsnot that I know what any of it means!)

VM size: 162GB (av)
Page ins: 2.32GB
Page outs: 1.26GB
Swap used: 610.5MB

Would my machine have any problems if I exceed the 16GB max recommendation?

Also, would it be possible to put 3x8GB in the machine without it causing problems, and where's a good place for quality Mac ram in the UK?

Best Regards
Andy

 

[minifridge1138]

I was wanting to upgrade my MacPro 4,1 which is currently running 8GB RAM(4x2).

Early 2009 2.66 Quad core x1 Nehalem

My reason for wanting to upgrade was to give PsCS5/6 more ram to tile render as I do some quite large composite and multi-layered smart object work in Photoshop.

I am also a complete Numpty when it comes to Mac architecture!

Crucial & MacUpgrades seem to want to cap my ram at 16GB but then I find that the machine will support 32GB and 48GB.

At present my activity monitor reportsnot that I know what any of it means!)

VM size: 162GB (av)
Page ins: 2.32GB
Page outs: 1.26GB
Swap used: 610.5MB

Would my machine have any problems if I exceed the 16GB max recommendation?

Also, would it be possible to put 3x8GB in the machine without it causing problems, and where's a good place for quality Mac ram in the UK?

Best Regards
Andy

I put the part that's applicable to you in BOLD. Ideally, that would be 0.

Basically, you're OS needed 610.5 MB more ram than your machine had. So it grabbed a portion of your hard drive, and started to take the data that was in memory and write it to disk.

That's not bad, that's what the OS is supposed to do.
The problem is that reading/writing to the hard drive is slower than reading/writing to ram. I mean really slow. SLOW.

Your mac is capable of 64 GB of ram (16 GB modules are available now).

Figure out how much you want to spend, and then buy that much ram.

Good luck!!!

 

[ColdCase]

Just curious, but why would my 3,1 show 5 GB RAM free but also 1.8 MB swap used as well as 155GB VM.

Edit: Never mind, I now recall that It is normal to use some swap even if there is free RAM.

 

[Bytesmiths]

People all over the internet report success with 4x 8GB modules.

Not here!

Pardon me for reviving a six-year-old thread, but I'm trying to get my MacPro 4,1 (early 2009, 2.66GHz quad core Xeon) to work with four each 8GB SIMMs.

No matter what order I put them in, it only recognizes the first two, and reports the remaining two slots as "empty," and reports system RAM as 16GB, rather than 32GB.

Anything special I should be trying? Do I need to do an unsupported EFI upgrade to get the additional RAM recognized?

Thanks!

 

[h9826790]

Not here!

Pardon me for reviving a six-year-old thread, but I'm trying to get my MacPro 4,1 (early 2009, 2.66GHz quad core Xeon) to work with four each 8GB SIMMs.

No matter what order I put them in, it only recognizes the first two, and reports the remaining two slots as "empty," and reports system RAM as 16GB, rather than 32GB.

Anything special I should be trying? Do I need to do an unsupported EFI upgrade to get the additional RAM recognized?

Thanks!

1) Are you sure all 4 slots are working before RAM upgrade?

2) Are they all 2Rx4 DIMM?

 

[tsialex]

Not here!

Pardon me for reviving a six-year-old thread, but I'm trying to get my MacPro 4,1 (early 2009, 2.66GHz quad core Xeon) to work with four each 8GB SIMMs.

No matter what order I put them in, it only recognizes the first two, and reports the remaining two slots as "empty," and reports system RAM as 16GB, rather than 32GB.

Anything special I should be trying? Do I need to do an unsupported EFI upgrade to get the additional RAM recognized?

Thanks!

What's your BootROM version? Hardware Info>Hardware Overview>Boot ROM Version