To move or not to move factory RAM when adding more RAM?

[aaron321]

The question is in the title.
My factory RAM is a rinky-dinky 1 GB total.

I thought it would be wiser, when upgrading, to remove that from it's place and plug it in later, after I have installed the 8GB + other 2GB RAM in other slots.

However, many of the instructions on Youtube and from Apple say you should just leave the factory RAM where it is (Riser A slot 1+2) and then add on to it.

What should I do?

 

[maflynn]

I don't think it really matters as long as you put the ram in matched sets. Ram is ram, Apple ram is not anything special.

 

[leventozler]

Run Geekbench with and without the factory RAM. Sometimes mixing different brands (or different frequencies) cause (minor) performance drops.

 

[aaron321]

I don't think it really matters as long as you put the ram in matched sets. Ram is ram, Apple ram is not anything special.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like it would matter. Just wondering why people would leave smaller RAM up front on the first riser and not instinctively put the larger RAM there in it's place. Thanks!

 

[jlsm511]

As long as it's all matched up shouldn't matter.

 

[Larry-K]

I always toss the Apple RAM in a drawer and replace all of it.

 

[h9826790]

If slots avail, consider keep use the Apple RAM. Even though keep the RAM running in triple channel will give you best performance. Less RAM also affect performance.

Usually, less RAM size make your system end up required to compress RAM or use swap under heavy duty. The performance hit is bigger than mixing RAM.

 

[aaron321]

thanks everone!

 

[Umbongo]

If you want to use them Aaron, and assuming 8GB + 2GB meant you put 2x4GB in Riser A and 2x2GB in Riser B then place them on Riser B.

A1: 4GB
A2: 4GB
A3: -
A4: -

B1: 2GB
B2: 2GB
B3: 512MB
B4: 512MB

This gives the most balance via 8GB on Riser A and 5GB on Riser B and your largest DIMMs in the quickest slots, but honestly I'd just not use it. The 512MB DIMMs were slower to access and the best place for it is on the slowest slots which has potential to reduce your overall memory performance all the time.

h9826790 is pretty much right in that having RAM is better than not, but sometimes you may find a situation where you will rarely utilize the extra memory, but your whole memory performance has been reduced by using the extra modules. You lasted this long with minimal memory, you won't miss an extra GB capacity.

 

[reco2011]

If you want to use them Aaron, and assuming 8GB + 2GB meant you put 2x4GB in Riser A and 2x2GB in Riser B then place them on Riser B.

A1: 4GB
A2: 4GB
A3: -
A4: -

B1: 2GB
B2: 2GB
B3: 512MB
B4: 512MB

This gives the most balance via 8GB on Riser A and 5GB on Riser B and your largest DIMMs in the quickest slots, but honestly I'd just not use it. The 512MB DIMMs were slower to access and the best place for it is on the slowest slots which has potential to reduce your overall memory performance all the time.

h9826790 is pretty much right in that having RAM is better than not, but sometimes you may find a situation where you will rarely utilize the extra memory, but your whole memory performance has been reduced by using the extra modules. You lasted this long with minimal memory, you won't miss an extra GB capacity.

Outside of benchmarks I doubt any of this will really matter to the OP.