What use would require more than 24GB RAM

[nilk]

You'll very likely be completely fine with 24GB for the life of this machine, assuming your use case doesn't change drastically.

However, the more RAM you have, the more file cache you have. I have 40GB in my iMac (first time I've ever had a machine with more than 16GB). Last night I had Photos and FCP X open. macOS had over 16GB of cached files. I have my photos and videos on slower external drives, so I appreciate any caching that occurs. I plan to leave Photos and FCP X open all the time so that they are ready to go from where I left off and the file cache warmed up.

I went with 2x16GB because if I decide to go to 64GB later, I only have to toss out the 2x4GB that the machine came with.

 

[EugW]

Unfortunately I don't believe that a ram upgrade was even an option on the 2016 Macbook.

It was not an option for the 2016. But it is an option for the 2017.

 

[jlseattle]

What I don't understand is why some people are so quick to upgrade their iMacs to crazy amounts like 40 GB, yet so many others skimp on their laptops with 8 GB.

So I think it is a psychological and usage issue. For me it is, I have an iMac and am planning to put in more RAM to further take advantage of my processor and such. But I only have 8gb in my MacBook Pro and I think it is sufficient.

So with my macbook I look at it as a on the go computer access machine (at the coffee shop and such). With my iMac I look at it as the "get real work done" machine.

BUT if I had just a Macbook Pro I would choose the 15" and put the highest process/ram/ssd I could afford in it.

 

[theluggage]

That just seems odd to me. If anything it usually makes the most sense to lean toward more RAM up front with the laptops because you can't add RAM later, whereas with the 27" iMacs you can upgrade at any time, and potentially for less money later.

...except that the 27" iMac - even the base model - is considerably more powerful than any of Apple's 12" or 13" laptops (all of which are dual-core/integrated graphics vs. the iMacs with quad core and discrete GPUs) and, thus, likely to be bought for more demanding work. Nobody who actually needs the higher-specced i7/580/585 iMacs is going to be comfortable with 8GB RAM - and if they were tossing up between a 5k iMac and a laptop they'd probably be looking at the 15" MBP, which doesn't even bother with an 8GB option.

It's rather "nice" of Apple that they bother to offer the 27" iMac in an 8GB version with two empty RAM slots, that can easily be updated to 24GB with third-party RAM for less than the cost of an extra 8 from Apple. I see they've "fixed" that with the iMac pro...

 

[ApfelKuchen]

What I don't understand is why some people are so quick to upgrade their iMacs to crazy amounts like 40 GB, yet so many others skimp on their laptops with 8 GB.

It seems the common statements here are:

"8 GB is enough for your MacBook, because macOS is very good for memory management and uses memory compression."

vs.

"I just ordered my new iMac with 8 GB RAM, and have another 32 GB of RAM on order from Amazon, and I'm so excited!"

That just seems odd to me. If anything it usually makes the most sense to lean toward more RAM up front with the laptops because you can't add RAM later, whereas with the 27" iMacs you can upgrade at any time, and potentially for less money later.

As mentioned, I went with 16 GB on my MacBook, and 24 GB on my iMac. I'd say for most users who have 40 GB, it is way overkill for them. Yes, some users need 40 GB, but the vast, vast majority don't, yet a bazillion users in the iMac forum have 40 GB.

The reason this doesn't make sense is that (I believe) many people make irrational decisions about RAM.

"More RAM" is the age-old solution to all ills. It's a habit learned in the early days of MS DOS and Windows, but memory management has come a long way since the 1980s. RAM is (traditionally) one of the easiest and cheapest upgrades to make, so it's an easy solution to recommend. It's the equivalent of "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning." (In other words, if more RAM doesn't fix the problem, we'll have to dig deeper.)

The machine may truly be starved for RAM, and/or it may be host to issues that ought to be fixed in software (memory leaks, runaway processes, etc.). That's why a tool like Activity Monitor is so useful - you can see whether RAM is inadequate and you can easily identify processes that are clearly misbehaving - pulling a high CPU %, and/or large amounts of RAM for no apparent reason. Knowledge is power. No need to prescribe aspirin on a guess.

Further, many people don't understand how RAM is managed. They assume that, if Memory Used is very close to Physical Memory, they don't have enough RAM. What they don't know is that the OS will fill as much RAM as they have, no matter how much they have, and will only start "cleaning house" (killing the longest-inactive processes) when it runs out of space.

Absolutely, if a computer has soldered or hard-to-upgrade RAM, it's best to buy the computer with amount of RAM you will reasonably need over the life of the computer. If RAM is easy to upgrade, you have the option of buying less than you'll need, and buying it at a lower price after the fact.

However, I think a fair number of RAM upgraders are deciding the amount they "need" on an emotional basis - "I can buy twice as much RAM for the same money, so screw Apple, I'll put in twice as much RAM and not give Apple the money." Then there are the "Tim the Toolman Taylor" types; whose egos demand "More power," whether they need it or not. When you combine those upgraders with the group that reflexively add more RAM as a cure-all... I think there's a huge amount of excess RAM going to waste out there.

 

[EugW]

...except that the 27" iMac - even the base model - is considerably more powerful than any of Apple's 12" or 13" laptops (all of which are dual-core/integrated graphics vs. the iMacs with quad core and discrete GPUs) and, thus, likely to be bought for more demanding work. Nobody who actually needs the higher-specced i7/580/585 iMacs is going to be comfortable with 8GB RAM - and if they were tossing up between a 5k iMac and a laptop they'd probably be looking at the 15" MBP, which doesn't even bother with an 8GB option.

It's rather "nice" of Apple that they bother to offer the 27" iMac in an 8GB version with two empty RAM slots, that can easily be updated to 24GB with third-party RAM for less than the cost of an extra 8 from Apple. I see they've "fixed" that with the iMac pro...

Even if it were my only machine, I'd have a very hard time going above a 13" MacBook Pro. The 15" is just too big for my preferences. However, I would consider a 13" with additional external screen.

As for the iMac, I agree that 24 GB is a great bang for the buck, using third party RAM. But that's 24, not the 40 I was talking about.

BTW, I'm guilty of getting the i7 iMac before, which is overkill for me. However, at least with the i7, the video encode times are considerably shorter. Going from 24 GB to 40 GB does absolutely zilch for me. I don't encode video very often, but do occasionally, and shorter is better. But I ended up returning the i7 because it was too loud. The i5 7600 is considerably slower with this action, but is very quiet. Both machines were 24 GB though.

Absolutely, if a computer has soldered or hard-to-upgrade RAM, it's best to buy the computer with amount of RAM you will reasonably need over the life of the computer. If RAM is easy to upgrade, you have the option of buying less than you'll need, and buying it at a lower price after the fact.

However, I think a fair number of RAM upgraders are deciding the amount they "need" on an emotional basis - "I can buy twice as much RAM for the same money, so screw Apple, I'll put in twice as much RAM and not give Apple the money." Then there are the "Tim the Toolman Taylor" types; whose egos demand "More power," whether they need it or not. When you combine those upgraders with the group that reflexively add more RAM as a cure-all... I think there's a huge amount of excess RAM going to waste out there.

Yeah, that is what I was talking about.

Although the 27" iMac can do way more than a MacBook, the 40 GB RAM is still overkill for most users. 24 GB is sufficient for most 27" iMac buyers. 24 GB is a great bang for the buck, and will be sufficient for the life of the machine for most, so it would be most logical for those types of users to just get 24 GB. If needs change down the line, then they are free to upgrade to say 48 GB at that point, for cheap. But instead, they get 40 GB to begin with, just because.

Personally, I think the money is better spent on more/better storage or whatever. I guess the issue here though is the cost increment from 512 GB SSD to 1 TB SSD is a fair bit of money, whereas the cost increment from 24 to 40 GB is much less.

---

I guess one way to put it is that 8 GB is sufficient for many (but not all) MacBook users in 2017, but it is merely sufficient, whereas 40 GB is probably almost 3X as much RAM as many (but not all) iMac users need in 2017.

 

[tgara]

Thanks, I think I'll buy the 16GB to take it to 24GB in total.

I hadn't even thought about RAM last time, but when I received my 2012 iMac, even scrolling quickly through RAW files in iPhoto gave me the beach ball after a few seconds. The 24GB solved that and I haven't come into any problems since.

That's what I did in my new 27 inch Retina iMac. My use case centers around multiple applications being open simultaneously -- Mail, iTunes, Calendar, Photos, Word, Powerpoint, Photos, plus a few third party apps, etc. 24GB made sense since I could get a pair of 8GB sticks for less than $150. Bumping up to 32GB would double the cost, and I didn't see the advantage.

 

[alien3dx]

What I don't understand is why some people are so quick to upgrade their iMacs to crazy amounts like 40 GB, yet so many others skimp on their laptops with 8 GB.

It seems the common statements here are:

"8 GB is enough for your MacBook, because macOS is very good for memory management and uses memory compression."

vs.

"I just ordered my new iMac with 8 GB RAM, and have another 32 GB of RAM on order from Amazon, and I'm so excited!"

That just seems odd to me. If anything it usually makes the most sense to lean toward more RAM up front with the laptops because you can't add RAM later, whereas with the 27" iMacs you can upgrade at any time, and potentially for less money later.

As mentioned, I went with 16 GB on my MacBook, and 24 GB on my iMac. I'd say for most users who have 40 GB, it is way overkill for them. Yes, some users need 40 GB, but the vast, vast majority don't, yet a bazillion users in the iMac forum have 40 GB.

I see my friend doing ilustrator and another one adobe primer using more then 8 gb average 10 GB. While to me, with emulator and so on average was 3 to 6 GB ram.

The most culprit of hunger ram was browser itself. Sometimes user open a lot of tab.Some user don't organise their file hopping fusion and SSD drive to help them quick find.

If in windows work, I willingly to upgrade to 16GB while is unix enviroment, 8 GB more then enough. Even used 4GB ram basic still survive me do a lot of multi tasking in basic Mac mini.

In the era of spoil not like old days, upgrade max everything not a good thing to me, I rather each 3 years buy new thing.

And basically no idea diff when I used 786MB DDR1(Custom PC) ,2GB DDR2(old laptop Lenovo Thinkpad) 8 GB DDR3(old laptop acer)(2010),8 GB DDR3L(old laptop acer)(2013),8 GB DDR4 (iMac 2017 base line).The only struggle for me a little bit on finder was on Mac mini 2014 4GB(2015).

 

[Buxley]

Machine's been up for 17 days.

Basic things running today - twitter, messages, safari... just ran world of warcraft, but quit it a few minutes ago. Right now it's telling me about 27 gig are in use. Background processes include clean my mac, 1password, dropbox, crash plan, creative cloud and time machine. I've run Xcode and several different iphone/ipad emulators in the past 17 days.

(time passes...) Just ran a memory "cleaner" as I wrote this, and it's right at 24 gig used, out of 40. Probably quitting Safari would knock it down a few more gig, but I'm typing this in Safari, so I'm not going to quit.

I would say for most people, 40 gig would be a lot more than they would need. I could probably get away with 32gig. All depends on what you're going to run. I usually have Xcode, Illustrator and Photoshop open at once, along with those other apps previously listed.

Your mileage will vary.

(Time passes again) Quit Safai and restarted. Before I did that, I ran "top" in terminal, and my previously reported 24 gig was listed as 20 gig PhysMem.... So be wary of what's reporting your RAM usage, and check to see if it's really Physical Memory being used.

 

[TheAppleFairy]

See, I disagree...

I have a Mac Pro, and it made a significant difference when I upgraded from 16 to 64GB. I use Lightroom, Photoshop, Photomatix, Bridge and MS Office, and usually all of it running at the same time, and I can definitely see/fell the difference. I also have a MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, and it is much slower generally when I have that many applications open.

iemcj is right though, RAM is constantly getting cheaper, so buy it when you need it.

I am preparing to build a computer at work for our marketing department. The video guy asked for 64GB of Ram, and it wasn't that expensive (custom windows PC). We figured if anyone would make use of that much Ram it would be him.

I think some people will see that they have 16 GB of Ram and their machine isn't using 100% of it so they don't think they need more. Yet if they have more things usually do process faster and it will consume more than it would with the lesser amount. So I agree with you especially for high end video and graphics.

 

[294307]

running iOS simulator and android emulator yesterday + Spotify + visual studio code.. 6 to 7 GB.. There is some mistake thinking if you had more ram, if not used then what the used of it.. Windows also been spoil... Java the worst. garbage

Oh, Java. Please don't remind me. I use JetBrains IntelliJ platform as my development IDE and it's great for my workflow but it can get horrendously slow in large projects. I can safely blame Java for that.

(Time passes again) Quit Safai and restarted. Before I did that, I ran "top" in terminal, and my previously reported 24 gig was listed as 20 gig PhysMem.... So be wary of what's reporting your RAM usage, and check to see if it's really Physical Memory being used.

You can enable the Physical Memory pane in Activity Monitor if you don't already have it shown. You can either go to View > Columns > Real Private Memory, or right-click on the table headings and select the option. Apple should really have it displayed by default.

 

[BigVern84]

What I don't understand is why some people are so quick to upgrade their iMacs to crazy amounts like 40 GB, yet so many others skimp on their laptops with 8 GB.

It seems the common statements here are:

"8 GB is enough for your MacBook, because macOS is very good for memory management and uses memory compression."

vs.

"I just ordered my new iMac with 8 GB RAM, and have another 32 GB of RAM on order from Amazon, and I'm so excited!"

That just seems odd to me. If anything it usually makes the most sense to lean toward more RAM up front with the laptops because you can't add RAM later, whereas with the 27" iMacs you can upgrade at any time, and potentially for less money later.

As mentioned, I went with 16 GB on my MacBook, and 24 GB on my iMac. I'd say for most users who have 40 GB, it is way overkill for them. Yes, some users need 40 GB, but the vast, vast majority don't, yet a bazillion users in the iMac forum have 40 GB.

Yes, thats what i keep thinking. Everyone seems to be looking at the "used ram", over "memory pressure" and thinking they need MUCH more then they really do without understanding what "used ram" means. Apple say if "memory pressure" is in green there should be no noticeable difference in use. I bet most of the people here with 40GB+ have just a tiny bar of green in the "memory pressure" chart.

 

[jerwin]

I bet most of the people here with 40GB+ have just a tiny bar of green in the "memory pressure" chart.

pretty much.

 

[nilk]

Oh, Java. Please don't remind me. I use JetBrains IntelliJ platform as my development IDE and it's great for my workflow but it can get horrendously slow in large projects. I can safely blame Java for that.

Java hasn't been slow for the last decade, and I don't think you can blame it here. Oracle's JVM is very performant. That said, Java often needs adequate RAM to perform well. Of course, how much RAM depends on the app and what you're doing with it.

I use and love IntelliJ IDEA (as well as Jetbrains IDEs in general). Every now and then they have a version that performs terribly and is extremely slow and unresponsive. What I do in that situation is roll back to the previous release and wait for a version that fixes the problem (latest version performs fine on my max-spec 2012 15" MBP). May or may not help, but tweaking the JVM parameters can make a difference (e.g. give it more heap if you have the RAM for it). I'm currently working on a project with over a million lines of Java code (close to 2 million if you include all the other code, which includes JavaScript, for example), and it's very smooth on the current version of IntelliJ (on my 2012 15" MBP). YMMV.
[doublepost=1504625307][/doublepost]

Yes, thats what i keep thinking. Everyone seems to be looking at the "used ram", over "memory pressure" and thinking they need MUCH more then they really do without understanding what "used ram" means. Apple say if "memory pressure" is in green there should be no noticeable difference in use. I bet most of the people here with 40GB+ have just a tiny bar of green in the "memory pressure" chart.

Would it be safe to say that "memory pressure" gives an indication of whether your system performance is being detrimentally affected by limited RAM; while "Memory Used" and "Cached Files" could give in indication that the RAM you have is being utilized by the software and OS, possibly to improve performance in some situations?

We have to define what we mean by "need". Do we mean what is the minimum required for apps to run? The base 8GB satisfies that for almost all typical users. Do we mean what is the minimum to avoid swap usage and higher memory pressure? Or do we mean the minimum amount of RAM before getting more would provide diminishing returns in discernible performance improvements?

I think the OP will be perfectly happy with 24GB, but we could get into a more nuanced discussion here. Admittedly, I don't have all the answers in that discussion. My simplistic viewpoint is that more RAM = more caching, but I don't know where the diminishing returns start, and of course that's going to vary for individual usage patterns.