Question about buying 64 GB of RAM from Apple

[mward333]

On the Apple Store, the most RAM I see that Apple will sell for the Mac Pro is 32 GB. Of course I will not buy RAM from Apple---this is obvious, because Apple's RAM is very expensive!! So please read ahead:

I plan to buy 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet (or a comparable seller) for a new Mac Pro. I am hoping to do this purchase through a funding agency, and I want to show the funding agency how much cheaper it is to use a 3rd party vendor vs Apple.

So I plan to say, for instance, it will cost me $3559 to buy the 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet..... but I don't know what "comparable" price I should say Apple would charge for 64 GB, because Apple doesn't sell that much RAM directly!

Any advice?? I know that some people will say something silly, e.g., Apple's price for 64 GB of RAM is infinity, etc., but I need a quick and honest reply here. Can anyone provide a tip? Thank you very much.

[stridemat]

You could demonstrate a cost per GB for both companies. Though not entirely representative, it would illustrate the differences in price.

[mward333]

You could demonstrate a cost per GB for both companies. Though not entirely representative, it would illustrate the differences in price.

That's an excellent idea. That was my initial idea. Then I noticed, from Apple:

add $450.00 for 16 GB of RAM
add $3,330.00 for 32 GB of RAM

so Apple does not have a linear increase in the price of RAM (i.e., the size of RAM does not double with the price).

On the other hand, RAM at Ramjet is almost linear in price:
16GB DDR3-1066 kit for Mac Pro (8x 2GB) $575.99
32GB DDR3-1066 kit for Mac Pro (8x 4GB) $1399.99
64GB DDR3-1066 kit for Mac Pro (8x 8GB) $3559.99

i.e., the price roughly increases at the same rate as the size of the memory.... not exactly, but much closer than Apple's. (So it is like comparing Apples and Oranges, pun intended, ha ha)
Seriously, though, any other advice?

I was hoping that someone might say, for instance, oh, here's a magic phone number where you can call Apple and purchase 64 GB directly from someone at Apple. Does a magic phone number like this exist???

[eponym]

so Apple does not have a linear increase in the price of RAM (i.e., the size of RAM does not double with the price).

Nobody has linear price increases. It's just not possible. You're effectively engineering twice as much "stuff" to fit into the same area. That's why an 8GB dimm is insanely expensive. Your third-party seller isn't even close to linear—there's a 27% price increase per GB when you jump from 32 to 64.

Apple doesn't offer those because almost nobody buys them (nor needs them). They're a very niche product, whose buyers are more than likely savvy enough to know not to buy RAM from Apple.

[mward333]

Nobody has linear price increases. It's just not possible. You're effectively engineering twice as much "stuff" to fit into the same area. That's why an 8GB dimm is insanely expensive. Your third-party seller isn't even close to linear—there's a 27% price increase per GB when you jump from 32 to 64.

Apple doesn't offer those because almost nobody buys them (nor needs them). They're a very niche product, whose buyers are more than likely savvy enough to know not to buy RAM from Apple.

I should have placed the emphasis on "almost". Yes, you're right, there is a 27% price increase per GB when jumping from 32 to 64 GB with Ramjet.... BUT, more importantly, the price jumps a TON more with Apple's RAM, which is what I wanted to emphasize:

add $450.00 for 16 GB of RAM
add $3,330.00 for 32 GB of RAM

Still, your main point is well-taken. Perhaps Apple does not offer 64 GB of RAM because nobody will buy it from them.....

So, is our conclusion that nobody has ever made a special arrangement with Apple to get 64 GB of RAM directly from them (even if it's for a HUGE, unlisted price)?? Perhaps that is what we should conclude....

[WardC]

You might want to try OWC (www.macsales.com). They are charging only $2,954.99 for the same 64GB of RAM that you are looking at. Here is the link:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory

[chrmjenkins]

May I ask why you want 64 GB of RAM?

[jessica.]

On the Apple Store, the most RAM I see that Apple will sell for the Mac Pro is 32 GB. Of course I will not buy RAM from Apple---this is obvious, because Apple's RAM is very expensive!!
Well, as far as laptop ram goes it is not as expensive as it used to be and nearly the same price as OWC (MacSales).

For you, why do you need 64GB other than just to have it? But say you do need it, I would go with OWC, it seems to be the better price and all my 3rd party RAM is from them.

[mward333]

You might want to try OWC (www.macsales.com). They are charging only $2,954.99 for the same 64GB of RAM that you are looking at. Here is the link:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory

Thank you for the link! I'll take a look. I appreciate that.

May I ask why you want 64 GB of RAM?

I do very large computations. I'm a mathematical researcher. For instance, I routinely fill my 16 GB of RAM in my current Mac Pro (see my sig) and then my machine begins wild amounts of paging to disk. I use gcc, perl, Maple, etc.... A wide variety of computations.

Well, as far as laptop ram goes it is not as expensive as it used to be and nearly the same price as OWC (MacSales).

For you, why do you need 64GB other than just to have it? But say you do need it, I would go with OWC, it seems to be the better price and all my 3rd party RAM is from them.

Thank you, Jessica! I am glad to get your recommendation. My RAM definitely does not site idle in my computer..... I'm running jobs all the time. I.e., I don't want to just have it..... I really appreciate your OWC recommendation. I've bought Mac parts from OWC in the past, and I've relied on Ramjet for my recent big RAM purchases, but I'm willing to look around, as you suggested.

Thank you all!

[mward333]

(Apology, first of all, for a back-to-back post here.)

I just got off the phone with Apple, and they said that 64 GB of RAM won't be recognized by the Mac Pro's logic board. They talked to a system engineer inside Apple who said this. I think it's nonsense.... I'm SURE that 64 GB of RAM can be recognized by the logic board.

I ran into the same problem in 2007 when I bought my current Mac Pro.... talked with Apple's system engineers, etc. Ugh.

I wish that Apple was willing to lower the prices of their RAM and to work with specialists who want to do such high-end computing that cannot be distributed to the network (yes, I do distributed computing too). It's a little disheartening. OK, perhaps I must stick with a 3rd party seller.

I was just hoping to at least get a "quote" from Apple, for the purposes of discussing with a funding agency, so that they could see the tremendous advantage of using a 3rd party vendor (as I discussed in my post #1 above).

[chrmjenkins]

I do very large computations. I'm a mathematical researcher. For instance, I routinely fill my 16 GB of RAM in my current Mac Pro (see my sig) and then my machine begins wild amounts of paging to disk. I use gcc, perl, Maple, etc.... A wide variety of computations.


Wow, gcc takes up a lot of RAM for you? I can see Maple doing so, but gcc? Are you certain 32 wouldn't be sufficient (based on amount of paging)? Have you considered adding a SSD to speed up the paging?

[mward333]

Wow, gcc takes up a lot of RAM for you? I can see Maple doing so, but gcc? Are you certain 32 wouldn't be sufficient (based on amount of paging)? Have you considered adding a SSD to speed up the paging?

You're absolutely right---my gcc is NOT the memory hog! It's my Maple that hogs the memory. I only mentioned some of the other languages that I'm using, so that people can see I'm not doing digital photography, etc!! :)

As another example, I recently generated about 250 GB of data over a period of 3 months...... My Ph.D. student's data set is approximately 1 TB in size. We're talking big memory here, folks. :)

This has all been discussed on other threads in Macrumors before, so I didn't want to bore anybody about my need for lots of memory..... sorry for heading down that road again. It inevitably comes up when people ask about my machine....

[Umbongo]

(Apology, first of all, for a back-to-back post here.)

I just got off the phone with Apple, and they said that 64 GB of RAM won't be recognized by the Mac Pro's logic board. They talked to a system engineer inside Apple who said this. I think it's nonsense.... I'm SURE that 64 GB of RAM can be recognized by the logic board.

I ran into the same problem in 2007 when I bought my current Mac Pro.... talked with Apple's system engineers, etc. Ugh.

I wish that Apple was willing to lower the prices of their RAM and to work with specialists who want to do such high-end computing that cannot be distributed to the network (yes, I do distributed computing too). It's a little disheartening. OK, perhaps I must stick with a 3rd party seller.

I was just hoping to at least get a "quote" from Apple, for the purposes of discussing with a funding agency, so that they could see the tremendous advantage of using a 3rd party vendor (as I discussed in my post #1 above).

Maybe I'm missing something but surely Apple not having a way to get 64GB and 32GB from them costing more than 64GB third party is enough value?

[mward333]

Maybe I'm missing something but surely Apple not having a way to get 64GB and 32GB from them costing more than 64GB third party is enough value?

Umbongo, I agree with you. In the current draft of my grant proposal, that's exactly what I put into my budget justification: Apple won't even sell me 64 GB of RAM, and by the way, Apple's price for 32 GB is the same (basically) as the 64 GB price from a 3rd party vendor!

So I hope that they will see the wisdom in this, i.e., in using a 3rd party vendor.

I just usually try to make line-by-line comparisons when I'm asking for support in things like this. Thank you for making me feel better about my approach. I think that this is the best I can do.

[chrmjenkins]

You're absolutely right---my gcc is NOT the memory hog! It's my Maple that hogs the memory. I only mentioned some of the other languages that I'm using, so that people can see I'm not doing digital photography, etc!! :)

As another example, I recently generated about 250 GB of data over a period of 3 months...... My Ph.D. student's data set is approximately 1 TB in size. We're talking big memory here, folks. :)

This has all been discussed on other threads in Macrumors before, so I didn't want to bore anybody about my need for lots of memory..... sorry for heading down that road again. It inevitably comes up when people ask about my machine....

I don't think you're boring anybody. Massive computations like that are always interesting because not only is it cool to see applications that need that amount of RAM, but you have also have to wonder why the person is using a mac versus a PC or whether or not they've used GPGPUs.

[mward333]

I don't think you're boring anybody. Massive computations like that are always interesting because not only is it cool to see applications that need that amount of RAM, but you have also have to wonder why the person is using a mac versus a PC or whether or not they've used GPGPUs.

chrmjenkins, thank you for your reply. GPGPU's are great, and I know about these. In fact, at my university if I want to do distributed computing, we have over 14,000 machines on our Condor network (last time I checked) that can run our jobs for us. I've used this network several times for big, distributed jobs. It's a lot of fun to do parallel computing, when it's appropriate for the task at hand.

In the RAM-intensive cases I'm mentioning, however, I'm generating HUGE series expansions in Maple for certain generating functions. Maple is making series expansions of "generating functions" for me, with perfect accuracy (the calculations are all done symbolically--not numerically--a big distinction here!). So the jobs cannot be distributed, and the computations need to be done on one machine, and these tend to blow up very large in the number of terms, but I'm actually interested in the asymptotics, so 16 GB of RAM, but it's perhaps not as large as I want to go..... For instance, I can get 1000 terms of the generating function I'm interested in, but I have thrashing and paging before reaching 2000 terms. Quite a shame.

Someday, when we all have many TB's of RAM in our machines, we'll look back on days like this and laugh. Already I can look back on what was happening 10, 15, 25, 50 years ago, and laugh at the size of machines at various points in the history of computing. I've been using Maple for about 15 years now, and it is very very different now than it was 15 years ago.... and it was revolutionary back then!! :)

[chrmjenkins]

chrmjenkins, thank you for your reply. GPGPU's are great, and I know about these. In fact, at my university if I want to do distributed computing, we have over 14,000 machines on our Condor network (last time I checked) that can run our jobs for us. I've used this network several times for big, distributed jobs. It's a lot of fun to do parallel computing, when it's appropriate for the task at hand.

In the RAM-intensive cases I'm mentioning, however, I'm generating HUGE series expansions in Maple for certain generating functions. Maple is making series expansions of "generating functions" for me, with perfect accuracy (the calculations are all done symbolically--not numerically--a big distinction here!). So the jobs cannot be distributed, and the computations need to be done on one machine, and these tend to blow up very large in the number of terms, but I'm actually interested in the asymptotics, so 16 GB of RAM, but it's perhaps not as large as I want to go..... For instance, I can get 1000 terms of the generating function I'm interested in, but I have thrashing and paging before reaching 2000 terms. Quite a shame.

Someday, when we all have many TB's of RAM in our machines, we'll look back on days like this and laugh. Already I can look back on what was happening 10, 15, 25, 50 years ago, and laugh at the size of machines at various points in the history of computing. I've been using Maple for about 15 years now, and it is very very different now than it was 15 years ago.... and it was revolutionary back then!! :)

Interesting, I never considered you'd do something symbolically rather than numerically for something like that (nor would I guess that seemingly so few terms would max out 16 GB). It's also funny to see people talk about maple vs. matlab because the maple fans tend to be die-hard.

[mward333]

Interesting, I never considered you'd do something symbolically rather than numerically for something like that (nor would I guess that seemingly so few terms would max out 16 GB). It's also funny to see people talk about maple vs. matlab because the maple fans tend to be die-hard.

Maple just tends to have the tools that I need. Sure, I do many things numerically.... but for a recent problem, I had to have extreme precision, because I was working with things in the range 10^(-1600), and I wanted to go much much smaller, but I couldn't manage with the RAM I currently have. Arggh!

By the way, it's not really "seemingly few" terms, because the number of terms grows extremely fast (I can't recall the exact rate) with every term of the series expansion.... I was trying to capture the behavior of some extremely small oscillations.... they are hard to see, but they are definitely present in the problem I was working on!

[chrmjenkins]

Maple just tends to have the tools that I need. Sure, I do many things numerically.... but for a recent problem, I had to have extreme precision, because I was working with things in the range 10^(-1600), and I wanted to go much much smaller, but I couldn't manage with the RAM I currently have. Arggh!

By the way, it's not really "seemingly few" terms, because the number of terms grows extremely fast (I can't recall the exact rate) with every term of the series expansion.... I was trying to capture the behavior of some extremely small oscillations.... they are hard to see, but they are definitely present in the problem I was working on!

Wow, that is precise. I can't imagine anything needing that level of precision :eek: . I understand the terms grow fast, between 1000 and 2000 just seems small :D

[mward333]

Wow, that is precise. I can't imagine anything needing that level of precision :eek: . I understand the terms grow fast, between 1000 and 2000 just seems small :D

Pretty amazing stuff. It was an exhilarating project! Definitely worthwhile.... I learned a lot. I tell my students that professors are learning all the time too!

I'll be happy to send you the paper as a PM, if you are interested..... Just let me know. It is nice talking to you. Do you perform some computational research too? I recognize your username, and it seems that we might have met before on macrumors at some point.... please forgive my terrible memory, if we already met.

[Roman23]

You are going to pay close to like 3500.00 for 64GB of memory? What on god's earth do you need that much for? Mind me asking!



On the Apple Store, the most RAM I see that Apple will sell for the Mac Pro is 32 GB. Of course I will not buy RAM from Apple---this is obvious, because Apple's RAM is very expensive!! So please read ahead:

I plan to buy 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet (or a comparable seller) for a new Mac Pro. I am hoping to do this purchase through a funding agency, and I want to show the funding agency how much cheaper it is to use a 3rd party vendor vs Apple.

So I plan to say, for instance, it will cost me $3559 to buy the 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet..... but I don't know what "comparable" price I should say Apple would charge for 64 GB, because Apple doesn't sell that much RAM directly!

Any advice?? I know that some people will say something silly, e.g., Apple's price for 64 GB of RAM is infinity, etc., but I need a quick and honest reply here. Can anyone provide a tip? Thank you very much.

[chrmjenkins]

Pretty amazing stuff. It was an exhilarating project! Definitely worthwhile.... I learned a lot. I tell my students that professors are learning all the time too!

I'll be happy to send you the paper as a PM, if you are interested..... Just let me know. It is nice talking to you. Do you perform some computational research too? I recognize your username, and it seems that we might have met before on macrumors at some point.... please forgive my terrible memory, if we already met.

Sure, I would be interested in seeing the paper.

I don't do any computational research, I'm just an engineer by trade. In another life, I may have gone on to a PhD, so that's why I have an academic interest still.

[Roman23]

Gets me wondering if 16GB DDR3 would be recognized in the single-quad core.. WHat Apple says most of the time doesn't compute with reality. I am sure when 16GB Dimms come out, the single-quads can be expanded all the way up to 64 as well.. and 128GB for the duals..




(Apology, first of all, for a back-to-back post here.)

I just got off the phone with Apple, and they said that 64 GB of RAM won't be recognized by the Mac Pro's logic board. They talked to a system engineer inside Apple who said this. I think it's nonsense.... I'm SURE that 64 GB of RAM can be recognized by the logic board.

I ran into the same problem in 2007 when I bought my current Mac Pro.... talked with Apple's system engineers, etc. Ugh.

I wish that Apple was willing to lower the prices of their RAM and to work with specialists who want to do such high-end computing that cannot be distributed to the network (yes, I do distributed computing too). It's a little disheartening. OK, perhaps I must stick with a 3rd party seller.

I was just hoping to at least get a "quote" from Apple, for the purposes of discussing with a funding agency, so that they could see the tremendous advantage of using a 3rd party vendor (as I discussed in my post #1 above).

[mward333]

You are going to pay close to like 3500.00 for 64GB of memory? What on god's earth do you need that much for? Mind me asking!

Hello Roman23, this has been well-discussed above.... this is for mathematical research at the university. I routinely use all of the RAM in my current Mac Pro (see my sig), and it would be very desirable to have 64 GB, so that I can improve the calculating ability of my investigations.

If you think that my current machine (16 GB) or future machine (hopefully 64 GB) is big, then please note this: My colleague has several machines that each have 128 GB of RAM in them. Those are rack-servers, nonetheless, but still very interesting!!

[DoFoT9]

woah. wonderful read OP! goodluck justifying the 3rd party vendors

[mward333]

woah. wonderful read OP! goodluck justifying the 3rd party vendors

Hi there DoFoT9... thank you!

Sure, I would be interested in seeing the paper.

I don't do any computational research, I'm just an engineer by trade. In another life, I may have gone on to a PhD, so that's why I have an academic interest still.

OK, chrmjenkins, I'll send you a PM in a few moments.....

[DoFoT9]

Hi there DoFoT9... thank you!
no problems :)

can i ask: are you in total need of ECC? or rather, how many errors would occur if you didnt use ECC.

[mward333]

no problems :)

can i ask: are you in total need of ECC? or rather, how many errors would occur if you didnt use ECC.

Hard to say.... I've studied ECC extensively in the past, and in fact my Ph.D. thesis involved the analysis of an algorithm for error correction..... but I don't know what would happen if I didn't have ECC on these RAM sticks..... Of course, we didn't have ECC back in the dark ages.... it is relatively new on these RAM sticks, I think..... this is actually a deep hardware question. Why do you ask? Just curious??

[PinkyMacGodess]

A guy I met on a trip to Puerto Rico had a 'demo' xserve from Apple that they wanted back apparently, and never asked for it back... Strange...

He said that Apple will, if you contact the right people, bend over backwards to support advanced research which impressed the heck out of him, and me too. I asked him how I could get a 'demo' xserve and he laughed. He said that for what he was doing, he was finding problems with precision and problems with a part of the kernel in OSX. It was making it very hard for his work. He was going to end up using the xserve for something else (since his research was near being done) and originally they wanted to build a compute farm to do heavy number crunching with xserves... I would assume that Apple fixed the issues with the kernel. He said that Apple was so interested in the issues he was having that they sent a few engineers down to see what the issues were. Maybe Apple considered the xserve payment for the research he helped them do into making a better product. I lost track of him though but there *could* be hope for you at least... Good luck...

[PinkyMacGodess]

no problems :)

can i ask: are you in total need of ECC? or rather, how many errors would occur if you didnt use ECC.

Some systems (depends on the BIOS, etc) actually won't run without ECC memory. I know some systems won't run with it as we had some around from a server and tried to use it in a PeeCee workstation and it failed and complained... :confused:

[DoFoT9]

Hard to say.... I've studied ECC extensively in the past, and in fact my Ph.D. thesis involved the analysis of an algorithm for error correction..... but I don't know what would happen if I didn't have ECC on these RAM sticks..... Of course, we didn't have ECC back in the dark ages.... it is relatively new on these RAM sticks, I think..... this is actually a deep hardware question.
very deep indeed! the use of ECC is needed by a very minimal group of people, and if the memory is fully functional then errors are likely to occur only at high altitudes (if at all). the only uses from what ive read are for military based operations etc.

Why do you ask? Just curious??
hmm just considering other options, possibly "upgrading" to a consumer based Intel Extreme CPU at higher clocks, and cheaper DDR3 RAM. i know its not a likely scenario for you, given the DP computer that you use - helps with making the costs cheaper if you are purely after more RAM :)

Some systems (depends on the BIOS, etc) actually won't run without ECC memory. I know some systems won't run with it as we had some around from a server and tried to use it in a PeeCee workstation and it failed and complained...

this is true. luckily enough i am certain that the MP does :) with a consumer based CPU anyway.

[ahankinson]

While I can certainly appreciate the idea of having all your tools on one machine, once you get to the level you're talking about you might get more mileage out of prototyping your stuff on your MP, and then getting a dedicated machine to do your computation on.

Just a quick look brought back this machine http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6016/SYS-6016GT-TF.cfm?GPU=FM2

The advantage of a server-class system is that you can usually expand them to huge amounts of memory (128GB+), and they don't really cost that much more than a desktop. When you get a new grant or leftover funding, you can throw it at upgrading your machine where it needs it (more RAM, in your case). It might be a bit more outlay now, but it's probably cheaper in the long run.

Throw Red Hat or SuSE on it, and you can run Maple on it too.

[Daschund]

I should have placed the emphasis on "almost". Yes, you're right, there is a 27% price increase per GB when jumping from 32 to 64 GB with Ramjet.... BUT, more importantly, the price jumps a TON more with Apple's RAM, which is what I wanted to emphasize:

add $450.00 for 16 GB of RAM
add $3,330.00 for 32 GB of RAM

Still, your main point is well-taken. Perhaps Apple does not offer 64 GB of RAM because nobody will buy it from them.....

So, is our conclusion that nobody has ever made a special arrangement with Apple to get 64 GB of RAM directly from them (even if it's for a HUGE, unlisted price)?? Perhaps that is what we should conclude....

I think that nobody answered this, so I'll jump in. Sorry if I'm repeating it...

The reason why the price is $450 for 16Gb of RAM is that the system already has 8 (that comes standard), so you are basically paying $450 for 8 more (and not $450 for 16). Hope this helps!

Daschund

[Roman23]

I just completed this upgrade over the weekend.. here is the system profiler review:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro4,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3,33 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 6 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 6.4 GT/s

notes: Memory which was 6GB ECC was traded up for non-ecc memory and I paid the difference which was a lot less than buying ecc apple memory
i7-975 is almost the same as the w3580, except its the desktop version and uses non-ecc memory.


very deep indeed! the use of ECC is needed by a very minimal group of people, and if the memory is fully functional then errors are likely to occur only at high altitudes (if at all). the only uses from what ive read are for military based operations etc.


hmm just considering other options, possibly "upgrading" to a consumer based Intel Extreme CPU at higher clocks, and cheaper DDR3 RAM. i know its not a likely scenario for you, given the DP computer that you use - helps with making the costs cheaper if you are purely after more RAM :)



this is true. luckily enough i am certain that the MP does :) with a consumer based CPU anyway.

[WardC]

This guy did it:

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/blog-images/2009/12/17/AboutThisMac64GB.gif

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/2009-12-blog.html

And BTW, stop harassing the guy, if he wants 64GB, let him have 64GB!!

[Roman23]

When 16GB ddr3 comes out, the single-quad can also upgraded to 64 while the duals can do 128.. but for me, less than 32 is adequate.


This guy did it:

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/blog-images/2009/12/17/AboutThisMac64GB.gif

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/2009-12-blog.html

And BTW, stop harassing the guy, if he wants 64GB, let him have 64GB!!

[mmulin]

On the Apple Store, the most RAM I see that Apple will sell for the Mac Pro is 32 GB. Of course I will not buy RAM from Apple---this is obvious, because Apple's RAM is very expensive!! So please read ahead:

I plan to buy 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet (or a comparable seller) for a new Mac Pro. I am hoping to do this purchase through a funding agency, and I want to show the funding agency how much cheaper it is to use a 3rd party vendor vs Apple.

So I plan to say, for instance, it will cost me $3559 to buy the 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet..... but I don't know what "comparable" price I should say Apple would charge for 64 GB, because Apple doesn't sell that much RAM directly!

Any advice?? I know that some people will say something silly, e.g., Apple's price for 64 GB of RAM is infinity, etc., but I need a quick and honest reply here. Can anyone provide a tip? Thank you very much.

..browser didn't display replies

[DoFoT9]

I just completed this upgrade over the weekend.. here is the system profiler review:

notes: Memory which was 6GB ECC was traded up for non-ecc memory and I paid the difference which was a lot less than buying ecc apple memory
i7-975 is almost the same as the w3580, except its the desktop version and uses non-ecc memory.
i think i was in a thread where you said that. quite impressive. too bad there is no DP support for consumer cards.

This guy did it:

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/2009-12-blog.html

And BTW, stop harassing the guy, if he wants 64GB, let him have 64GB!!
woah. lucky bastard haha. i has 4 :(

When 16GB ddr3 comes out, the single-quad can also upgraded to 64 while the duals can do 128.. but for me, less than 32 is adequate.
are you certain of this?

[eponym]

I'm SURE that 64 GB of RAM can be recognized by the logic board.

You definitely can in the octo Mac Pro. OWC did it.

BUT—you have to boot Snow Leopard into 64 bit mode. In 32 bit mode, the OS will be limited to 32GB of addressable memory.

[DoFoT9]

You definitely can in the octo Mac Pro. OWC did it.

BUT—you have to boot Snow Leopard into 64 bit mode. In 32 bit mode, the OS will be limited to 32GB of addressable memory.

thats no problem :D :rolleyes:

[mward333]

Thank you to everyone for the very helpful replies! This is a great discussions! Any additional comments would be welcome! I won't reply to everyone directly (since there are so many helpful replies!), but I do have a few questions:

you have to boot Snow Leopard into 64 bit mode. In 32 bit mode, the OS will be limited to 32GB of addressable memory.

Hi there, eponym, I had already thought about this issue---do you have some advice on making sure that I am booted into 64 bit mode? I am planning to run Mac OS X server on the machine, which leads to my next reply:

you might get more mileage out of prototyping your stuff on your MP, and then getting a dedicated machine to do your computation on.


Greetings, ahankinson, I appreciate your suggestion. Indeed, that's exactly what I do for many of my jobs, especially the ones that I do in parallel. I prototype on my Mac Pro, and then I batch the jobs out to our Condor network, which I mentioned before. We have tons of dedicated, "big" machines on our campus that are available for big jobs.

The reason for getting a Mac Pro that is loaded with RAM and just dedicated to my own use is that my 20 students will be able to log-in remotely, at the same time, and run Maple through X11, i.e., run xmaple on the machine. This is a huge benefit of having so much RAM for so many simultaneous users, and I'll know that the machine will only be dedicated to us at that time. I've thought about buying a rack-based machine for this purpose, but as you can see from my sig, I do a lot of computing with large visualizations, so the benefit of having it on my desk is that I can also drive several monitors with the machine too. So it will serve two purposes.

The reason why the price is $450 for 16Gb of RAM is that the system already has 8 (that comes standard), so you are basically paying $450 for 8 more (and not $450 for 16). Hope this helps!


Daschund, yes, I did notice that of course it's really $450 + the cost of the lowest standard installed RAM which is actually 6 GB.... ah, well, these are just pennies compared to the cost of the larger RAM, and I didn't mention it, but I do understand what you mean here! Thank you for clarifying for the whole thread; I should have mentioned that too.

I just completed this upgrade over the weekend.. here is the system profiler review:


Roman23, thank you for the information about your upgrade; wow, very impressive! I hope that it turns out great for you; I'm surprised that non-ECC RAM is OK in that scenario, but it must be OK, based on what you said. Very interesting to see!

To everyone:
Again, thank you ALL for your replies so far! This is a very nice discussion! I appreciate all of your inputs!

[eponym]

Hi there, eponym, I had already thought about this issue---do you have some advice on making sure that I am booted into 64 bit mode? I am planning to run Mac OS X server on the machine, which leads to my next reply:

You can verify that you're in 64 bit mode via the Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities). The kernel will show Intel(64-bit mode) [or something like that].

You boot into 64 bit mode by holding down '6' and '4' on the keyboard during startup. I'm not sure if you can make the mac pro always boot into 64 bit by default. I think that might be (for now) limited to Xserves.

[mward333]

You can verify that you're in 64 bit mode via the Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities). The kernel will show Intel(64-bit mode) [or something like that].

You boot into 64 bit mode by holding down '6' and '4' on the keyboard during startup. I'm not sure if you can make the mac pro always boot into 64 bit by default. I think that might be (for now) limited to Xserves.

My kernel_task (which always has PID 0) says that the kind is "Intel" in the Activity Monitor, but many of the other applications are listed as "Intel (64 bit)". So I have a feeling that I'm not running using the 64 bit kernel. I tried your trick of holding 6 and 4 upon booting (i.e., immediately after I heard the chime at startup). Am I doing something wrong? I feel like a newbie with such a simple question, but I appreciate your help! :)

Notice that I'm running a former generation of Mac Pro right now, namely, the 667 MHz RAM version from 2007.

[khva1380]

Wow - I am slightly amazed to see that 64 gb of RAM will run in a current Mac Pro. My reason for holding off the upgrade is that Apple state the Mac Pro will currently only accept 32 gig of RAM.

Before people ask, I require large amounts of RAM to assemble sequence data (a human genomes worth of sequence at a time) and this requires massive amounts of RAM.

So - it now turns out that these machines will take 64 GB of RAM - interesting. I would be greatful to know if anyone else has managed to install 64 gig - I will contact the one example given above and check it out.

[deconstruct60]

very deep indeed! the use of ECC is needed by a very minimal group of people, and if the memory is fully functional then errors are likely to occur only at high altitudes (if at all). the only uses from what ive read are for military based operations etc.


High altitudes ? Good grief.

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf

The more memory you stuff into a box the more you need ECC ( many GBs). The longer you use the memory (i.e., going to use the box and over long period of time) the more you need ECC. If your data is valuable (e.g, you are selling it and/or taking care of it for someone for money) the more you need ECC.

For the general population perhaps that is "very few" in need. For the folks buying a Mac Pro to do commercial work this hand wavy spin of ECC as a non functional frill is a mislabeling of the problem. Just like ECC and SMART on hard drives, RAM ECC has increased utility when dealing with increasing larger amounts of data that is valuable.

ECC is an expensive frill is more often spun by folks who just want high clock rate CPUs and memory. The marginal extra money spent on ECC could have been spent on overclocking registered buffer memory (which also costs more). It is a different objective spun as though useful to the most general population. ( general population also will benefit from ECC if get to point 12GB is standard PC memory. Things are slowly heading in that direction. As memory gets cheaper people tend to use more, which gives them more exposure. )

[Wild-Bill]

TO the OP:

Another thing to help justify your 3rd-party memory purchase is, in addition to being way cheaper than Apple, you will get a LIFETIME guarantee on that memory. Buying from Apple, that memory is only good as the warranty on your Mac Pro..........

[chrmjenkins]

TO the OP:

Another thing to help justify your 3rd-party memory purchase is, in addition to being way cheaper than Apple, you will get a LIFETIME guarantee on that memory. Buying from Apple, that memory is only good as the warranty on your Mac Pro..........

Probably not a help in grant proposals as they would all have limited scopes of time. If he were to ditch the Mac Pro, he'd need new funding anyway.

[kernkraft]

64GB of RAM?!!:eek::eek::eek:

...and I thought that my 4GB MBPs were OK-ish!

[mward333]

TO the OP:

Another thing to help justify your 3rd-party memory purchase is, in addition to being way cheaper than Apple, you will get a LIFETIME guarantee on that memory. Buying from Apple, that memory is only good as the warranty on your Mac Pro..........

Probably not a help in grant proposals as they would all have limited scopes of time. If he were to ditch the Mac Pro, he'd need new funding anyway.

You both have a good point, because although each grant only lasts for a few years, people tend to establish relationships with funding agencies and to get one grant consecutively after another..... So these are both good points to keep in mind.

[Roman23]

But, if Apple still thinks the duals can only support 32GB, I am sure the single-quads when 16GB DDR3 comes out, it too will be able to support 64GB.. I believe the nehalem chipset goes up to 128GB if not mistaken.

Anyone care to try 16GB dimms in a single-quad mac pro?


i think i was in a thread where you said that. quite impressive. too bad there is no DP support for consumer cards.


woah. lucky bastard haha. i has 4 :(


are you certain of this?

[iamcheerful]

My kernel_task (which always has PID 0) says that the kind is "Intel" in the Activity Monitor, but many of the other applications are listed as "Intel (64 bit)". So I have a feeling that I'm not running using the 64 bit kernel. I tried your trick of holding 6 and 4 upon booting (i.e., immediately after I heard the chime at startup). Am I doing something wrong? I feel like a newbie with such a simple question, but I appreciate your help! :)

Notice that I'm running a former generation of Mac Pro right now, namely, the 667 MHz RAM version from 2007.
Thanks for highlighting the specific Mac Pro you are running.

The short reply - your mac does not support 64-bit kernel due to the 32-bit EFI limitations. More information - Link (http://www.ahatfullofsky.comuv.com/English/Programs/SMS/SMS.html).

Screenshot taken from - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3770
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2472181/Random%20on%20Forums/Macs_that_use_64-bit_kernel.png


The specifics ...
Using terminal to set ... sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64
Details - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3773

Use of 3rd party software to set 64-bit kernel boot.
Details - http://timesoftware.free.fr/k64enabler/

"... Apple's 64-bit kernel requires both a 64-bit processor (a Core2 Duo or better) and 64-bit EFI."Details - Link (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/02/inside_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bits.html)

"Specifically, some earlier Core 2 Duo-based Macs have a 32-bit EFI firmware, and despite the fact that a 32-bit EFI can load a 64-bit kernel, Apple (so far) limits these machines from doing so. Ironically, a tool to enable hackintoshes to boot Mac OS X can enable Macs with 32-bit EFI firmware to boot Snow Leopard in 64-bit mode."Details - Link (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/08/latest-snow-leopard-build-limits-most-macs-to-32-bit-mode.ars)

[wisty]

Plot cost-per-gig for both Apple and your other supplier. You don't have to be a math guru to see the trend ...

[mward333]

The short reply - your mac does not support 64-bit kernel due to the 32-bit EFI limitations.

Hello there, iamcheerful, I really appreciate your reply! Your post was extremely helpful. I figured that I might have 32-bit firmware of some sort, which would prevent the 64-bit kernel. Your post definitely verified this. OK, this is very helpful to know, and it assures me that the 64-bit kernel should be OK on the new Mac Pros. Great!

Plot cost-per-gig for both Apple and your other supplier. You don't have to be a math guru to see the trend ...

Hi wisty! Good idea.... thank you for the idea! A graph makes everything look very clear. Excellent, excellent! I'll take your suggestion. Thank you.

[Tutor]

Clean up

[mward333]

I buy all of my ram through either Transintl or OWC and save a wad of cash.

Thank you for the advice! Wow! People have already pointed out that OWC ($2,954.99) is less expensive than Ramjet ($3559.99) on this particular RAM, but Transintl is even chapter! $2,898.00, wow!

This is great news. Thank you!

Strange, by the way; I don't see this size of RAM on newegg right now!

[maghemi]

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned, you say you have the older Mac Pro with the 667 Ram. The new DDR3 ram will not fit into your machine.

[mward333]

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned, you say you have the older Mac Pro with the 667 Ram. The new DDR3 ram will not fit into your machine.

This was handled in Post 1, i.e., my first post. I'm buying a new Mac Pro. I should have put the emphasis on "new", but I expected everyone to see this in Post 1. I'll re-copy the sentence from Post 1 for your convenience:

I plan to buy 64 GB of RAM from Ramjet (or a comparable seller) for a new Mac Pro.

Thank you for reiterating this. Yes, of course, DDR3 RAM will not work in a Mac Pro from 2007. I'll be buying a new 8-core Mac Pro 2.93 GHz machine.