Upgrading Ram and SSD on 2012 iMac on my own

houssein31 · Feb 16, 2015

SO I have been thinking of this a lot, and I am going to upgrade the ram and add an SSD to my 21.5 2012 iMac. I know you're all going to advise me not to do it on my own, but I know the risks and I dont want to pay someone 350$ (geeksquad) to do something I know I could do on my own. Im pretty handy,and ve done similar things in the past...and worst case scenario, I buy a new iMac, specs as I want.

At first I was going to listen to you guys and simply attach an external SSD, but I dont know if this would solve my problem, Im always running out of ram too. I currently have 8gb and according to the "Memory Clean" app I barely ever have ram available (probably because I usually have 10 tabs in safari open, iTunes, Preview, Pages, Messages and Mail almost always open)

So I watched plenty of videos on youtube on how to do it, and to change the SSD on the 2012 iMac, I basically have to tear apart my iMac, which i will do. I think 16gb will be enough...
(Best video I found was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1gihIbBKvc )

But when it comes to the SSD, I have a question, on some videos, I saw people simply remove their hard rive and plug in an incased SSD and thats it....But in the OWC video, I saw that they added an SSD(not in cased) to the logic board (near the Ram slot).....but why??? Is it better to place it on the Logic board (and keep the hard drive) instead of installing it in the place of the hard drive??

I know its seems a little stupid, but Im really confident that I know how to do this...Just really tired have having a slow mac

Thanks in advance

yjchua95 · Feb 16, 2015

houssein31 said:
SO I have been thinking of this a lot, and I am going to upgrade the ram and add an SSD to my 21.5 2012 iMac. I know you're all going to advise me not to do it on my own, but I know the risks and I dont want to pay someone 350$ (geeksquad) to do something I know I could do on my own. Im pretty handy,and ve done similar things in the past...and worst case scenario, I buy a new iMac, specs as I want.

At first I was going to listen to you guys and simply attach an external SSD, but I dont know if this would solve my problem, Im always running out of ram too. I currently have 8gb and according to the "Memory Clean" app I barely ever have ram available (probably because I usually have 10 tabs in safari open, iTunes, Preview, Pages, Messages and Mail almost always open)

So I watched plenty of videos on youtube on how to do it, and to change the SSD on the 2012 iMac, I basically have to tear apart my iMac, which i will do. I think 16gb will be enough...
(Best video I found was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1gihIbBKvc )

But when it comes to the SSD, I have a question, on some videos, I saw people simply remove their hard rive and plug in an incased SSD and thats it....But in the OWC video, I saw that they added an SSD(not in cased) to the logic board (near the Ram slot).....but why??? Is it better to place it on the Logic board (and keep the hard drive) instead of installing it in the place of the hard drive??

I know its seems a little stupid, but Im really confident that I know how to do this...Just really tired have having a slow mac

Thanks in advance

If your memory pressure is green in Activity Monitor, you are not out of RAM.

Free RAM is wasted RAM. One does not look at the Memory Used values in Activity Monitor anymore. Those values are irrelevant given how Yosemite caches and compresses RAM now.

You have to take apart the entire display and glue it back together just to get at the hard drive bay and RAM slots. I just hope you know how to put it back together. It's almost equivalent to taking apart the logic board too.

DeltaMac · Feb 16, 2015

houssein31 said:
... I am going to upgrade the ram and add an SSD to my 21.5 2012 iMac. ...
Im always running out of ram too. I currently have 8gb and according to the "Memory Clean" app I barely ever have ram available (probably because I usually have 10 tabs in safari open, iTunes, Preview, Pages, Messages and Mail almost always open)
...
But when it comes to the SSD, I have a question, on some videos, I saw people simply remove their hard drive and plug in an incased SSD and thats it....But in the OWC video, I saw that they added an SSD(not in cased) to the logic board (near the Ram slot).....but why??? Is it better to place it on the Logic board (and keep the hard drive) instead of installing it in the place of the hard drive??

...

One good reason to simply replace the spinning hard drive, instead of just adding a blade SSD to the blade slot - your iMac may not have that blade slot, unless it came with the factory upgrade to an SSD, or fusion drive. The HDD-only models don't even have that blade socket on the logic board.
I THINK that Apple started using logic boards with the empty blade socket on later 2012 models - but there's no way to tell, until you take the whole iMac apart.

You might be lucky - or you might be better off just getting a 2.5 SSD, as you can use that on any 2012 21.5-inch iMac.

houssein31 · Feb 16, 2015

yjchua95 said:
If your memory pressure is green in Activity Monitor, you are not out of RAM.

Free RAM is wasted RAM. One does not look at the Memory Used values in Activity Monitor anymore. Those values are irrelevant given how Yosemite caches and compresses RAM now.

You have to take apart the entire display and glue it back together just to get at the hard drive bay and RAM slots. I just hope you know how to put it back together. It's almost equivalent to taking apart the logic board too.

Heres what Activity shows right now...(I have a normal amount of apps open)..What do you think?

houssein31 · Feb 16, 2015

DeltaMac said:
One good reason to simply replace the spinning hard drive, instead of just adding a blade SSD to the blade slot - your iMac may not have that blade slot, unless it came with the factory upgrade to an SSD, or fusion drive. The HDD-only models don't even have that blade socket on the logic board.
I THINK that Apple started using logic boards with the empty blade socket on later 2012 models - but there's no way to tell, until you take the whole iMac apart.

You might be lucky - or you might be better off just getting a 2.5 SSD, as you can use that on any 2012 21.5-inch iMac.

Im gonna check if theres a way to know if I have SSD slot...But is a SSD bade better than the 2.5 SSD???

Thanks

yjchua95 · Feb 16, 2015

houssein31 said:
Heres what Activity shows right now...(I have a normal amount of apps open)..What do you think?

Your RAM is not even used much at all. RAM usage is pretty low.

----------

houssein31 said:
Im gonna check if theres a way to know if I have SSD slot...But is a SSD bade better than the 2.5 SSD???

Thanks

Nope. Both are SATA (SATA3 2.5" and mSATA blade), so both operate at the same speeds.

You can choose to buy a blade mSATA SSD if you want to create your own Fusion Drive.

houssein31 · Feb 16, 2015

yjchua95 said:
Your RAM is not even used much at all. RAM usage is pretty low.

Really??? because the Memory Clean App always tells me that I have less than 100MB left....

But I guess you know more than me..And its a good thing, mean dont have to take apart everything...just got to change the SSD

Thanks

yjchua95 · Feb 16, 2015

houssein31 said:
Really??? because the Memory Clean App always tells me that I have less than 100MB left....

But I guess you know more than me..And its a good thing, mean dont have to take apart everything...just got to change the SSD

Thanks

Any RAM cleaning app is BS and is more of a scam to mislead the user into thinking that he/she has run out of RAM.

All the values given by such apps are irrelevant, because of how Yosemite caches RAM.

DeltaMac · Feb 16, 2015

Yosemite will use as much memory as it can.
That memory clean app used to be useless with older OS X systems. Now with Yosemite, it's even more useless, if there is such as thing as "more useless"

You probably can't add a blade SSD, as your iMac probably doesn't have a socket for it.

houssein31 · Feb 16, 2015

DeltaMac said:
Yosemite will use as much memory as it can.
That memory clean app used to be useless with older OS X systems. Now with Yosemite, it's even more useless, if there is such as thing as "more useless"

You probably can't add a blade SSD, as your iMac probably doesn't have a socket for it.

I but my the iMac 6 month after it launched...It maybe has the socket...either ways, ill just replace the hard drive with a 2.5 SSD...

phpmaven · Feb 17, 2015

houssein31 said:
Really??? because the Memory Clean App always tells me that I have less than 100MB left....

But I guess you know more than me..And its a good thing, mean dont have to take apart everything...just got to change the SSD

Thanks

Just to add another voice, uninstall that memory app, it's worthless and it's readings are useless. For your usage, 8GB of RAM is plenty. I'm a firm believer in the idea of getting as much RAM as you can afford, especially since it's so cheap, but to tear your iMac apart to upgrade the RAM is a waste of time. You won't see any benefit. Installing an SSD is a whole other story though. The performance gains would be well worth it.

Fishrrman · Feb 17, 2015

OP:

There is "an alternative path" if you don't really feel like opening up the iMac, which is a process that can be fraught with dangers.

That is, use either thunderbolt or USB3 to attach your SSD, creating an "external booter".

The speeds you experience will be "the near equal" of an internally-installed drive, and for all practical purposes will be "un-perceivable" once the iMac is up-and-running.

Thunderbolt enclosures are pricey (and difficult to find), but a USB3 enclosure will run $25-40. Here's an excellent one to consider:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/dlite1.html

You could velcro this to the back of the iMac's stand, where it would be all-but invisible and out-of-the-way.

Doing this could save a lot of time -- and grief, if in the process of doing "internal surgery", you break something.

And -- you'll still have the internal drive for additional storage.

houssein31 · Feb 17, 2015

Fishrrman said:
OP:

There is "an alternative path" if you don't really feel like opening up the iMac, which is a process that can be fraught with dangers.

That is, use either thunderbolt or USB3 to attach your SSD, creating an "external booter".

The speeds you experience will be "the near equal" of an internally-installed drive, and for all practical purposes will be "un-perceivable" once the iMac is up-and-running.

Thunderbolt enclosures are pricey (and difficult to find), but a USB3 enclosure will run $25-40. Here's an excellent one to consider:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/dlite1.html

You could velcro this to the back of the iMac's stand, where it would be all-but invisible and out-of-the-way.

Doing this could save a lot of time -- and grief, if in the process of doing "internal surgery", you break something.

And -- you'll still have the internal drive for additional storage.

Do you think I could install the entire OSX of the external SSD?? So that my Mac is entirely running on SSD??

AtomicGrog · Feb 17, 2015

houssein31 said:
Do you think I could install the entire OSX of the external SSD?? So that my Mac is entirely running on SSD??

Without a shadow of doubt... I have osx images on external HDD's (USB Based) they work as well as the internal drive, albeit a little slower. (USB 2 is poor performance...)

WilliamG · Feb 17, 2015

houssein31 said:
Do you think I could install the entire OSX of the external SSD?? So that my Mac is entirely running on SSD??

I've been doing that for over 2 years now. Currently run a 1TB SSD via Thunderbolt on my 2014 iMac. Never a moment's trouble.

blackgnat · Feb 18, 2015

the ssd blade connector is present in every iMac assembled after 6 january 2013. ..

Meister · Feb 18, 2015

houssein31 said:
Really??? because the Memory Clean App always tells me that I have less than 100MB left....

But I guess you know more than me..And its a good thing, mean dont have to take apart everything...just got to change the SSD

Thanks

Wtf is a memory clean app?
Why are you using such a thing?

Listen to yijchua95!

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