16gb or 12gb ram?

[ezatech]

Lashed out and bought a top of the line iMac 27inch for editing purposes / video / web design etc...

What would be the best option vs price.

1) Add 2x4GB sticks to the 2X2GB sticks it comes with (stock) = 12GB total.

or

2) 4 x 4GB sticks = 16GB and then selling the 2x 2GB sticks on ebay.

Would performance be affected if i did option 1 in regards to different brands of ram (the apple stock) and OWC brand ram?

Thanks heaps,

 

[88 King]

There shouldn't be any performance degradation by mixing 3rd party ram sticks with those came with the imc (likely Samsung).

If you decide to get 16GB of ram, I'd suggest you keep the stock ram as backup incase you need to send the imac back for repair. Beside you are not likely to get more the $10 for each stick.

 

[SR20DETDOG]

Why not just buy 2x4GB for 12GB, try it out and see how it goes, then if you do need/want more you can just buy another 2x4GB for the full 16GB.

 

[Kasalic]

Why not just buy 2x4GB for 12GB, try it out and see how it goes, then if you do need/want more you can just buy another 2x4GB for the full 16GB.

This is what we did we our two iMacs in the office. Running office and Windows VM, and the difference from 4GB to 12GB has made a huge improvement. We were prepared to go to 16GB if we needed to but have decided to put it off for now.

 

[Dresevski]

The price of RAM is pretty low, basically bottomed out, just get the 16GB. Once you throw it in you'll forget about it and it'll done forever. I have 12GB and wish I had just done 16