16gb upgrade yes or no?

[bitinthenet]

Hi there,

I would love to upgrade to 16GB RAM on my beautiful iMac, but I saw the prices on Apple and almost fainted

My questions are two:

1) If you upgraded to 16 GB, was it worth in your opinion?

2) If you bought a compatible RAM, such as Corsair one, did you have trouble?

Thanks a lot

Dimitri

 

[Identity Fraud]

The RAM in the iMac is just bellow the screen. It's very easy to replace so buy the RAM form a third party and do it yourself. The "Apple Tax" on RAM is out of control.

 

[GGJstudios]

1) If you upgraded to 16 GB, was it worth in your opinion?

2) If you bought a compatible RAM, such as Corsair one, did you have trouble?

Whether it's worth it or not depends on your usual workload. For some, it makes a big difference. For others, there is zero benefit to adding RAM.

Apple doesn't make RAM and overprices the RAM it sells. You're better off buying RAM and installing it yourself.

 

[jwm2]

Yes its worth it, even if you don't go for 16gb, upgrading to 8 or 12 will still have benefits. 4gb is just not enough, but is fine for most people.

 

[thekev]

Don't pay Apple pricing on it. I haven't tested this personally, but no one has complained about the configuration. My suggestion if you're budget minded is to buy 8GB extra in the form of 2x4GB sticks. Install it along what the computer comes with initially and that bumps you to 12. If you still feel you need more, swap the other 2 bringing it up to 16. I haven't heard of anyone using Corsair. Crucial seems to be popular. It shouldn't cost more than $100-150 for 16GB. Cut that in half for 12, as you'd save the initial ram. I'd keep possession of the ram it starts with for testing purposes later on in case you have problems. Apple discounts the refurb units quite a lot with the imacs. It might be worth looking into especially if you're budget conscious.

Regarding tax, other oems mark up the hell out of ram upgrades too. It varies, but some of them are in line with Apple on this. I'm wondering if Apple intends to go with the soldered in ram on more computers .

 

[Bear]

You haven't said what you run. In my case, I'm seeing 4GB isn't quite enough for a lot of people, but 8GB is fine. Having said that...

I bought Crucial and I would recommend buying an 8GB kit (2 * 4GB modules) to bring your system to 12GB. You can always upgrade the original memory later. At the current price of ram, getting the 4GB kit doesn't make sense at all.

If you do replace your original memory, you need to hold on to it for AppleCare. Apple requires Apple supplied memory for some repair situations.

 

[harcosparky]

I watched Activity Monitor while doing some tasks, web browsing, playing a video, opening large image files and the like.

4 GB - Showed too many Page Outs and Swapping for my liking. When I threw in some intense file copying between drives on the Firewire and USB ports the Page Outs and Swapping were unacceptable.

8 GB - Saw no Page Outs of Swapping with the above tasks, however when I started moving large files between multiple drives along with 'routine' activities the Page Outs and Swapping started to show up.


IMHO - 8 Gigs would be fine for most people, and I thought it might be fine for me but am now rethinking that.

I have some more testing to do tomorrow and and gonna really throw some stuff at the system before I decide on how much RAM I will find acceptable over the long run.


For the 2011 iMac I found the following RAM Prices from OWC.
16 GB ( 4 X 4GB ) $91.99

You could also buy 8 GB module but the price more than doubles.
16 GB ( 2 X 8GB ) $247.99

For me I might opt for the more expensive option, because if I bought the 16 GB ( 4 X 4GB ) $91.99 option and found out 16GB is not to my liking I'd be stuck.

Buying the 16 GB ( 2 X 8GB ) $247.99 will give me the 16 GB and leave open two slots just in case I decide to add more later on.

Here is where we order memory from ................
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/



FWIW: We have ordered quite a few things from them and are very happy.




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