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Does it matter what Brand of RAM I buy?

D

dlo604

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
48
0
Vancouver
I was reading in the manual that you can only get 2 4 and 8 GB RAM at a time which is true. I'm thinking about upgrading my MBP to 8 GIGS eventually or 6GB for the time being.

Is there a specific brand you would recommed? Will brands effect how effective it will be when installed to a MBP?
 
dlo604 said:
I was reading in the manual that you can only get 2 4 and 8 GB RAM at a time which is true. I'm thinking about upgrading my MBP to 8 GIGS eventually or 6GB for the time being.

Is there a specific brand you would recommed? Will brands effect how effective it will be when installed to a MBP?
Click to expand...

Any brand should work so long as it is 204 pin ddr3 sdram (Assuming yours uses ddr3).

As for recommended brands: Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, GSkill should all be good.
 
I've always read from various forums and places that Macs could be finicky about the type of RAM they used. I bought some off brand cheap stuff for my late 2006 revision Macbook Pro trying to save some money and ended up having a number of problems before replacing it with Samsung OEM memory and never had another issue.

That being said, I took the recommendations of a lot of people on here and got the $57 Crucial 4GB upgrade from NewEgg.com for my new 13" uMBP and haven't had an issue.
 
CrazedVW said:
I've always read from various forums and places that Macs could be finicky about the type of RAM they used. I bought some off brand cheap stuff for my late 2006 revision Macbook Pro trying to save some money and ended up having a number of problems before replacing it with Samsung OEM memory and never had another issue.

That being said, I took the recommendations of a lot of people on here and got the $57 Crucial 4GB upgrade from NewEgg.com for my new 13" uMBP and haven't had an issue.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. Have you noticed the speed difference or is very minimal?
 
Dont get 8gbs unless you need it, and Im sure you dont. 4gb sticks are new and very expensive, but they will come down in price quickly. If you ever do need 8gbs of ram it will be hundreds of dollars cheaper if you just wait until that time comes.
 
Any reputable brand that has many good reviews on Newegg should be fine. Also look for a lifetime warranty, which most good RAM manufacturers have these days.

There should be little difference in performance between brands as long as all the specs are the same. Most important is speed (higher is better) and latency (lower is better). I remember one brand that claimed "subtiming" latency improvements (lower latency despite the same number), but the difference was something like 1% in actual tests.
 
Back when I was a broke High School / College kid, I used to buy all of my ram from http://www.18004memory.com/ and had great success. I had 1 bad chip that was replaced no problem by them.

Since then though I use crucial. I don't really know why but I just like the buying and support experience there.





NEVERMIND. scratch that. I just went to 18004memory's site andtheir ram prices are very high and they don't have an up to date list or Macbook Pros nor do they carry 4Gb sticks of DDR-3 SODIMM. I haven't used em inl like 4 years so maybe they've gone downhill.
 
I've got 4GB for sale that is DDR3 if you want it. Ill sell it for $35 shipped. Its from OWComputing.com. Its 2x2GB sticks. :)
 
stainlessliquid said:
Dont get 8gbs unless you need it, and Im sure you dont. 4gb sticks are new and very expensive, but they will come down in price quickly. If you ever do need 8gbs of ram it will be hundreds of dollars cheaper if you just wait until that time comes.
Click to expand...

True Dat!!

99% of all computer users in 2009 will not use anywhere close to 4gb of ram. Buying 6gb,8gb,16 or 32 gigabytes of ram will not make your system faster or make you more popular.
Running Word, Outlook, iTunes, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDeisgn, Kaspersky all at once will not even use 2gb, so why do you need 4gb?

Latency is the name of the game in regards to speed/performance.
Newegg is the best site on the planet for consumer feedback.
Most laptop manufactures use cheap, slow ram, so replacing the ram with lower latency ram will show a slight increase in performance during day-to-day operations. The more programs you use at once, the more increase you will see.
 
CrazedVW said:
I've always read from various forums and places that Macs could be finicky about the type of RAM they used. I bought some off brand cheap stuff for my late 2006 revision Macbook Pro trying to save some money and ended up having a number of problems before replacing it with Samsung OEM memory and never had another issue.
Click to expand...

Now Macs are just PCs. You shouldn't buy crap memory as for any PC.
 
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