Expanding memory immediately upon purchase or wait?

[Sanatogen]

I will receive my new iMac 27" at some point tomorrow and I'm very excited about it. It comes with 8Gb memory, I've never properly used a Mac before I don't know how far that will take me. Some people have said it's more than enough, others have advised me to at least double it up.

My main use will be playing games, video editing and web design. It's fairly cheap to buy additional memory through Amazon for example but should I do it immediately or perhaps wait?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

8 GB should suffice for some time in order to monitor your own RAM usage doing your usual computational tasks.

After a typical day of your computational usage (and a fresh start up of the iMac at the beginning of that day), open Activity Monitor and go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

* Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor​

To learn more about Mac OS X: Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[Shane1905]

8GB should be fine for now but RAM is also pretty cheap these days, I stuck an extra 16GB in mine for £75 for a total of 24GB to future proof but for now it was most likely unnecessary.

 

[Sanatogen]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I wasn't aware of the memory tool but I will look it up and try it once I have everything sorted.

Another thing I'd like to do is streaming on the Internet. I suppose 8Gb memory should be enough for that too but I'm still thinking of the PC and Windows' perverse use of the internal memory for just about everything.

 

[Bear]

I will receive my new iMac 27" at some point tomorrow and I'm very excited about it. It comes with 8Gb memory, I've never properly used a Mac before I don't know how far that will take me. Some people have said it's more than enough, others have advised me to at least double it up.

My main use will be playing games, video editing and web design. It's fairly cheap to buy additional memory through Amazon for example but should I do it immediately or perhaps wait?

I would recommend when you go to upgrade you either add 8GB 0r 16GB to your existing memory. As for when to do it, you might want to wait until you see if you need it, however, on a new system at the earliest I would wait a few days after getting it (maybe as much as a week) to make sure there are no issues with the system, that way you know if it's the system or the new memory if you have a problem.

 

[RedReplicant]

Leave it alone unless you're running VMs, editing large RAW files regularly (and I mean more than hitting auto tone, cropping, and exporting), or editing video regularly. Otherwise, it's a waste of money.

If you want to spend money sensibly for something anyone will notice, add an SSD/fusion drive.

 

[Sanatogen]

or editing video regularly. Otherwise, it's a waste of money.

Well, I'm primarily buying the Mac for video editing and that's why I figured I might need more than the 8Gb.

If you want to spend money sensibly for something anyone will notice, add an SSD/fusion drive.

That's something I'd love to add at some point in the future but it will have to wait a few months unfortunately.

 

[thedeske]

The last 4-5 iMacs I set up for me and others were the same routine. We knew we needed more memory, so it was out of the box and install memory before first boot.
Any problems encountered & we would have pulled the 3rd party memory, but that was not the case.
All was fine.

 

[Mr Rabbit]

I would wait unless you start hitting the limits of the 8GB.

If you wait a year or two (or three!) the RAM will just get more affordable. You just don't want to wait too long, otherwise you'll see the prices go back up.