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Leaving One RAM Slot Empty - OK or not?

E

envirocl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 2, 2009
3
0
Hi,

I just got a white Macbook 13.3 (2.1 GHz, Penryn) which originally came with just 1 GB of RAM (two sticks of 512 MB).
Then I got two sticks of 2 GB Kingston RAM for this Macbook.
I took out both 512 MB RAM and only put one stick of 2 GB RAM in, leaving the other slot empty.
My Macbook works great.

My question is, is it OK if I leave the other slot empty like that?
Or should I put the other 2 GB stick in as well?

Thanks a lot for your help.
 
Absolutely. I believe there is a slight performance hit in running mismatched memory (1 GB in one slot, 2 GB in the other), but running with memory in only one slot is perfectly fine.

Of course, the more the merrier. ;)
 
From what I have read here there doesn't seem to be any harm in doing it but the performance could be a little bad. Depends on what you are doing with your MB.
 
Thanks a lot for your replies.
They help a lot.
I think I'll stick with just one 2 GB memory stick, and I'll give the other stick to a friend whose Macbook is very slow and doesn't realize she needs to upgrade her RAM :)

Thanks again.
 
Updates

It's been more than a year since I started this thread. The empty slot had given me no problem but recently I added a Corsair 1 GB Value RAM to that slot.
Increase in performance is worth it (from 2 GB to 3 GB). Value RAM combined with non-Value RAM seems to be perfectly fine.
 
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