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Looking to upgrade to 8GB.. where can I find reasonably priced 4GB DIMMs?

D

dawgma9

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2009
5
0
I'm buying a MacBook Pro soon and would like to upgrade the RAM to 8GB (yes, I DO need it). However I am not willing to pay the god awful price of $1000 for a 4GB bump from Apple.

There are plenty of 3rd party 4GB DIMMs that sell for $300-$400 and I could buy two of them for less than the price that Apple wants to charge. But even those are quite pricey.

Does anyone know of a source to get 4GB DIMMs for a more reasonable price of around $200 or less? They would have to be at least 800Mhz.
 
I haven't seen anything near $200 and the $300-400 you've seen is pretty much "competitive" out there. If you need it, then you will need to put down the cash for the 4GB DIMM unless someone can post with something closer to $200.
 
better to do research before getting your hands on one.
last thing you want is non-compatible rams freezing your machine.
 
This could be good: http://tinyurl.com/mbm4nv

Sure, it's a lower frequency, but 800Mhz is still good.

p3ncil said:
better to do research before getting your hands on one.
last thing you want is non-compatible rams freezing your machine.
Click to expand...

True. I've never fully understood what exactly makes certain RAM modules "mac compatible".... I thought most 3rd party DDR2 and DDR3 sticks would be.

p3ncil said:
better to do research before getting your hands on one.
last thing you want is non-compatible rams freezing your machine.
Click to expand...

The MacRumors RAM buying guide says Crucial is a good place to get RAM.

On the Crucial site you can select the exact computer model that you have and it will show the RAM that is compatible with it. The compatibility is guaranteed by Crucial.

Given that, if you look at the RAM specs on Crucial's page for the 17" Macbook Pro here: http://tinyurl.com/lhrlj8

Then I should be able to just find something similar, but cheaper, and it should be okay.

This could also work: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT2KIT51264AC800

EDIT: Haha.. woops! Those are actually the same as the first set of DIMM's that I posted above from ebay.
 
waloshin said:
8 gbs on a laptop for?
Click to expand...

I'm using it for design work. 2D and 3D. My scratch sizes can easily top 10GB (regularly 4-8GB). That means once I have used up all of my RAM the programs start to use the hard drive to cache data. There is a *significant* performance drop when this occurs.

8GB of RAM will help prevent those performance drops from happening 70% of the time.
 
LOL I as just going to say why are we talking about 800MHz spec when the DDR3 is 1066MHz? Again, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything near your asking price. If it's for work, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you don't want to put down that much cash, the alternative is go PC route and get DDR2 RAM for cheap and work with Windows.
 
Make sure you buy memory in a kit. Just because you buy two identical 4GB ram sticks, doesn't mean they will dual channel.
 
dawgma9 said:
True. I've never fully understood what exactly makes certain RAM modules "mac compatible".... I thought most 3rd party DDR2 and DDR3 sticks would be.
Click to expand...

1. You need to make sure that you have exactly the right specs. If you know what to look for, fine. Crucial will sell you RAM for specific computer models, and they take the responsibility if they get it wrong.

2. Some cheap RAM doesn't quite meet its specs. And some computers need RAM that does meet the specs, others may not. In that case, "Apple compatible" may just mean "we didn't lie when we said what specs we meet".
 
Alternatively , consider replacing your hard drive with an SSD if you dont have one already. Then your scratch disk will perform much faster as well.
 
p3ncil said:
better to do research before getting your hands on one.
last thing you want is non-compatible rams freezing your machine.
Click to expand...

i just want to add my two cents.


I had a v v good working macbook pro 4 years old, with a 500mb RAM. I upgraded it one of the 250 MB with a 1GB from Kingston RAM. I bought it from a Apple Store in Hong Kong. My laptop started freezing after that!! Then the store replaced the RAM with a new one from Kingston. It continued freezing laptop!! However after 8~9 months, the problem has rectified on its own and the machine is working OK. But i suffered for many months!
 
dawgma9 said:
Well this is the cheapest 8GB DDR3 kit that I could find: http://www.ramjet.com/ItemDescription.asp?Item=MBP8G

Can anyone do better?

EDIT: $629 here:http://macramdirect.com/macbook.html#mb1
Click to expand...

Why would you need that much power in the first place? I could maybe see using so many programs at once that all 4 gigabytes of memory is used and your system is slow but I've had a 4 gigabyte 15" macbook pro for over a month and haven't come close to using 2 or 2 and a half gigs at a time and I frequently multi task. Spare yourself the huge-ass hole in your pocket. ;) (p.s., use the iStat Pro widget to check. Or just use activity monitor.)
 
sam10685 said:
Why would you need that much power in the first place? I could maybe see using so many programs at once that all 4 gigabytes of memory is used and your system is slow but I've had a 4 gigabyte 15" macbook pro for over a month and haven't come close to using 2 or 2 and a half gigs at a time and I frequently multi task. Spare yourself the huge-ass hole in your pocket. ;) (p.s., use the iStat Pro widget to check. Or just use activity monitor.)
Click to expand...

Read his posts.
 
I just finished installing 8GB of memory in my system and it makes a hell of a difference. I allocated 4gb to Windows Parallel and still leaves 4GB dedicated to OS X. I love it.
 
jimthegreek said:
I just finished installing 8GB of memory in my system and it makes a hell of a difference. I allocated 4gb to Windows Parallel and still leaves 4GB dedicated to OS X. I love it.
Click to expand...

Where did you end up purchasing your ram from? Notice any difference in battery life at all?
 
gl4662 said:
Where did you end up purchasing your ram from? Notice any difference in battery life at all?
Click to expand...

I didn't notice any improvement over battery life or any degrade in it either. I do believe that the SSD did make a slight improvement though but I won't know for sure for a few battery cycles.

I bought the Crucial 8GB kit off Fleabay for $599.00
 
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