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Macbook running cooler after 4GB RAM upgrade?

A

asdfTT123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
159
1
I was previously running my SR 2.2 GHz Macbook with the standard 1GB RAM before I upgraded today to 4GB G.Skills from Newegg. I noticed that not only did the system become smoother but the CPU became cooler and the fans were not running as high as they normally would in simple tasks such as movie watching or Windows XP virtualization. To test this, I opened Word, Photoshop CS3, Safari, Windows XP via Parallels, and an avi movie on VLC player only to notice the CPU temperature was maintained below 60 C with steadily low fan speeds. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also, does anyone with 4GB configurations still occasionally experience the rainbow beachball when using Safari 3 in Leopard? It happens very occasionally for me now and I was wondering if it's normal. Nevertheless, I'm very happy with my upgrade.

If anyone is looking to upgrade their SR Macbooks or MBP's to 4GB RAM, I highly recommend these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231135

They are now even $5 cheaper than when I purchased them last Friday.
 
I, too, just updated my macbook from 1 gig to 4 gigs...got the same RAM from newegg

As far as temperature goes, I did notice somewhat of a change. Funny you bring it up, I was going to open a thread on it today.
 
are both of your mac's running fine with that RAM? i just heard somebody saying something about a 3.3bg cap or something?
 
It could be explained by the lower number of page ins/outs to your disk. The less writing your system has to do to the disk, the cooler it can run? Not sure what the numbers are behind this but that's what I got. :)
 
Yeah, Spongey says he's also running the G.Skill RAM. This CPU temperature decrease isn't something of my imagination because my system now handles more and the temperature and fan speeds stay at a minimal. It's strange because even when I had free RAM on my 1GB configuration the system would still run hotter. I complained sometimes about the heat and now all of the issues are gone... As an example, with normal Safari surfing and iTunes, the temperatures according to iStat pro were just under 50 or a little above. Right now, they hover between 43-46. When there are more processes running the difference is very noticeable because the fans don't go berserk.

And to answer the question about the RAM cap, that only applies to non-Santa Rosa systems.
 
Santa Rosa is the current high end Intel Mobile Chipset. If you purchased recently from Apple you should be running Santa Rosa. You can check by going into "About This Mac" -> "More Info...". If the bus speed reads 800 MHz you have Santa Rosa. If it's 667 MHz then you have the previous generation chipset, Napa.
 
bummer, looks like I'm running napa, was looking forwards to beasting it up as well. what would happen if i installed 4gb?
maybe i'll just have to buy a 2gb stick and upgrade to 3gb altogether, but will that cause problems because they are not matched?
 
According to some benchmarks there are slight speed advantages to running matched RAM, but the speed is barely noticeable. Unless you really need additional RAM to what you have now it probably isn't worth upgrading because you won't notice any speed differences.
 
Would it be wise to buy this RAM now before MWSF next Tuesday just to avoid the price going up over the week from now until then? I mean Santa Rosa will still be used if the MBs recieve an update, no real RAM speed updates until Montavida later this year right?
 
It's pretty much guaranteed 100% that there will be no differences in RAM that may come from any refreshes or updates because all current Intel Centrino notebooks use the same RAM and it will stay that way until Montevina.
 
gav1v said:
bummer, looks like I'm running napa, was looking forwards to beasting it up as well. what would happen if i installed 4gb?
maybe i'll just have to buy a 2gb stick and upgrade to 3gb altogether, but will that cause problems because they are not matched?
Click to expand...

Welcome to MR, gav1v

You will find answers to many commonly asked questions under the Guides tab at the top of this window

MR Guide to Understanding Intel Mac RAM
 
gav1v said:
bummer, looks like I'm running napa, was looking forwards to beasting it up as well. what would happen if i installed 4gb?
maybe i'll just have to buy a 2gb stick and upgrade to 3gb altogether, but will that cause problems because they are not matched?
Click to expand...

I just put 4 GB of OCZ branded RAM in non Santa Rosa Macbook and it works just fine, recognized all 4GB's too. I just picked this machine up used off Craigslist, and had the RAM laying around from an upgrade I had planned on doing to my first gen MacBook Pro, but soon found out it won't even boot with more than 2 gigs in it. Piece of crap. I sure wish I would have been smarter than to buy a first gen intel laptop.
 
if you have a core duo your machine won't see/address more than 2GB ram

If you have a core2duo your machine will see 4GB but only address (use) 3.3GB ram

If you have a Santa rosa core2duo your machine will see/address 4GB ram
 
im glad to hear this, because i just purchased 4GB of RAM for my macbook and had some questions about it. i was gonna originally get only 2GB but opted for 4GB because it was only $17 more and much cheaper than just buying an extra 1GB. :)
 
I bumped my 2.0 SR MB to 4 gigs and immediately noticed a big difference in speed, as well as less disk activity. Less swapping = less heat. It's especially noticeable when running Aperture or more than one VM in Fusion. Next up - 320 gig WD hard drive...
 
asdfTT123 said:
Also, does anyone with 4GB configurations still occasionally experience the rainbow beachball when using Safari 3 in Leopard? It happens very occasionally for me now and I was wondering if it's normal. Nevertheless, I'm very happy with my upgrade.
Click to expand...

I do occasionally get the beachball but no major issues.

As far as the temperature differences, I have no basis of comparison as I immediately upgraded to 4GB when my MBP was delivered. The RAM was already waiting :D
 
Just Upgraded Mine

I just purchased a Santa Rosa Macbook and upgraded it to 4GB using OWCS. I notice the big change on it like my Macbook is not as warm and the noise is somewhat gone. I installed the chips myself. Pretty cheap and easy to do. I got my memory chips from canadaram.com.

The memory card will also work on a Macbook Pro.
 
I just ordered 4 gigs of RAM so this is great to hear!

You mentioned your macbook runs smoother. What performance increases have you noticed? The computer seems quite fast even with 1 gig of RAM so i'm curious as to what the benefits are...
 
i'm having the EXACT OPPOSITE problem as you.

i upgraded form 2GB with to 4GB with the same sticks from newegg, but it seems that my computer is HOTTER THAN EVER.... :( the fans are constantly on.

i'm running firefox, adium and skype and that's about it. it would never get that hot with 2GB. i used to be at 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit, and now i'm constantly at 160-180 degrees farenheit...

are my sticks bad? the about this mac says 4gb, but i dont know why it's running so hot.
 
daneoni said:
if you have a core duo your machine won't see/address more than 2GB ram

If you have a core2duo your machine will see 4GB but only address (use) 3.3GB ram

If you have a Santa rosa core2duo your machine will see/address 4GB ram
Click to expand...

Actually, the Santa Rosa 2.2GHz CoreDuo2 will recognize 8GB -- see my recent thread https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=16815366#post16815366 regarding this -- I had always heard that it will only use 6GB without crashing, and am testing this to see what the real limits are.


Niffy
 
Niff Stipples said:
Actually, the Santa Rosa 2.2GHz CoreDuo2 will recognize 8GB -- see my recent thread https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=16815366#post16815366 regarding this -- I had always heard that it will only use 6GB without crashing, and am testing this to see what the real limits are.


Niffy
Click to expand...

It's limits, as found out by Other World Computing, is that it will work beyond 6GB, but the system will become extremely slow and unstable due to the chipset running out of registers for accessing the ram.


Also, reviving multi-year old threads isn't always the best idea.
 
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