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Maxing Out RAM?

Buerkletucson

Buerkletucson

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 12, 2015
507
298
Minnesota
Any of you guys max out the RAM on your iMac to 64GB?
What type of user would need this much RAM?

Just looking at the options for RAM on my late-2015 27" iMac.

For giggles, I checked what it would cost to max out the machine, Holy smokes.....$798? :oops:
 
I can think of a number of user types who would consider 64 Gb to be a bare minimum. Problem is, none of them are likely to be running on an iMac. Heavy DBMS users (especially analytics) and VM farm hosts are just two of the obvious ones. I don't see anyone in this user class running non-ECC, for starters.
 
Buerkletucson said:
Any of you guys max out the RAM on your iMac to 64GB?
What type of user would need this much RAM?

Just looking at the options for RAM on my late-2015 27" iMac.

For giggles, I checked what it would cost to max out the machine, Holy smokes.....$798? :oops:
Click to expand...
not holy smoke yet.. me just to upgrade to 16 GB RAM imac 900 MYR something.. and the base IMAC also 5099 MYR.. if you want to buy the same thing in USD ? would you ? I rather optimize another way which much cheaper
 
I got 32GB for my PC and used Premiere Pro to edit 60fps HD videos. I had buggy memory-leaking plugins that would cause the render to crash with only 16GB RAM. After upgrading to 32GB, the crashing stopped because there was plenty of headroom for those buggy transitions, but it still didn't go near 32GB when editing or rendering. Aside from the buggy plugins, my projects would seem to hover around 12GB or so, and maybe a bit over 16GB. So I'd definitely recommend 32GB, but 64GB? Sheesh.

If anyone edits in 4K and their machine uses over 32GB RAM while editing/rendering, I would be interested to see some screenshots. Actually I wonder if high res photo editing would use more RAM than video editing?
 
I have a 27" 2017 iMac that I upgraded myself to 64GB. I have a very specific use case where this much RAM makes sense. Logic Pro X, and loading multiple instruments via Kontakt. All the instruments can be loaded into RAM.
 
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fatherom said:
I have a 27" 2017 iMac that I upgraded myself to 64GB. I have a very specific use case where this much RAM makes sense. Logic Pro X, and loading multiple instruments via Kontakt. All the instruments can be loaded into RAM.
Click to expand...

Would you mind sharing where you purchased your RAM?
Thanks....
 
Yep, 64GB of crucial here. I only went for 64GB as I was becoming a bit confined by the 32GB in my last one.

Mainly for multiple VMs. Unless you have a very specific use case you probably won't notice the difference above 16GB - which seems to be the sweet spot for most people. For example, mine is sitting here using Safari, email, slack and a couple of other minor bits, and it's hovering at 10GB used.
 
I bought an additional 16GB of RAM from Crucial, to go with the 8GB that came with my iMac, just to ensure I have enough buffer, for whatever I'm doing - so I can encode in Final Cut Pro X, whilst using iTunes, Pixelmator, Safari ect, without any hiccups.
Anything extra, would be me wasting RAM. YMMV.
 
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