RAM in old iMac

[CubeHacker]

I just bought an old iMac DV off ebay to play around with (it would be my first mac ever!). I want to get some more RAM for it, but i'm a bit confused. Checking Apple's website, it says that it takes PC100, with a max of 512mb stick in 2 slots for a total of 1gb of RAM.

Now the problem is, which memory should I purchase? Looking around online, the prices for old PC100/133 are much higher, since they are for the most part, no longer in production and no longer price competative. I've found prices ranging from about $45 for a 512mb stick, all the way up to $150. Thats a huge difference! The cheaper sticks are labeled as "generic", and claim to only work with Athlon chipsets, and are not guarenteed to work with Intel chipsets. I can never find a mention for Apple computers, except for places with extremly inflated prices.

Does anyone know if these cheap, generic ram sticks would work fine in an iMac?

 

[Sun Baked]

Anything Apple that says PC100, you'd want to put the next speed in PC133 -- at a minimum.

Apple's spec for the PC100 memory was a bit tight, and they ended up with a PC133 spec memory in the 100MHz boards in later machines.

These were a lot of the machines OS X and the firmware upgrades made lots of memory non functional.

 

[Coca-Cola]

I searched for and purchased my iMac DV's memory at www.crucial.com. I am happy with the service. Very fast delivery, easy selection. Guaranteed to work.

 

[CubeHacker]

Originally posted by Coca-Cola
I searched for and purchased my iMac DV's memory at www.crucial.com. I am happy with the service. Very fast delivery, easy selection. Guaranteed to work.

Crucial is the best. And for DDR memory, they are the way to go. But for old PC100/133 ram, they are easily twice the price compared to some of the ram that can be purchased over places advertised on www.pricewatch.com. I just want to know if cheap generic memory works. Anyone have any experience here?

 

[Coca-Cola]

Just curious? What model is your iMac? I am running Panther on my iMac DV special edition(graphite) 400 mhz. I am amazed at the life span of this darn computer. I photoshop with it, and all sorts of cool stuff. A new machine would be a lot more productive however. Soon, very Soon, I can't wait until I get my tax returns back. The things that my current mac can't do....
iSight, new games, and Keynote. Darn. I really need Keynote.

 

[Coca-Cola]

Oh Yeah, I have 640 megs of ram. Still room left to grow.

 

[CubeHacker]

Its an iMac DV 400mhz (blueberry). I have not received it yet, but it only has 64mb of Ram. I plan to stick Panther on it, and well, 64mb just isn't enough

I would really like to get 512mb on it, but I just can't justify spending $120 for ram when the entire iMac only cost me $180.

 

[Stelliform]

I have 1 GB of ram in my Ruby iMac DV and it really helped. Anything over 512 should be fine though.

 

[smada]

most PC-133 or PC-100 sticks will work. with the extremely cheap generic stuff, there might be a little room to worry, but not too much. and definitely get more than 64 mb!!!!

512 will be nice and fast, but I certainly never regretted upgrading to 1 GB. now I'm even considering upgrading to 2 gigabytes. Does anybody know if an iMac DV SE can handle SDRAM that dense? Maybe it's just because I have nothing else to spend my money on, being a responsibility free teenager, but I can't resist it whenever a new opportunity to max out the iMac presents itself.

 

[MoparShaha]

I have two 512 MB PC133 sticks in my iMac DV. Bought them from Crucial. I've had no problems whatsoever.