Silly question regarding iMac memory

[xandreu]

I've just bought my first iMac, the 5K retina and love it.

I bought it with 8GB of memory with a view to upgrading the memory myself to save a few pennies. I read it takes DDR3 1600Mhz memory which is the same type I have in my Lenovo W540.

Does this mean I will be able to take the memory out of my W540 and put it in the iMac safely, or is there something else in the specifications which would make it incompatible?

As you can tell I'm not very clued up on computer memory.

Thanks in advance.

 

[yjchua95]

I've just bought my first iMac, the 5K retina and love it.

I bought it with 8GB of memory with a view to upgrading the memory myself to save a few pennies. I read it takes DDR3 1600Mhz memory which is the same type I have in my Lenovo W540.

Does this mean I will be able to take the memory out of my W540 and put it in the iMac safely, or is there something else in the specifications which would make it incompatible?

As you can tell I'm not very clued up on computer memory.

Thanks in advance.

From what I've heard, iMacs only work well with DDR3 1600MHz 1.35V. 1.5V may cause some finicky issues.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Yes, stick with DDR3L (1.35V) RAM to avoid issues. I know Apple recommends DDR3 on their specs page (for some bizarre reason) but they themselves ship exclusively with 1.35V RAM and I can tell you from personal past experience that the low voltage is the way to go.

 

[Chippy99]

I've just bought my first iMac, the 5K retina and love it.

I bought it with 8GB of memory with a view to upgrading the memory myself to save a few pennies. I read it takes DDR3 1600Mhz memory which is the same type I have in my Lenovo W540.

Does this mean I will be able to take the memory out of my W540 and put it in the iMac safely, or is there something else in the specifications which would make it incompatible?

As you can tell I'm not very clued up on computer memory.

Thanks in advance.

Suck it and see. It won't do any harm (make your you have backups though, which is sensible in any event) and may very well work just fine. Check in System Report though to make sure it's running at 1600MHz after you've installed it. If the timings for your Lenovo ram are not compatible, then the Mac may drop the speed down to 1333MHz... which is not the end of the world, but not ideal.

If it's running at 1600MHz and it runs stable with no crashes or glitches for a few days, I would say it's working fine and you're good to go.

 

[xandreu]

Thanks for the replies guys. I tried it this morning and it didn't work

All I got was a series of bleeps when I tried to turn the Mac on. No screen, no start up, just a series of angry bleeps.

I took the RAM out and re-seated it to make sure it was in correctly but the same thing happened again.

Oh well, looks like I'll just have to go out and buy some.

Thanks anyway.

 

[Tobamory]

I had issues, I bought it with 8gb bought 16gb of crucial and nothing but reboots I ran memtest and diags and it failed. I returned crucial and thy sent me more same again, when mixing apples with crucial it failed and reboots.

If I ran pure crucial 16gb it was fine, if I ran pure Apple it was fine, mixing wasn't even though crucial said it was...

I eventually bought another 16gb now have 32gb of crucial and it's fine, once you've installed it run the bios based mem check if it fails diags take it out as you'll get reboots etc....

 

[SaSaSushi]

I had issues, I bought it with 8gb bought 16gb of crucial and nothing but reboots I ran memtest and diags and it failed. I returned crucial and thy sent me more same again, when mixing apples with crucial it failed and reboots.

If I ran pure crucial 16gb it was fine, if I ran pure Apple it was fine, mixing wasn't even though crucial said it was...

Interesting, because I added 16GB of Crucial to 16GB of Apple RAM I bought the machine with and it has been running perfectly for the past year.

I did initially get a bad set of Crucial and had kernel panics, freezing, etc but the replacement they sent was fine.

 

[rkaufmann87]

Thanks for the replies guys. I tried it this morning and it didn't work

All I got was a series of bleeps when I tried to turn the Mac on. No screen, no start up, just a series of angry bleeps.

I took the RAM out and re-seated it to make sure it was in correctly but the same thing happened again.

Oh well, looks like I'll just have to go out and buy some.

Thanks anyway.

Only install RAM in an iMac from trusted sources such as Crucial (buy it direct from Crucial) or OWC. iMacs are sensitive to the type of RAM installed. Installing incorrect RAM could eventually damage the OS, you paid a lot of money for the computer, it's not the right time to put in cheap components.

 

[Tobamory]

Interesting, because I added 16GB of Crucial to 16GB of Apple RAM I bought the machine with and it has been running perfectly for the past year.

I did initially get a bad set of Crucial and had kernel panics, freezing, etc but the replacement they sent was fine.

Wonder if it was because I was mixing 8 and 16 the Mac didn't like it, lots of kernel panics....

I was about to ditch crucial as I thought it was there ram, but as above once I tested them alone they all,passed fine... I even swapped them around into the opposing slots but still same...

Anyway I'm good,now.....