So lately I've been making videos for youtube and every time I convert the video in iMovie, my early 2011 Macbook Pro 13' sounds like its trying to take flight. This is do to the fans working super hard. I know this is a stupid question but would doubling the ram to 8gb help put less strain on the computer. I assume it would but just want to confirm. Also if I open my Mac to install the ram will it void my applecare. Thanks
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Will upgrading ram make a difference?
- Thread starter redsoxfan320
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Any time you do any resource-intensive operations, more heat is generated and your fans may spin faster to keep temps in a safe operating range. This is normal. It may or may not have anything to do with RAM.
To determine if you need more RAM, restart your computer, then launch Activity Monitor and look at the System Memory tab at the bottom. If your "page outs" are significant (say 1GB or more) under your normal workload, you may benefit from more RAM. If you have no page outs during normal use, you're not maxing out the RAM that you have.
You'll have to run for a while, using the apps you normally use, to get a realistic picture. Restarting resets your page outs to zero, and they are cumulative until you restart again.
It will always show zero page outs after a restart. As I said, you'll have to run for a while, using your computer the way you normally do, to see if page outs occur under normal use. Just keep an eye on it for a few days. If it's still showing zero page outs, that means you're not maxing out the RAM you have, and increasing RAM would give you no improvement in performance.
Okay gotcha. I guess I should have checked how many were there before I restarted... Thanks
To answer your question simply, no, more RAM will not calm the fans down, as converting video is entirely CPU-dependent. It uses basically all available CPU power and will cause the fan to spin up, but that is completely normal.
Okay then.. Would more ram help tasks such as converting the video get done faster?
But to answer the original question, upgrading the ram won't make much difference in video encoding. It's not much of a ram intensive process as it is a CPU intensive process. Those fans will run regardless of how much ram you have as the CPU will be running a near full copacity either way.
Okay thanks! One more thing, I always see people on here talking about buying SSD. What do they offer that the regular hard drive doesn't? Thanks and sorry if these are stupid questions. I'm a mac lover, yet a noob
Unlike a disk drive that has a spinning platter, the SSD has no moving parts and is much, much faster.
I knew about the no disk spinning part, but what do you mean faster? Thats where I got confused. Is it faster as in the speed it takes for a song on iTunes to play or for a large file to transfer?
Any operation that involves reading and writing to disk is faster with a SSD. Of course, it won't change the playback speed or tempo of music or videos.
Hate to revive this thread but my mac was just sounding like a helicopter for no reason. I had just 4 tabs open on google chrome. Then I checked my used ram and its was bouncing from 3.60s to 3.70s.