A pen...
Ha ha
I need a pen!
How to upgrade the RAM of your iMac
Cheap
the right way!
I mean: memory upgrade on the 27-inch iMac is very easy
you just need a pen!
But if you want the best possible performance,
spending less money,
there are some things we need to discover, like:
Can I use different RAM sticks together?
Is it OK to mix RAM brands?
or to mix different RAM sizes?
Is there a correct slot order for the best performance?
Do I really need 16 or 32 Gigabytes?
How much RAM is enough?
Will more memory really make Final Cut faster?
I found the results very interesting
and I’ll show you now, on Geek Detour!
Let’s do it again!
One of the main reasons I use a Mac
instead of a PC is Final Cut Pro X
it renders videos faster than anything else.
By the way, if you are buying an iMac and you are choosing
between the 21 inch or the 27 inch model,
trust me: get the big one
not only for the bigger screen,
but mostly for the ability to change the RAM yourself,
for a much cheaper price than Apple’s RAM, easily,
using this door at the back.
The 21 inch iMacs requires you to literally unglue the display
and disassemble almost the whole computer
to access the RAM…
you won’t…
Get the big one, with the best CPU you can pay.
When I bought mine, I paid an extra for the Quad Core i7,
but the RAM was unchanged: 8GB.
And during these 5 years, 8Gigs were enough for me.
Every video you saw on my channel, so far,
was edited on Final Cut Pro with only 8 gigs of RAM.
But my projects are getting more complex, with bigger files,
and some of the footage is now shot in 2.7k
or even 4k…
so I wonder if more memory will make Final Cut faster
or better, somehow.
I wont spoil the surprise!
Before you buy anything,
you need to know which type of memory your mac needs.
So you click the “Apple” menu,
and chose the “About this mac”.
And there you have the model of your mac.
Write down this information!
Then go to the “Memory” tab:
my iMac came with 2 sticks of 4 Gigs
and two additional free slots.
And on the “Memory Upgrade Instructions”:
if you have a newer mac it might support 64GBs or even more,
but, as you can see, my iMac only goes up to 32 Gigabytes of RAM.
I unplugged everything…
and to protect the display from scratches I used a towel.
And there it is the memory door.
To open it, you remove the power cable and
there is a hidden button
that you can press with a pen
and the door opens.
You push the levers apart, outwards, lift,
and now you can add memory sticks.
It is so easy that, with a bit of practice,
you can do it even without laying down the iMac.
Now you just put memory, close the door and
Boom!
Everything faster!
Not really!
And here is where I saw some of confusion on forums and on YouTube.
Indeed if you mix memory sticks of different sizes
and put them in any order,
good chances that your Mac will just
work fine!
I tested a few weird combinations
and the Apple Hardware Test, on Boot,
always gave me “Good”
and that is very disappointing
the Mac should warn you because it is not all the same
depending on the order you get different results!
So, for the question “Can I mix different memory sizes?”
Yes you can.
But, there is a correct arrangement
to make the memory operate in “Dual Channel” mode.
Of course, the easiest way to avoid compatibility problems
and get the best performance
is to buy 4 identical memory sticks
exactly the same brand, type and capacity.
Fill the 4 slots and you are fine!
But it is more expensive.
Instead, here is what I did:
I kept my original 8 Gigabytes in two sticks of 4;
And I only bought additional 16 Gigabytes, two sticks of 8;
And the correct order for the best performance was,
from bottom to top:
8gigs, 4Gigs, 8Gigs, 4Gigs.
This is how it looks like, on the System Information
and this configuration runs on Dual Channel.
By the way, I couldn't find any way on Mac OS itself
to see if the memory is operating on Dual Channel or not.
I saw it by running a benchmark
and measuring the RAM transfer speed.
If you know any other way, please tell me in the comments!
There is a huge debate if Dual Channel is really
so much better than Single Channel… specially on games.
The thing is:
even if the difference is not that great on all applications,
why would you run your computer in Single Channel Mode?
Just buy the correct memory sticks in pairs,
put them in the correct order
and get the best possible performance!
About Final Cut Pro: I did some testings with 8GB
and after upgrading to 24GB,
rendering the same project,
and I noticed something really strange:
now that Final Cut has much more memory to use
I though it would use all that memory, right?
But when I looked in the Activity Monitor,
I saw that Final Cut itself was using the same amount of RAM…
So, is it not using all the available RAM?
Yes, it is, but in the form of Cached Files.
All the footage that you are editing is stored as files
on your hard disk or SSD…
and when you have more available RAM,
OS X will load and keep these files in memory.
In terms of rendering time:
more RAM doesn’t make Final Cut export your project much faster…
the difference is minimum!
But here is the deal:
to me, Final Cut already exports fast enough,
and I do it only once, when I finish editing.
The big difference I noticed after putting more RAM
was on the responsiveness when scrubbing thought the project,
adjusting the clips,
I mean: with more RAM, the experience of editing gets better
and if you are doing YouTube videos,
you probably don’t need 32 Gigabytes…
I felt that 16Gigs or 24Gigs is enough for me.
So If you are in doubt between
maxing the RAM capacity of your iMac
or moving to an SSD storage,
the SSD might be the best use of your money.
and that will be the next step with my iMac:
I want to buy a 2TB external SSD.
Do you also use an old Mac?
Did you make any upgrade?
Share your story in the comments
I read everything!
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and thanks for watching!
Ha ha ha!
For Christ sakes... how many times should I do it?!
Ha ha ha
Do you have it?