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RAM Mixing in 2020 iMac

I know this topic has been covered a million times, but I’m having trouble getting an answer to act on. My new 2020 27” i5 iMac came with 2x4 gigs or RAM. My IT department jammed in a single 32gb chip as an upgrade, despite me asking for a matched pair upgrade. I think this combination is slowing down my memory speeds. I am wondering if I should pull out the 2 x4 pair and run a single 32gb DIMM, or just continue with 3 DIMMs totaling 40 GB.

iMac 27″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 27, 2021 7:07 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 27, 2021 7:13 PM

Give the following a try:

  • Select About This Mac from the Apple menu.
  • Select the Memory tab.
  • In the lower right-hand side, select Memory Upgrade Instructions.
  • This should open an Apple article on how to go about upgrading your Mac's memory.
6 replies

Oct 28, 2021 7:48 AM in response to Paul Threatt

While the speed might in fact be slower, it won't be anything you can actually perceive when running the machine normally unless you do really RAM intensive tasks or have a way to actually compare the before and after.


It's always better to have more RAM than less but faster.


I wouldn't not worry too much about the unpaired RAM stick.



RAM Mixing in 2020 iMac

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