Advice for RAM on new iMac...

As far as speed is concerned either option will offer the same results. Your strategy is spot on, if you think at some point you will upgrading beyond 8GB RAM then get 4GB chips installed. However my recommendation is to NOT purchase RAM from Apple, you can get high quality RAM from reputable vendors like Crucial or OWC for less money. My recommendation would be to take delivery with the base 4GB and then purchase and install the new RAM yourself, it's extremely easy and should take about 10 minutes to do.

Best advice anyone can give you is to upgrade the RAM with after-market stuff. Apple, and to be fair, every other computer maker, jacks up the price of things like RAM because then they have to warranty it. You can buy after-market RAM 2-3X over generally for what it costs to buy it from Apple.

That being said... I'm coming from a PC with the same Core i7 CPU used in the iMac to the i7 iMac. Only difference is my PC had 8GB of RAM, the iMac only has 4GB. Honestly, aside from longer loading times in StarCraft 2, can't tell the difference. If anything, the iMac is more responsive, but we're comparing Windows 7 to Mac OS X 10.6, so it's not a straight comparison.

And I'm a bit of a heavy multi-tasker... Or maybe lazy application closer is more apt. I have Firefox 3.6.8 with 2 windows... The first probably has around 10 tabs open, the other 4-5... Thunderbird 3.1.2... Both of those are widely considered memory hogs. Adium 1.4b18 (potential memory leaks in beta code), iTunes, and probably some other misc stuff. According to activity monitor, I'm really only using about 1.2GB for all that. There's about another ~2.5GB going to caching, and still around 200MB or so is just sitting idle.

I'd say just get the stock 4GB, give it a week to see how things go. If you need more, it's pretty simple to add.

I found this article on barefoot http://www.barefeats.com/imi7m.html . What I find the results interesting.

Message was edited by: TeenTitan

Adding RAM in no affects your warranty unless you somehow manage to damage your machine when installing it however doing damage is almost impossible. Apple even provides instructions on how to do it when in the owners manual. Look on page 37 of the manuall.

As far as speed, adding memory in most cases improves the speed of the computer and is considered the one thing that will help the speed most on a new computer. However there is overkill too, unless you are doing work that is extremely memory intensive (gaming, 3D renderings, professional video production, CAD/CAM) 16GB is probably a waste of money. My recommendation would be to start with 8GB and see how it performs and if for some reason you still aren't satisfied you can always add more.

I found this online and I do want to upgrade to 8GB. Any thoughts on this product?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820349034&cmre=imac_ram-_-20-349-034--Product


Thanks!

That product won't work in your 24" iMac. I'd recommend referring to your owners manual for the correct specifications. Or you can go to OWC's site or Crucial's site where they both can coach you what RAM will work in your machine.

While the RAM you quoted is a good buy it will only work in Late 2009-Mid 2010 MacBook Pros and Late 2009 iMacs.

Regards,

Roger