adding more memory

This Community is "staffed" by users just like you. We don't work for Apple, and can't make appointments like you're seeking.

However, if you look at this Apple Support article, you'll see how to make an appointment at your local Apple Store's Genius Bar: Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Hope this helps.

If this is an Apple Silicon iMac (2021), the RAM memory is fixed at the time of manufacture. It cannot be upgraded after the purchase. The same goes for the internal drive capacity. These items are soldered onto the logic board and can't be changed.

The OP’s tag line says that the OP has a 21.5” iMac.

21.5” iMacs with model years from 2009 to 2011 have four user-accessible memory slots. Most of those with model years of 2012 or later have two sealed-in, inaccessible memory slots. A few unfortunate 21.5” iMacs have soldered-in RAM that makes expansion impossible even if you are willing to pay a shop to do it.

Hi,

Or you could upgrade RAM at your local Apple Authorized Service Provider.

Find Locations- Apple

Adding RAM will not make it any computer faster. Personally if it were mine I would replace it with a new (wait until after October 30th to buy due to new imminent models) 24" iMac. Please remember your computer is getting close to 10 years old, is obsolete and has really no value. Therefore spending money on an obsolete computer that has no value simply does not make sense. There really isn't too many reasons not to upgrade, if your cannot afford to pay cash then use Apple's 12 month same as cash option.

However of you don't mind spending hundreds of dollars on it, then upgrade to an external SSD and make that your boot drive. This will improve performance substantially however you will still have an obsolete computer. If you don't know how to perform this upgrade please refer to How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk

rkaufmann87 wrote:

Adding RAM will not make it any computer faster.

Adding RAM will make a computer faster if lack of RAM (relative to the workload) is enough of a bottleneck that excessive swapping/paging occurs. In the old days, there was even a term for what happened when a computer spent so much time shuttling data to/from disk (waiting on the disk) that it couldn't do much, if any, useful, work. That term was thrashing.

However, MacTracker indicates that all of the 21.5" Late 2015 iMacs (whether Retina or not) shipped with 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. 8 GB should be sufficient for general workloads – even if it might not be enough for someone who was doing heavy-duty professional photography or video work.

However of you don't mind spending hundreds of dollars on it, then upgrade to an external SSD and make that your boot drive. This will improve performance substantially however you will still have an obsolete computer. If you don't know how to perform this upgrade please refer to How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk

If that iMac came with an internal hard drive or Fusion Drive, an external SSD will likely make a large difference. A few of these iMacs came with pure flash storage (256 GB on the non-Retina model, 256 or 512 GB on the Retina model). If the OP has an internal SSD, and there is a reasonable amount of free space left on it, then the startup drive is not the bottleneck, and adding an external SSD would be unlikely to help.

kiva160 wrote:

Unfortunately, mine is a 21.5 late 2015…

Note that on the 21.5" Late 2015 iMacs, a 1 TB Fusion Drive would have consisted of a 5400 rpm notebook hard drive paired with a measly 24 GB of flash.

Previously, all Fusion Drives – even 1 TB ones – included 128 GB of flash.

"Adding RAM will make a computer faster if lack of RAM (relative to the workload) .... "

If a given app is starved for memory, adding RAM may allow that app to run at all or perhaps run better.

But that's not making the computer run faster per se, that's just allowing the app to run which appears to make the computer seem faster.

Well thank you for attempting to make me wrong.