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iMac late 2013 Version 21.5

What is the affect of installing new memory in iMac late 2013 21.5 inch model?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 25, 2023 3:46 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 25, 2023 4:05 PM

Depends on whether your machine was starved for RAM in the first place. That iMac has two sealed-in RAM slots and can take 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. Since the slots are sealed in, and the chassis is not easy to open and reseal, upgrading the RAM is a job for a repair shop or skilled technician.


If you run Activity Monitor and watch the Memory Pressure graph while you are running a normal workload, you can use the color-coding on the graph as a guide:


  • Green means your system has adequate RAM for what it is doing
  • Yellow means that your system has marginal RAM for what it is doing
  • Red means that your system has inadequate RAM for what it is doing, and this may hurt performance


If you see lots of Green on the Memory Pressure graph, installing more RAM might not do much of anything, except to make your wallet that much lighter.


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 25, 2023 4:05 PM in response to Ivanhoe-

Depends on whether your machine was starved for RAM in the first place. That iMac has two sealed-in RAM slots and can take 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. Since the slots are sealed in, and the chassis is not easy to open and reseal, upgrading the RAM is a job for a repair shop or skilled technician.


If you run Activity Monitor and watch the Memory Pressure graph while you are running a normal workload, you can use the color-coding on the graph as a guide:


  • Green means your system has adequate RAM for what it is doing
  • Yellow means that your system has marginal RAM for what it is doing
  • Red means that your system has inadequate RAM for what it is doing, and this may hurt performance


If you see lots of Green on the Memory Pressure graph, installing more RAM might not do much of anything, except to make your wallet that much lighter.


iMac late 2013 Version 21.5

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