Upgrading RAM in 3.4ghz i7 iMac - 32gb?

If this is your machine, OWC has 32 GB available, but a lot of money. Lots of people on this forum have bought from them.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/2011/DDR3_21.5_27

OWC and Crucial have discovered the 2010 and 2011 27" iMacs will support up to 32GB of RAM. Apple only sells up to 16GB because that is all they officially support. Both OWC and Crucial are trusted vendors so you can buy from them with confidence. If you decide to only get 16GB DO NOT buy it from Apple, you can buy the RAM for significantly less from either OWC or Crucial, install it in 10 minutes or less and have no affect on the warranty. If you decided to upgrade to 32GB each of the 4 slots will have a 8GB DIMM and if upgrade to 16GB each slot will have a 4GB DIMM installed.

I am interested in hearing if anyone has done the upgrade to 32?

I going to push it over the recommended 16gb and see what happens.

The macbook pro worked great, as long as no software upgraded needed a bios or kernel update.

The OS currently doesn't support 16gb on the MBPRO, and probably wont for the imac.

I am gonna check and holler back at y'all in a few days..

Did you try 32 GB?

I have 32GB of Crutial RAM in my 3.4 core i7 and it works just fine!

Memory Slots:

ECC: Disabled

BANK 0/DIMM0:

Size: 8 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x859B

Part Number: 0x43543130323436344246313333392E4D3136

Serial Number: 0x00000000

BANK 1/DIMM0:

Size: 8 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x859B

Part Number: 0x43543130323436344246313333392E4D3136

Serial Number: 0x00000000

BANK 0/DIMM1:

Size: 8 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x859B

Part Number: 0x43543130323436344246313333392E4D3136

Serial Number: 0x00000000

BANK 1/DIMM1:

Size: 8 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x859B

Part Number: 0x43543130323436344246313333392E4D3136

Serial Number: 0x00000000

I did the upgrade, with mixed results. I had to return the first sent OWC sent me because the machine started to have a lot of kernel panics, I never had a single one when I was running on 16gb, also bought from OWC. I ran a rember test and it reported faulty RAM, so I retuned it.

I installed the second set they sent, I'm still having lots of kernel panics and crashes which programs that never gave me trouble before, for example Illustrator, Cinema 4D and Skype, the rember test is no longer working, as soon as I start it the machine becomes completely irresponsive and I have to force a restart. I also ran an Apple hardware test, which reported a 4MOT/4/0000003 HDD error.

I'm taking the machine tomorrow to an Apple store to see what they say, it could be the RAM, the hard drive or even one of the fans.

I also upgraded the memory of my MB Pro from 4 to 8th (also OWC) and it's been working fine for over a year now.

I don't know if OWC were over enthusiastic with their assessment of the iMac 2011 and the 32gb kit, but two out of two sets seem to have failed on me.

Will post Apple diagnose when I get it.

Just found your post and wondered (as it's a few months later) what results you had, and if you thought it was worth the extra cost of say 16GB.

Mike

I have a 2011 iMac with 32G of Ram (OWC), it is not noticeably faster than when it had 16G, but it works. With 16G I usually had 3 to 5G free, now I have 18 to 21G free, so I would say it was a waste of money.

Interestingly enough, the machine stopped having kernel panics after I took it to Apple, despite the fact they didn't find anything wrong with it and in fact suggested I should go back to 16gb. There's been a number of software updates released since then, so perhaps they fixed something related to something else and inadvertently affected the reason why I was having panics.

I have an occasional crash with After effects, but that's about it. Also CS6 it's very buggy, so it's probably Adobe's fault and not Apple's.

Unlike Csound1, I did notice an increase in speed, particularly with After Effects using multiprocessing rendering, when I only had 16gb only one or two of my processors were being used as the rest of the memory was busy with something else, right after that all 8 of them fired up and the rendering times decreased considerably.

Considering the 32gb ram package was first released at $3,000 and now it's $300, I'd say it's totally worth it, I paid $500 less than a year ago. Check with OWC, perhaps you can try it for a month or so and if you're not convinced return it for a small processing fee.

I also bought the 32GB kit after talking to OWC rep to verify it would work in my Mid-2011 21.5 iMac and it was great for about 4 days, now all of a sudden, crash city constantly today. Not sure what it is all about. Not sure if some of the RAM went bad already or somehow my OS is corrupting. I need to rum MemTest+ but working right now from home so don't have time.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

This is wrong. Looking at your rams system report you are only at 1333Mhz

Looks like youve not paired them up right

1333Mhz is correct for Mid 2011 iMac (which has the 3.4 i7 option): http://support.apple.com/kb/SP689

Hi, considering making the upgrade from 8 to 32 on this mid 2011 iMac core i7 3.4. See the mixed results. Did it finally work for you? Should I do this? Any suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Alan

Hi, considering making the upgrade from 8 to 32 on this mid 2011 iMac core i7 3.4. See the mixed results. Did it finally work for you? Should I do this? Any suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Alan