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Early 2008 iMac Upgrade w/ SSD and/or 6 GByte RAM?

Hello All:

I own a 24" Early 2008 iMac with the 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2Duo and 4 GBytes of RAM. I am running Mavericks.


A few weeks ago the internal 500 GByte hard drive died and at the moment, I am runing the Mac from an external USB drive. As the USB connection is a lot slower than the internal serial ATA (theoretical 480 MBit/s in USB 2 vs. 3 GBit/s in SATA II), the performance experience is not good. A Firewire 800 drive would have been better, but I did not have one available and it still would not be as fast as SATA II. I am therefore planning to replace the internal hard drive.


In order to imrove the performance of the iMac I am thinking of two measures:

  • Install a 500 GByte SSD instead of a conventional hard drive
  • Upgrade the RAM to from 4 to 6 GByte


Both measures are officially not supported by Apple, but they are feasible. Also, both measures would have about the same incremental cost compared to just a conventional had drive.


My question: What will give me the bigger benefit, a SSD or 2 additional GBytes of RAM?


Any thoughts, hints, experience?


Thanks,

Hal

Posted on Jul 13, 2014 10:20 AM

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Early 2008 iMac Upgrade w/ SSD and/or 6 GByte RAM?

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