Mid-2011 iMac - Upgrading RAM from 4GB to 12GB worth it? How many more years can I get out of this iMac?

I know this is a really old thread but this is reference for anyone searching this.

I got a mid 2011 iMac i7 4GB from my University Newspaper, it was dead. I got Apple to fix it and replace the HDD and load up macOS Sierra on it.

It ran like crap. I know it ran like crap because I have a 2008 i7 12GB PC desktop I built myself, which was WAY faster.

I ran tests and checked out the System Monitor - heavy swap usage and RAM was almost maxed out. I was just browsing the internet and having Spotify Open. The iMac almost died when I booted up XCODE. It basically came to a halt when I launched the Simulator for an iPhone.

I picked up a 16GB kit and put it in myself. The thing runs night and day different. I'm using 7.09 GB right now just doing homework (Spotify/Mail/Calendar/Safari). This goes past 8GB when I run XCODE and the iOS Simulator.

No offense to anyone, but I have seen a lot of BAD advice on this on other mac forums saying it won't speed up your computer. That's so wrong. If your HDD is being used heavily as a scratch disk for temp files, you're decreasing the HDD life span and creating a bottle neck. Secondly, who seriously runs ONE application at a time? Come on now......

To anyone with a 2011 iMac with 4 or 8GB ram, definitely get a 16GB kit if you use photoshop or develop apps. I can easily see myself using this 2011 iMac indefinitely until the GPU dies or something.

The 2011 iMac has a SATA III interface, 6 gigabytes a second, on the motherboard,

but the internal OEM hard drive is SATA II, 3 gigs / second...

Hence, replacing the hard drive, with either a platter or SSD, will make it run faster.

Adding memory chips helps too...

dazed wrote:

I see, I totally misunderstood mostly based on their silly drawing. Thanks for your help.

The 'silly' drawing shows how many slots you have and what is currently fitted to them. You have a 2gb chip in each of two slots, if you had 2 x 4 gb the 'silly' drawing would show that.

Activity Monitor is a great way to evaluate this. I had a similar iMac (27 inch 2010) with 4G that ran fine for everything I was using. However, when I started a virtual machine under Fusion, it started choking and you could see it happening in real time on Activity Monitor's memory tab.

If you leave the monitor up on the desktop and watch it as you do different things, If the loading gets high then you might benefit from the extra memory. However, If the normal activities that you do always are fairly low on the "memory pressure", then adding the memory might not make such a difference.

In my situation, the memory was topping out and the addition of the extra 8G made a huge difference whenever I was running Fusion and a virtual machine

quakeRun,

My 2011 was running slow so i took it to the local Apple store for them to check out. They found some malware on it and suggested I add Ran from 4 to 8 for $150. From looking at this it seems high. If I do this myself is it just "plug and Play"? Not really a techie but i can do a little.

thx,

This is for a 2011 iMac? If so, quite easy to do; here are instructions

https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/imac_mid_2011/

And here is the available RAM:

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

You can get 8 GB RAM for less than $60 (2 x 4 GB); this is one of the two most recommended RAM vendors here. You can install more than that as you can see.

Matt,

MacTracker and my wife's 2011 21.5 inch iMac report a 6GBps SATA hard drive interface:

Negotiated Link Speed for my computer is 6 Gb/sec, but I have replaced the hard drive.

A lot depends on what you use your Mac for. My wife's iMac with 4 GB of memory from early 2009 is going very strong for what she needs it to do. Upping the RAM to 12 GB will help ensure that it will be able to run Yosemite more smoothly.

Additional storage can always be added with FW external hard drives if needed. The 8 GB kit from Crucial.com

is quite reasonably priced at $66 ˜and is from one of the most respected memory suppliers for Macs out there. There modules are guaranteed to work.

I have the same aged iMac only 27" and expect it to last me several more years unless Apple comes up with a new desktop that i just "can't live without". But lots of luck getting that thru the wife. 😟

Your wife must know my wife!😁

I have the mid-2011 as some of you do. It comes with 4GB installed with 2 additional empty slots that 'appear' to hold 2GB each. So . . . my question is how is it possible that one can upgrade RAM to 12GB as opposed to 8GB?

Last week, for better or worse, I upgraded my OS to Yosemite from Mtn Lion. While I'm mostly a lightweight when it comes to using my iMac, I'm still finding it to be running slower than usual. From what I'm reading here and elsewhere, it sounds as if it would be a good idea to add more RAM. But I didn't know that I could add more than 4GB. Would I have to use an external hard drive to up the RAM to 12GB? Since I already have an external drive for running back-ups, aka Time Machine, is it even possible to use a 2nd external hard drive? (I said I was a lightweight.)

I'm also pleased to read that y'all think that the mid-2011s aren't designed to be obsolete in the near future. Call me old-fashioned (no, don't really call me old-fashioned) but I just get steamed by the whole concept of 'planned obsolescence'.

Thanks for any advice y'all might have.

Here are the specs of one of the mid 2011's (don't know which one you have):

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i7-3.4-27-inch-alumin um-mid-2011-thunderbolt-specs.html

and here is the info re. the RAM:

So, if you want to stick with Apple's maximums, you could still get a total of 16 GB ( 4 x 4), or leave the current 2 x 2 and add either: 2 x 2, 2 x 4 GB. You should match them horizontally. Or, you can go with OWC's test restults and go with 4 x 8 GB.

Buy them at one of two most recommended vendors: OWC (macsales.com) or Crucial. I've always bought at OWC.

By the way, adding RAM has nothing to do with your hard drive or an external hard drive - hard drives are storage; RAM is memory.

My 2011 iMac runs very nicely with 12GB of RAM. The biggest bottleneck is the hard drive speed. Actually, it didn't seem bad until I got a MacBook Air with an SSD. First SSD I've ever had. Wow, does it make a difference...

Still, I expect to get a few more years out of my iMac without problems.

Seconding your findings...I noticed a substantial performance improvement by adding 8GBs of additional RAM (sourced from OWC) to my mid-2011 iMac's factory-supplied 4GBs but it's still not as responsive as my 2014 MBA with only 4GBs of RAM. I'm sure my MBA's SSD explains much of the difference.

Technology moves on...