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

You should see a slight improvement in editing but if there's a lot of processing involved that's done by the CPU which hasn't changed.

As KiltedKim pointed out the hard drive can be a bottle neck. Having a SSD as your boot drive will make an very, noticeable improvement in performance, i.e. booting, opening applications and files, etc.

Here is a screen print that might help explain (to y'all, not me) of the specs for my iMac.

And then . . . this is where my confusion starts to enter the picture:

So are y'all saying that each of the 2 empty slots can accept more than 2GB? From looking at the screen, I had assumed, I guess falsely, that each of the 2 empty slots could only accept 2 GB, Thus I could only end up with a maximum of 8 GB.

The iMac is all that I have and I don't anticipate getting anything else like a MBA or whatever. I'm on a fixed income aka a pittance of a pension. Thus my concern for keeping the puppy I got going for as long as possible.

[Yes, I do know that RAM is not the same as storage. Someone in this discussion had mentioned hard drive for - - - oops, they did say storage not RAM. Sorry. And I also know that technology moves on. I'm happy for running water, electricity, and all kindsa stuff, including simple things like toilet paper.]

Anyway, sidebar aside, y'all are saying that I can get additional memory that would equal MORE THAN a total of 8GB as Apple seems to indicate. Correct?

Apple doesn't "indicate" that 8 GB is all you can put in - that graph just shows that they put in 2 x 2 GB. Here are the tech specs from Apple for your model:

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP623?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It shows very clearly that Apple supports up to 16 GB or 4 sticks of 4 GB each.

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

So, now that we have that out of the way - you do not have to put in the maximums: you can leave your 2 x 2 and add 2 x 2 or 2 x 4 (that is what I did for a total of 12 GB) - as long as you match them horizontally. Here are further instructions from Apple:

from here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1423#1

Buy them at either OWC (macsales.com) or Crucial - both offer lifetime warranties and are the most recommended for Mac RAM.

I have 20 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 on my imac mid 2011.

And it works good, using alot of adobe photoshop and other normal mac work 🙂