Memory For Mac

Posted on  by
A RAM Install on a 27-inch iMac through the “back door”

Memory Cleaner is a cleaning and memory optimizing tool for MacBook and iMac. It is super easy to use. Single click on the Cleanup button and the app will quickly clean the RAM. You can set up automatic modes to forget about regular monitoring of the apps’ CPU usage and just enjoy a fast Mac. Newegg.com offers the best prices on computer products, laptop computers, LED LCD TVs, digital cameras, electronics, unlocked phones, office supplies, and more with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Newegg shopping upgraded ™. If your Mac has slowed down it's possible that your RAM is being used to the max. Here's how to free up memory on a Mac (or how to free up RAM), including ways to reduce Mac RAM usage without.

Now that the new iMac Pro is available, you might be thinking about getting one to speed through video editing and rendering…or just to gain bragging rights. There was a bit of controversy once the iMac Pro became available to pre-order, as it was also announced that unlike the “regular” iMac, the Pro model did not have a hatch on the back for performing easy memory upgrades. While more reasonably-priced upgrades than those from Apple will be available from MacSales.com in the near future, OWC CEO Larry O’Connor recently noted that:

  • While Macs certainly aren’t as easy to upgrade as a typical PC, it’s surprisingly simple to upgrade some components like RAM—especially if you’ve got a Mac desktop or an older laptop. Adding more RAM can breath new life into an old Mac.
  • Mac Memory Top Selected Products and Reviews Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) SODIMM 204-Pin Memory For Mac - CT2K8G3S160BM.

“… with consideration to the relatively limited trade-in value of the lowest base 32GB option, the current cost of a full 64GB or 128GB kit and the labor involved with the upgrade – we currently recommend purchasing an iMac Pro with the amount of memory you believe will be needed.”

How much RAM should you purchase for your iMac Pro, or for any Mac that isn’t easily upgradeable by users?

The amount of RAM that should come pre-installed in your Mac depends on what you’ll be using the Mac for and what model you purchase.

iMac Pro
Those who are purchasing the iMac Pro are usually doing so for a reason — they need the incredible power of this computer. At a starting price of $4,999 with 32GB of RAM and the basic processor, it’s quite pricy. Get it with the top of the line processor with 18 cores, 128GB of RAM, and 4TB of SSD storage and you’re looking at a $13,348 price tag — before taxes!

Related:See which upgrades your Mac is compatible with the My Upgrades tool

Our suggestion for those who are considering the purchase of an iMac Pro for a specific use case and application is to ask others who already use that app how much RAM they would suggest. You’ll find that user forums and online groups are a valuable resource for finding the “sweet spot” for required RAM for a particular app.

That being said, if you’re considering the purchase of an iMac Pro — even with the base 8-core processor and storage — a good suggestion would be to get it with 64GB of RAM for future needs. That drops the price tag down to a more reasonable $6,548.

Once OWC’s DIY kit and Turnkey Upgrade options become available, you’ll have another solution for bumping up the RAM in your computer.

iMac
The iMac now comes with 8GB of RAM pre-installed, which is sufficient for many users. For those who are purchasing the 27-inch iMac, the good news is that you can easily upgrade your computer buy purchasing RAM from MacSales.com and installing it through the “back door” on the device. The 21.5-inch iMac does not come with that door, so you’ll want to think ahead to possible uses of the computer during its working life.

Will you be creating photo books, doing detailed photo retouching, editing 4K video, or composing music? Consider ordering that computer with 16GB of RAM (the maximum for the 21.5-inch model). That 27-inch iMac can be upgraded to a total of 64GB of RAM from the factory for “just” $1,400… or you can save a lot of money purchasing your upgrade from MacSales.com for $648 (prices in this article are as of this publishing date) — less than half of what Apple charges!

MacBook
Apple’s sleek little MacBook now comes with 8GB of RAM standard, which is more than enough for many purposes. For most day-to-day use, that 8GB of RAM is sufficient for web browsing, email, social networking, running your favorite productivity apps, and even doing work with Photos.

Going to be doing work with Adobe’s Creative Cloud or perhaps need more RAM to juggle a pile of apps? Upgrading to the maximum — 16GB — is just $200 more.

MacBook Air
The slender MacBook Air has one thing Apple’s other laptops are lacking — “normal” ports and not the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports found on the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Like the MacBook, the MacBook Air is outfitted with a standard load of 8GB of RAM. It does not come in a higher RAM capacity model, so take that into account if your future usage may require a bit more working memory.

MacBook Pro
The top of the line MacBook Pro now comes with 8GB of RAM standard in the 13-inch model (upgradeable to 16GB at purchase time for $200) while the 15-inch is preloaded with 16GB and is non-upgradeable. This is one of the primary criticisms of the current MacBook Pro, in that “pro-level” laptops should be upgradeable to at least 32GB.

Our suggestion on the MacBook Pro? Get it with 16GB of RAM. Even if your workflow doesn’t require a lot of RAM, the device will have more resale value down the road.

Mac mini
Alas, the poor Mac mini — the neglected child of the Mac line. Will 2018 be the year that it is finally given a refresh? The least-expensive model (a bargain at $499) comes with a minuscule 4GB of RAM — the least RAM you’ll find in any Mac. The mini used to be user-upgradeable, but that’s no longer an option… Through Apple, you can bump up the base RAM to 8GB for an additional $100 during a purchase or take it to the max with 16GB for $300.

Our suggestion? Spend that extra $300 and go for 16GB. Most Mac minis are used for specific purposes, as Plex multimedia or small office servers. Both of those use cases can really benefit from the maximum 16GB RAM.

Mac Pro
Finally, we come to the Mac Pro, which will be upgraded some time in the future. Will that future be 2018, 2019, or even 2020? We don’t know, but the new computer is likely to be a powerhouse. In the meantime, it’s still a fast, powerful and somewhat expandable Mac.

The Mac Pro is outfitted with a base amount of 16GB of RAM, upgradeable through Apple to 32GB ($400 more) or 64GB ($1,200 more) of memory.

It can be used as a simple 'paint' or as a full and professional photo editor.We have to highlight its flexibility, because you can adapt it to your style of work. GIMP, acronym of GNU Image Manipulation Program is the name of this powerful and well-known free image editor which put in your hands lots of tools to power up your image edition tasks.Although the program is free, don't think that it's a poor program. The GIMP has become very famous and that's not a fact of luck. The GIMP is very useful, powerful and fast. Gimp download for mac free.

You can do much better by purchasing your Mac Pro upgrade through MacSales.com. Options are available for 32GB ($359), 64GB ($498), 96GB ($819) or a whopping 128GB ($1,079). That’s right — you can double Apple’s available RAM upgrade for less money! Mac Pro users are generally heavy RAM consumers, so buy the base machine with the storage and processor setup you need plus the minimum amount of RAM. Then, use that link you see above to get as much RAM as you think you’ll need for editing your Oscar-contender movie!

Older Macs
In this article, we’ve pointed out what you should consider for memory in your soon-to-be-purchased Mac. But what about the older, more easily upgradeable Macs? A memory upgrade can often bring new life to an older Mac, so it’s a good idea to look into upgrading RAM if that Mac is feeling sluggish.

To determine whether or not an older Mac can take more RAM, you’ll need to see how much is currently installed and whether there are available slots into which you can install additional and/or larger RAM modules. The best way to do that is to go to your Apple menu and select About This Mac. For upgradeable Macs running macOS High Sierra or Sierra, there’s a Memory tab that you can click on for details. Here’s an example below, taken from a 27-inch Retina 5K iMac:

Macs with RAM that can be user upgraded will show this Memory tab in About This Mac

Jump back over to the MacSales.com home page, where it’s easy to find out if your older Mac can be upgraded and how easy or hard it will be to perform the upgrade. Just click on Memory (see image below) and you’ll see a menu for all of the different Mac models. Select yours, and follow the instructions on the next page you see. Happy upgrading!

Click on the “Memory” link and select the type of Mac

Be Sociable, Share This!

Prices, terms, and availability subject to change without notice. Not responsible for typographical, technical, or descriptive errors of products herein.
OWC is on-site wind turbine powered at 8 Galaxy Way, Woodstock, IL 60098 1-800-275-4576 +1-815-338-8685 (International)
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2018, OWC – Since 1988

So you are thinking of buying a new Mac and you are wondering how much memory to get. It is a tough decision to make, and really comes down to a matter of money. Lets look at factors that will help you decide if you should spend the extra money to get more RAM.
The Case For More Memory

There are not many people around who buy a computer with extra memory and later regret it. On the other hand, the world is full of people who buy a computer with too little memory and regret it later at some point.

Memory comes in handy if you are manipulating large graphics and video files. What do I mean by large? An example would be an image that is 100MB in size. Now a typical photo you have on your Mac is probably 2-3MB. Who works with 100MB images? Designers who do things like create high resolution posters, magazine covers and other high resolution art.

How about video? Does editing 15 minutes of vacation clips count as large? No. Editing together a season of 22-minute television shows, or a 90-minute movie, with 4K resolution is large.

If you do image or video work like this, then you probably want to get as much memory as you can. If you just work with your own personal photos and videos, then it doesn’t really matter.

How about games? If you are a serious gamer, playing in 3D worlds that require maximum frame rates on large screens, then you may also need a good deal of memory. But not necessarily. See the next section’s comments on the GPU. But if you are spending serious money on your new Mac because you want a great gaming machine, then you probably don’t want to skimp on memory.

Another reason for getting more memory is to future-proof your Mac. A new MacBook Pro with 8GB of memory may be fine for now, but thinking ahead 4 years, perhaps the macOS out then, and some of the apps you may want to run then, will need more. So getting 16GB will make it more likely that your Mac will last longer.

The Case Against More Memory

The way people think of computer memory today is a little old-fashioned. Not too long ago, more memory meant a faster computer. And that is still true. It is just not as true as it was a few years ago. Today, most Macs use solid-state hard drives which are much faster than standard hard drives. Computer speed today also relies more on the graphics processor (GPU) and the memory that is part of it. Software has also become more optimized to work faster and rely less on large amounts of RAM.

A lot of what people think of as “speed” on a computer today is really graphics performance. Anything from 3D games, to video playback and editing, even to the animation of the operating system is handled my the GPU.

A typical Mac user that chooses 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB may never notice the difference. If you are just surfing the web, writing emails, managing your photos, working with documents and watching video, then you may never use that extra 8GB of memory.

As far as making your Mac last longer, keep in mind that no matter how much memory you stuff into your new Mac, at some point a version of macOS will come out that doesn’t work with it. Memory typically isn’t a factor in this, as it is the processor and logic board that will hold you Mac back in that case. And once you can’t upgrade your macOS, your machine is obsolete regardless of the memory.

How About Upgrading Later?

You may have heard that you can’t upgrade the memory of new Macs. This is only partially true. You can certainly open up and upgrade the memory in the latest 2017 iMacs. Apple even provides instructions here. You can also do it in a Mac mini or Mac Pro. But not the MacBooks, which have RAM fixed inside the machine.

This means it is much more important to decide how much memory you want with a MacBook than the other models. Once you buy your MacBook, you are stuck with that amount of RAM for the life of the machine.

Memory For Macbook Pro 2009

Making the Decision

On the one hand you’ve got to look at the reasons you want more memory. The main two reasons are if you are doing high-end professional work, or you want to possibly extend the life of your Mac in a future where that memory may be needed.

Weight against that the bill. An extra 8GB of RAM in a MacBook Pro 13-inch will cost you about $200. Is it worth that to you? Perhaps save that $200 and put it toward your next MacBook purchase in three years?

Memory For Mac Pro

Ultimately the decision is yours. For most Mac users the extra memory isn’t necessary. But on the other hand, there are worse ways you can spend an extra $200, especially if you make a living using your Mac.