iMac question

doubledown

Hi all,

My wife and I are thinking of treating ourselves to an iMac for Christmas. The one I'm looking at is the 21.5-inch: 2.7GHz model. I'm going to up the hard drive space from 1 gig to 2 gigs as we have a lots of music and photos between us. But should I consider paying an extra €200 to up the RAM from 4GB to 8GB or is it unecessary? We'll be using it for normal computing, mail, music etc.

Thanks in advance.

curiousb

I would up the RAM if I were you. It does make a difference. You will hopefully have the mac for many years and the extra money now will stand you in good stead. It's basically futureproofing it.

doubledown

Thanks for the quick response. Do you reckon 8GB would be enough or should I go for the 16GB?

curiousb

Personally I'd go for 16gb, but I use mine for photo editing and music recording. I would imagine 8gb would be fine for average use.

big_moe

I would say 8GB of RAM is more than enough. Save yourself €200 though and buy the RAM from Crucial and pop it in yourself.

Here's how easy it is to replace the RAM on an iMac.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing-iMac-Intel-21-5-Inch-EMC-2428-RAM/5660/1

Here's the link for the Crucial site

http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/listparts.aspx?model=iMac%202.7GHz%20Intel%20Quad-Core%20i5%20(21.5-inch%20-%20DDR3)%20Mid%202011&Cat=RAM


Although, 16GB of ram is only €80 so I suppose why not!

Adam

Sad Professor

Do not under any circumstances buy the RAM from Apple. As said above, buy the RAM from Crucial and install it yourself. The 21-inch iMacs have 2 RAM slots, so you will need a 8GB (2x4GB) kit.

16GB is overkill for casual usage IMO. You can upgrade later when it's cheaper.

ZENER

Also I'd be hesitant about storing everything on the internal drive. Perhaps leave the 1TB as installed and use the money saved to buy a good quality external drive for Time Machine and storing all your media and documents.

Agree on the 8GB RAM and as suggested above order from Crucial.com for a way cheaper price.

Ken

mailforkev

Just going to throw it out there, but 4GB really is perfectly fine for day to day use on that iMac.

All you mention is casual use, so certainly don't spend 200 quid to upgrade it. As mentioned above if you get the iMac and and still feel that you want to upgrade it after using it for a while then go to Crucial to buy the RAM.

doubledown

Thank you all for your replies. Much appreciated.

I went with the 2TB hard drive and the 8GB of RAM in the end. Looking forward to getting it now!