Apple iMac memory upgrade

[dave2010]

We have an iMac 27 inch Retina 2019. Sometimes it gets slow.

It only has the 8Gbytes of main memory it came with - checked in About This Mac.

My understanding is that the Crucial upgrades should work with this model.

Looks like there are 4 slots, so to take it up to 32 Gbytes would presumably have to take out an 8Gbyte module, and put 4 x 8 Gbyte modules in.

I could source these from Crucial for about £120.

My gut feeling is that if I can do this, that would make a significant difference to the performance of the machine.

I could also buy yet another offline storage device, and back up a lot of the files on the SSD which are cluttering it up, though I don't know how significant that would be in terms of speed up.

I think one or two people round here have done this kind of upgrade on a similar iMac.

Even though the M1 iMacs may be faster, I don't think I can reasonabaly buy yet another computer - and I do like the 27 inch display of this one

[struth]

more the merrier memory wise. yes it will help, if memory is your issue. certainly wont do any harm if it can take the upgrade. for 120 notes its worth trying

[dave2010]

more the merrier memory wise. yes it will help, if memory is your issue. certainly wont do any harm if it can take the upgrade. for 120 notes its worth trying

Difficult to know whether memory is an issue or not, but it seems likely. That has worked with previous models, though there does usually come a point at which it makes hardly any difference at all - as other channels - bus and IO eventually limit performance.

The thing to avoid is any memory swapping for active programs.

Anway £120 is a lot less than the cost of a new machine, and I've already said I like this one.

[struth]

Difficult to know whether memory is an issue or not, but it seems likely. That has worked with previous models, though there does usually come a point at which it makes hardly any difference at all - as other channels - bus and IO eventually limit performance.

The thing to avoid is any memory swapping for active programs.

Anway £120 is a lot less than the cost of a new machine, and I've already said I like this one.

you can always use memory elsewhere or sell on so trial comes at little cost.

[dave2010]

you can always use memory elsewhere or sell on so trial comes at little cost.

I think Crucial offer a guarantee in case it doesn't work.
I would expect some improvement in any case, which would justify the cost. It should be possible to have two bites at this - a half way upgrade for around £60, and then go back for more it that worked, but is it worth the bother of opening up the machine twice? Perhaps not!

[AJSki2fly]

Difficult to know whether memory is an issue or not, but it seems likely. That has worked with previous models, though there does usually come a point at which it makes hardly any difference at all - as other channels - bus and IO eventually limit performance.

The thing to avoid is any memory swapping for active programs.

Anway £120 is a lot less than the cost of a new machine, and I've already said I like this one.

Used to work for Apple in tech support working on these, presumably you have regularly get up to date with the MAC OS and are running the last compatible MAC OS for it, this will use significantly more RAM than the MAC OS that came with it originally, and 8Mb of RAM is not going to cut it, especially if you start having multiple Apps running simultaneously. So going to 16Mb of 32Mb of ram should help, question is is it worth it?

With respect to the onboard Hard drive, has it ever been replaced, most spinny hard drives last for 5-6 years before failing and needing to be replaced, sticking an SSD external HD and moving data file to it may help, but the limiting factor with be the speed of the USB bus, be careful with external SSD drives, not all will work with a machine of your spec, some require different low level read/write software and you machine may not support that, I know this is fact due to a customer that had an SSD put in his iMac, it would install and load the OS and then would fail, it took some investigation to get to the bottom of the problem.

My advise is this.

1. The old Hard Drive may be getting disk errors and starting to fail, this will slow the machine up. Back it up to an external Hard drive FIRST. and then run disk utility on the internal hard drive and see if its has error or fails. If it fails or is old and has errors, consider if you wan to spend money on an old machine, it is now unsupported and parts will become unavailable if not so already.

2. If you get past 1, and you want to spend money on it, then put the external RAM in at least 16Mb match pairs(8Mb each) and ensure they go into the correct Ram bays, there is documentation on this, if you put them in the wrong bays then the machine will either not see one or the other or run slow. If 32Mb then 4*8Mb sticks one in each.

3. Consider that cost of the above, any repair to a 2019 iMac, will not be cheap, a LCD will probably set you back around £300-400 replacement possibly more and the MLB(logic board if available around the same. The PSU is/was around £100 plus repair cost so about £200 if it fails. I think the graphics cards are £200-300 plus fitting of around £100. If you do not want o face such a possibility then buy a new Mac.

I hope that helps a bit.

[rmcin626]

Adrian, gave some good advise when I bought my IMAC about 18 months ago, has been running well since day 1.

[dave2010]

My advise is this.

1. The old Hard Drive may be getting disk errors and starting to fail, this will slow the machine up. Back it up to an external Hard drive FIRST. and then run disk utility on the internal hard drive and see if its has error or fails. If it fails or is old and has errors, consider if you wan to spend money on an old machine, it is now unsupported and parts will become unavailable if not so already.

2. If you get past 1, and you want to spend money on it, then put the external RAM in at least 16Mb match pairs(8Mb each) and ensure they go into the correct Ram bays, there is documentation on this, if you put them in the wrong bays then the machine will either not see one or the other or run slow. If 32Mb then 4*8Mb sticks one in each.

3. Consider that cost of the above, any repair to a 2019 iMac, will not be cheap, a LCD will probably set you back around £300-400 replacement possibly more and the MLB(logic board if available around the same. The PSU is/was around £100 plus repair cost so about £200 if it fails. I think the graphics cards are £200-300 plus fitting of around £100. If you do not want o face such a possibility then buy a new Mac.

Thanks for the comments. The drive is a 1 Tbyte Fusion - which I think is a 1 Tbyte HDD, plus a small amount of SSD - perhaps 100 Gbytes. Earlier Fusion drives had a better ratio of SSD to HDD, then Apple got mean.

Would a Time Machine backup be good enough before checking out the HDD, or should I use yet another HDD as a backup and (say) Carbon Copy Cloner?
I have tended to think of TM as not really being much use - but it did rescue my laptop a few years ago when a bad driver for a webcam which I wanted early on in the pandemic lockdown, trashed the machine.
I have it running, but whether it's really worthwhile I'm not sure.

I have other machines (iMacs and a few others) which date back way beyond 2011, and they still work. However, I have also seen iMacs go bad - though not generally within 5 years of purchase.

I'd really like to keep this one [around 3 year old...] going - I think the only obvious issue is the lack of main memory - and maybe more SSD would be nice too, but that's a more difficult "upgrade"/repair. Solution to the SSD issue is to simply back off all less used and less wanted data to external hard drives. I'm not sure if there's a way to purge unwanted files which are backed off, or if "dead" copies just lie in there causing slowdown issues from time to time.

I do tend to have loads of programs loaded at any one time, so my gut feeling is that more memory would be a sensible way to go.

If the machine dies I will replace it, but I'm hoping it'll go for quite a few more years yet. My Macbook Pro is now 8 years old, and despite some minor issues, it still serves me well. I just wish it had more SSD, but costs at the time of purchase, and current cost of repair/upgrade tend to counter any activity to remedy that. I'll probably buy an M1 or M2 machine in due course.

[AJSki2fly]

Thanks for the comments. The drive is a 1 Tbyte Fusion - which I think is a 1 Tbyte HDD, plus a small amount of SSD - perhaps 100 Gbytes. Earlier Fusion drives had a better ratio of SSD to HDD, then Apple got mean.

Would a Time Machine backup be good enough before checking out the HDD, or should I use yet another HDD as a backup and (say) Carbon Copy Cloner?
I have tended to think of TM as not really being much use - but it did rescue my laptop a few years ago when a bad driver for a webcam which I wanted early on in the pandemic lockdown, trashed the machine.
I have it running, but whether it's really worthwhile I'm not sure.

I have other machines (iMacs and a few others) which date back way beyond 2011, and they still work. However, I have also seen iMacs go bad - though not generally within 5 years of purchase.

I'd really like to keep this one [around 3 year old...] going - I think the only obvious issue is the lack of main memory - and maybe more SSD would be nice too, but that's a more difficult "upgrade"/repair. Solution to the SSD issue is to simply back off all less used and less wanted data to external hard drives. I'm not sure if there's a way to purge unwanted files which are backed off, or if "dead" copies just lie in there causing slowdown issues from time to time.

I do tend to have loads of programs loaded at any one time, so my gut feeling is that more memory would be a sensible way to go.

If the machine dies I will replace it, but I'm hoping it'll go for quite a few more years yet. My Macbook Pro is now 8 years old, and despite some minor issues, it still serves me well. I just wish it had more SSD, but costs at the time of purchase, and current cost of repair/upgrade tend to counter any activity to remedy that. I'll probably buy an M1 or M2 machine in due course.

"The drive is a 1 Tbyte Fusion - which I think is a 1 Tbyte HDD, plus a small amount of SSD - perhaps 100 Gbytes."

Fusion drives are a pain in the proverbial IMO, and experience, the idea was to put the core OS system files on the SSD and allow it to be used for memory page swapping, if I recall correctly. The main aim to improve machine speed, but it is somewhat limited, especially if you only have 8Mb Ram. Be careful with a fusion drive they are known to fail, I seem to remember that there was an Apple recall to replace the SSDs on fusion drive machines, you should be able to check this online on Apple by entering your machine Serial Number.

"Would a Time Machine backup be good enough before checking out the HDD"

Only use a Time Machine backup just make sure it is up to date before doing HDD check.

"I have tended to think of TM as not really being much use"

Never rely on Cloud or other backups for Macs, you should have one connected all the time to every Mac you have, then if any fail after fixing /replacing recovery is simples!

"I'm not sure if there's a way to purge unwanted files which are backed off, or if "dead" copies just lie in there causing slowdown issues from time to time."

Managing unwanted files is down to you I am afraid, if you know what they are then delete them, if you accidentally delete them then there is a way to get them from the earlier backups from the Time Machine backup history, another good reason to use it. By the way if your Time Machine backup drive fills up then it will start dropping off old copies/backups, so if you never want to worry about it then it is best to spec the Time Machine backup drive at least twice the size of ALL the Macs hard drives that are being backup to it.

"I do tend to have loads of programs loaded at any one time, so my gut feeling is that more memory would be a sensible way to go."

As I said before 8Mb with the most recent versions of Mac OS is nothing, and if you open loads of Apps they will be memory page swapping like hoares draws.

"The drive is a 1 Tbyte Fusion - which I think is a 1 Tbyte HDD, plus a small amount of SSD - perhaps 100 Gbytes."

So if HD check out OK, then I would upgrade with good RAM as discussed before, if you have to have loads of apps open the go for 32Mb.


Other things to slow down a machine hugely:-

Keep lots of tabs open in the Web Browser you use, some pages will update in the back ground and will also use precious internet bandwidth. Answer - DON'T DO IT!

Leave lots of Emails in Inboxes, I have seen over 100K of emails in several customers mail boxes, so what you ask, the answer is that every time the Email app is opened and in the background for every inbox or opened email folder it will check the header of every email in it with every header on the actual Email server, I think you can easily see this could result in huge amounts of data to and from a machine. It will make the Email app very slow and hog network services massively. Answer - delete unneeded emails and move emails to be kept into other folders. Its down to a user to maintain their data, a computer cannot do it, AI can identify old or unread or duplicates, but it cannot say on email is not needed it is not connected to a users brain.

Any computer operating system will create and leave temporary and old system files knocking around, wasting space and ultimately causing disk fragmentation over time which will slow a machine down eventually, anyone who tells you this is no longer an issue is talking out of their pants. Use a tool like CleanMyMac, it has all sorts of clean up goodies and is easy to use. I have used it for many years because I am lazy.

[dave2010]

Waited until now to test the hard drive - in case it took hours. Disconnected the TM drives, and ran the test. Came back OK in about a minute. So I guess the next step is to order the new memory.