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Thread: Apple iMac memory upgrade

  1. #11
    Join Date: Nov 2011

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    I'm Adrian.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dave2010 View Post
    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.

    Yes, and while waiting tidy up email, web tabs and old files to delete, might want consider Cleanmymac has lots of useful tools
    Listening is the act of aural discrimination and dissemination of sound, and accepting you get it wrong sometimes.

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  2. #12
    Join Date: Feb 2010

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    Quote Originally Posted by AJSki2fly View Post
    Yes, and while waiting tidy up email, web tabs and old files to delete, might want consider Cleanmymac has lots of useful tools
    Is Cleanmymac safe and reliable? Is it a bit like CCleaner for Windows, which I used to use quite a lot?
    Dave

  3. #13
    Join Date: Nov 2011

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    I have used it for at least 7years
    Listening is the act of aural discrimination and dissemination of sound, and accepting you get it wrong sometimes.

    Analog Inputs: Pro-Ject Signature 10 TT & arm, Benz Micro LP-S, Michel Cusis MC, Goldring 2500 and Ortofon Rondo Blue cartridges, Hitachi FT5500 mk2 Tuner

    Digital:- Marantz SA-KI Pearl CD player, RaspberryPi/HifiBerry Digi+ Pro, Buffalo NAS Drive

    Amplification:- AudioValve Sunilda phono stage, Krell KSP-7B pre-amp, Krell KSA-80 power amp

    Output: Wilson Benesch Vector speakers, KLH Ultimate One Headphones

    Cables: Tellurium Q Ultra Black II RCA & Chord Epic 2 RCA, various speaker leads, & links


    I think I am nearing audio nirvana, but don’t tell anyone.

  4. #14
    Join Date: Jan 2008

    Location: Norfolk, UK

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    I'm BigBobJoylove.

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    Don't touch Cleanmymac, Mackeeper or any garbage like that. Waste of time. It's junk ware.

    I own Mac Doctor Norwich, been running it for 12 years now. The ONLY cleaner you want is OnyX (completely free). Don't be tempted by any of the rest as they'll simply waste processor cycles and slow the machine down further.

    Ditch the horrendous Fusion Drive and get a Mac specialist (like me for example) to upgrade it to an SSD. A SATA SSD will work very well (around 6 times quicker than the Fusion), but even better is a PCIe SSD which replaces the small internal SSD (around 15 times quicker than the Fusion).

    Don't attempt to upgrade it yourself. There's a real knack to getting the fragile displays off the chassis, and a slight glass breakage will cost you hundreds in a replacement display.

    The RAM upgrade will help a bit, but nothing like it used to. The slowest link in the chain is that rotary drive.

  5. #15
    Join Date: Feb 2010

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    I'm Dave.

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    Finally got round to buying and installing some new memory. I'm not sure whether I've done the right thing - or not.

    Looking back upstream it seems I might have thought of replacing the 2 x 4 Gbyte modules with 4 x 8 Gbyte modules.

    Looking at this page, it would appear that there are a few possible options - https://uk.crucial.com/compatible-up...019)-imac-19-1

    A. Remove the 2 x 4 Gbyte modules - insert 4 x 8 Gbyte modules - total cost about £81.

    B. Remove the 2 x 4 Gbyte modules - insert 2 x 16 Gbyte modules - total cost around £84.

    C. Simply add in 2 x 16 Gbyte modules - total cost about £56.

    As far as I can see there isn't any obvious reason why option C shouldn't work - though this brings the memory total up to 40 Gbytes.

    I looked at a few YT videos about upgrading.

    In particular this one suggests that the 2019 iMac can actually be upgraded to 128 Gbytes - https://youtu.be/WK0Oyt5JCOg

    So what I actually did was option C, which brings the total memory up to 40 Gbytes. Having done this, the system does indeed report that the machine has 40 Gbytes of memory.

    That configuration is for the machine I'm typing on now.

    I have wondered whether I did the right thing - whether there could be any conflicts between the original 2 x 4 Gbytes memory, and the newly inserted memory, which would slow the machine down.
    So yesterday I had a rather protracted online chat with someone from Crucial who seemed to suggest that I had indeed "done it wrong", citing the "fact" that the 3 GHz processor can only manage 32 Gbytes of memory.
    He was insistent on that, and I was equally insistent that I was actually chatting to him using the machine reporting 40 Gbytes of memory.

    I'm still not quite sure on this. I can say that the machine works. Whether it would work faster if I took out the original 2 x 4 Gbytes of memory I don't know. I don't particularly want to go down the route which the Crucial guy was suggesting of 4 x 8Gbytes of memory - there seems to be no reason to do that - just take out the 2 x 4 Gbytes cards to see if things change, but then again - if things are actually working, then why bother.

    Regarding CleanMyMac - which has been discussed above, I eventually bought a copy, and it seems quite good and fairly benign.
    I eventually nailed - at least partially - some of the problems with the machine, which turned out to be due to large amounts of email data.
    In the past I always used Apple's email client for email, but in the last year or so I found that using the online web browser interface to gmail was sometimes - indeed quite often - better. I also found that when I hit the limit of mail which Google/Gmail will store for me without charge, that I could reduce the email by careful deletion, to keep things functioning, but only just. The problem kept coming back every few weeks. During the pandemic I subscribed to a lot of sites, such as the Washington Post, New York Times etc. also the Telegraph - partly out of boredom - and during the pandemic I wanted to know what was going on. The problem with newspaper sites is that they send out the data whether you want to read it or not. This can generate huge amounts of data which fill up one's inbox, and can also take up a lot of space if the mail client is open on the local computer. I finally found ways to manage the email which seem to work well enough. The obvious way is to search one's email inbox for large attachments - but I'd already tried that. It's modestly successful until it fails. The next thing is to look for sites which send out frequent "updates" - often travel firms, or clothing firms etc. Those senders send out files so frequently that even though the messages are quite small, the total space used is quite large. I'd already spotted that problem a few years ago, with one financial site.

    So the solution is to look for email messages - and delete them. Yes - but not quite. If we take the example of the New York Times emails, then one can search for emails which have "New York Times" as search terms, but unfortunately that will discover many hits, as the individual words are quite likely to occur in many messages. This doesn't make the deletion problem easier, as maybe one doesn't want to delete every email like that.

    Then I noticed something else. There are some subscription sites which send out a lot of emails, but apparently from different "people". Campaign sites may do that, and there are some music sites which do that too. So what one actually has to do is to locate the actual email sites which are sending out the extra or unwanted emails. Also, some sites re reputable, and at least when one has identified them, it's possible to unsubscribe from future messages. Some sites seem less reputable, and will continue to send messages even if "unsubscribed". So far the solution for those - not guaranteed to work 100% - is to report those as spam. So finally, by adopting a more determined approach to email, I have managed to get the email barrage from so many sites more or less under control. I have done this moderately effectively, so that one day I removed around 1 Gbyte of unwanted email. It's much quicker to let it mount up, then spend an hour or so doing a systematic clear out. Other people might simply pay Google/Gmail for extra storage - which isn't too expensive, but I didn't want to do that as I figured it still wouldn't solve the problem of having too much email I didn't want to keep.
    Dave

  6. #16
    Join Date: Nov 2011

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    I'm Adrian.

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    The Crucial tech guy is right, it will only see the first 32gb of ram of addressable storage. The problem is as I understand it is that the 32gb will now be split over 3 memory slots. This I believe can impact processing efficiency. I believe it is always recommended to use matched pairs of ram, and keep the the same in four slots. So 4 4gb or 4 8gb and so on until you reach the max the machine can take.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Listening is the act of aural discrimination and dissemination of sound, and accepting you get it wrong sometimes.

    Analog Inputs: Pro-Ject Signature 10 TT & arm, Benz Micro LP-S, Michel Cusis MC, Goldring 2500 and Ortofon Rondo Blue cartridges, Hitachi FT5500 mk2 Tuner

    Digital:- Marantz SA-KI Pearl CD player, RaspberryPi/HifiBerry Digi+ Pro, Buffalo NAS Drive

    Amplification:- AudioValve Sunilda phono stage, Krell KSP-7B pre-amp, Krell KSA-80 power amp

    Output: Wilson Benesch Vector speakers, KLH Ultimate One Headphones

    Cables: Tellurium Q Ultra Black II RCA & Chord Epic 2 RCA, various speaker leads, & links


    I think I am nearing audio nirvana, but don’t tell anyone.

  7. #17
    Join Date: Feb 2013

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    I'm Grant.

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    a google account should give you 15gig of free storage which ive never got close to. i delete emails although how big their footprint is i dont know. same the pics i no longer require.
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  8. #18
    Join Date: Feb 2010

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    Quote Originally Posted by AJSki2fly View Post
    The Crucial tech guy is right, it will only see the first 32gb of ram of addressable storage. The problem is as I understand it is that the 32gb will now be split over 3 memory slots. This I believe can impact processing efficiency. I believe it is always recommended to use matched pairs of ram, and keep the the same in four slots. So 4 4gb or 4 8gb and so on until you reach the max the machine can take.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    In that case surely just taking out the original 2 x 4 Gbytes should work, as presumably each slot is OK with 16 Gbytes of RAM.

    It's odd that it reports having 40 Gbytes though.

    I'm not in a desperate hurry to take the back off again, and the machine does seem to be working.
    I guess I might have to try again, to see if the speed does go up with 4 x 8Gbytes, instead, or maybe just settle for 16 Gbytes and buy 2 x 4Gbytes additionally.

    However I'm really not in a hurry - things seem to be working even if they shouldn't.
    Dave

  9. #19
    Join Date: Feb 2010

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    I dug in a little further. My CPU has 6 cores - according to the About My Mac info.

    So I looked up addressing for i5 chips. First I did indeed find this page:

    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-3-60-ghz.html

    This does show a limit of 32 Gbytes, but it only has 4 cores. Also, if you look carefully, the processor type was first released in 2016.
    Those processors are also described as 6th Generation i5 devices.

    So then I looked for later generation i5s, and found this - which is a 9th generation series

    https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-4-10-ghz.html

    These were released during 2019 - some in different quarters. From this page inspecting the different 6 core processors shows that they can handle up to 128 Gbytes of memory.
    Interestingly, this is also true of the 4 core processors issued in that range. OK - the processors are shown as faster than 3 GHz, but Apple may have put them in as they became available.
    It's probably cheaper for a manufacturer to put in newer chips as they become available - rather than keeping stocks of older ones. They don't have to tell all the consumers, as long as the final products are in or exceed the base specification.

    So on balance I'm guessing that Apple did indeed put 9th generation processors into some of the 2019 models. I guess at this point I don't need to worry about this any more.

    As I already mentioned, the machine does seem to be working OK - and I'm typing on it now. I would like it to be faster, but I would expect that if there were a serious mismatch of memory to processor, something would not function.

    I don't know if it's possible to identify the exact processor type to nail this down further without looking at the physical chip. Maybe it's possible to do it with a software tool, but I don't know which one that might be - or indeed if there is one.
    Last edited by dave2010; 22-05-2023 at 06:51.
    Dave

  10. #20
    Join Date: Nov 2011

    Location: Seaton, Devon, UK

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    I'm Adrian.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dave2010 View Post
    I dug in a little further. My CPU has 6 cores - according to the About My Mac info.


    As I already mentioned, the machine does seem to be working OK - and I'm typing on it now. I would like it to be faster, but I would expect that if there were a serious mismatch of memory to processor, something would not function.

    I don't know if it's possible to identify the exact processor type to nail this down further without looking at the physical chip. Maybe it's possible to do it with a software tool, but I don't know which one that might be - or indeed if there is one.
    I am not sure if you iMac is an i5 2019 or i9 2019 machine as in the thread you refer to i9 chip upgrade and later i5.

    Assuming it is an i5 processor, as you discuss it at length, which is more common.

    I would suggest you have a read of this https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...-2020.2248911/ especially the "rules of thumb"

    also a good source of info on i5 iMacs https://everymac.com/systems/by_proc...e-i5-macs.html

    If you click on the Apple logo on your machine and then 'about this Mac' and then 'System Report' you can see all the hardware details, Hardware gives you Machine specifics including Total Number of Cores. If your 27' iMac was built between
    Introduction Date: March 19, 2019 Discontinued Date: April 20, 2021 then it will be i5 chip with 6 cores

    There are 4 variants all with using the intel 14-nm "Coffee Lake" chipset, it appears only the 3.7 GHz Core i5 (I5-9600K) iMac has features a "9th Generation", so you should be able to determine what yours is from the System Report where it show Processor Speed.

    Whatever it is I would still recommend using matched pairs of RAM, as an Apple Genius for 10 years that repaired these machines I and my colleagues would only recommend that and generally Crucial RAM which was reliable. So when upgrading we would not recommend mixing it up.

    Hope this helps and does not confused matters more.
    Listening is the act of aural discrimination and dissemination of sound, and accepting you get it wrong sometimes.

    Analog Inputs: Pro-Ject Signature 10 TT & arm, Benz Micro LP-S, Michel Cusis MC, Goldring 2500 and Ortofon Rondo Blue cartridges, Hitachi FT5500 mk2 Tuner

    Digital:- Marantz SA-KI Pearl CD player, RaspberryPi/HifiBerry Digi+ Pro, Buffalo NAS Drive

    Amplification:- AudioValve Sunilda phono stage, Krell KSP-7B pre-amp, Krell KSA-80 power amp

    Output: Wilson Benesch Vector speakers, KLH Ultimate One Headphones

    Cables: Tellurium Q Ultra Black II RCA & Chord Epic 2 RCA, various speaker leads, & links


    I think I am nearing audio nirvana, but don’t tell anyone.

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