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re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac -->

re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze). It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015 machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web, or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upgrade the RAM. I quickly re-sold it to another person who I bet also hadn't imagined these things.

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Angostura 8y ago
I'm quite surprised that you found 8Gigs a problem - what was the memory pressure indicator showing? It should be fine.
crazygringo 8y ago
...how is 8GB underpowered for browsing the web? My 2016 MacBook Pro has 8GB and it's perfectly fine. I can't even imagine what web you're browsing.
- simonh 8y ago
  I would have thought it would be ok too, but I'm guessing your machine has an SSD, so when it occasionally needs to use swap space you barely even notice. On a machine with a bare spinning platter drive and no fusion drive, going to swap can be awful for performance. You’ll really notice it. So most of the time everything will be fine, but now and then it will suddenly start crawling. Also Chrome with a dozen tabs open is a bit of a memory hog. Safari is a lot better, but eh.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    It's probably not even swapping. It's that operating systems use additional memory for I/O caching. Less memory means fewer blocks in the cache which means more slow reads from spinning rust every time you open a program or document. But replacing HDD with SSD fixes that too.
duado 8y ago
You misconfigured aomething if social media taxed your 8GB. Or had a performance bottleneck elsewhere.
fredsted 8y ago
It's probably bogged down by the harddrive, not the RAM.
- hollerith 8y ago
  Agree. My 2011 Mac mini with only 2 gigs of RAM is almost as comfortable for web browsing as the 1350-usd brand-new Windows 10 box in the office with 8 gigs of RAM. A recent experience qualifies me to say that using a recent version of MacOS on a 5400-rpm hard drive is infuriating compared to using the same version of MacOS running on the same Mac with an SSD. My 2011 Mac mini has an SSD in it. Everything is fine with my Mac till a few months ago, when I get careless during an upgrade of MacOS with the result that my system is unbootable and I cannot wipe the SSD and re-install because there is data on the SSD I don't have backed up, so to recover I install an empty 5400-rpm hard drive I have lying around next to the SSD, then install the new version of MacOS onto that. Like others here, it amazes me that Apple still sells computers where even the system files are stored on spinning rust. Right after installation (of High Sierra) the aforementioned hard drive had less than 32 gigs of data on it. I am mystified why Apple doesn't solder at least that much solid-state memory to the motherboard.
  - DelightOne 8y ago
    > I couldn't just reformat the SDD because there was data on it that I didn't have a backup for Not used time machine or is it not backing up all necessary?
    - hollerith 8y ago
      I wasn't using time machine. (I am now.)
S_A_P 8y ago
I bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a HUGE performance improvement.
- noonespecial 8y ago
  Can confirm. 2012 Imac with 1TB rust disk was truly feeling its age. Swapped to small SSD I had laying around just to see what would happen and just SuperDuper-ed the old OS. Could not believe the difference. You just have to see it happen to get it. Best upgrade ever.
  - gshubert17 8y ago
    Agreed. I had a 2009 iMac with 640GB (7200 rpm) disk and 4 GB ram. I swapped to a smaller (250 GB) SSD and upgraded to 8 GB ram and it's like a new machine for me--a great upgrade.
- prewett 8y ago
  Is using an external SSD drive with USB 3 a reasonable alternative? I'm considering an iMac, but I'd rather not do that iFixit kit on a brand new machine if I can avoid it.
- subpixel 8y ago
  huh - back to Craigslist for me!
com2kid 8y ago
My $999 Asus from Costco 18 months ago came with a 480GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and a discrete GPU. The screen is 1080p, I would've had to pay a couple hundred extra for a 4k screen instead, not worth it when I'm mostly connected to external, and battery life is better with 1080p when I'm mobile. My desktop is 7 years old now. I've spent ~$1400 in parts over the years. 32GB of RAM, CPU that does its job (Intel i7-whatever), and a GPU that consumes more power but is just as good as a GTX 1050 (A lot less VRAM though!). I fully expect that machine to last me until the physical components start to give out. Probably the capacitors. It is always the capacitors.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Angostura 8y ago

I'm quite surprised that you found 8Gigs a problem - what was the memory pressure indicator showing? It should be fine.

crazygringo 8y ago

...how is 8GB underpowered for browsing the web? My 2016 MacBook Pro has 8GB and it's perfectly fine. I can't even imagine what web you're browsing.

simonh 8y ago
I would have thought it would be ok too, but I'm guessing your machine has an SSD, so when it occasionally needs to use swap space you barely even notice. On a machine with a bare spinning platter drive and no fusion drive, going to swap can be awful for performance. You’ll really notice it. So most of the time everything will be fine, but now and then it will suddenly start crawling. Also Chrome with a dozen tabs open is a bit of a memory hog. Safari is a lot better, but eh.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  It's probably not even swapping. It's that operating systems use additional memory for I/O caching. Less memory means fewer blocks in the cache which means more slow reads from spinning rust every time you open a program or document. But replacing HDD with SSD fixes that too.

duado 8y ago

You misconfigured aomething if social media taxed your 8GB. Or had a performance bottleneck elsewhere.

fredsted 8y ago

It's probably bogged down by the harddrive, not the RAM.

hollerith 8y ago
Agree. My 2011 Mac mini with only 2 gigs of RAM is almost as comfortable for web browsing as the 1350-usd brand-new Windows 10 box in the office with 8 gigs of RAM. A recent experience qualifies me to say that using a recent version of MacOS on a 5400-rpm hard drive is infuriating compared to using the same version of MacOS running on the same Mac with an SSD. My 2011 Mac mini has an SSD in it. Everything is fine with my Mac till a few months ago, when I get careless during an upgrade of MacOS with the result that my system is unbootable and I cannot wipe the SSD and re-install because there is data on the SSD I don't have backed up, so to recover I install an empty 5400-rpm hard drive I have lying around next to the SSD, then install the new version of MacOS onto that. Like others here, it amazes me that Apple still sells computers where even the system files are stored on spinning rust. Right after installation (of High Sierra) the aforementioned hard drive had less than 32 gigs of data on it. I am mystified why Apple doesn't solder at least that much solid-state memory to the motherboard.
- DelightOne 8y ago
  > I couldn't just reformat the SDD because there was data on it that I didn't have a backup for Not used time machine or is it not backing up all necessary?
  - hollerith 8y ago
    I wasn't using time machine. (I am now.)

S_A_P 8y ago

I bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a HUGE performance improvement.

noonespecial 8y ago
Can confirm. 2012 Imac with 1TB rust disk was truly feeling its age. Swapped to small SSD I had laying around just to see what would happen and just SuperDuper-ed the old OS. Could not believe the difference. You just have to see it happen to get it. Best upgrade ever.
- gshubert17 8y ago
  Agreed. I had a 2009 iMac with 640GB (7200 rpm) disk and 4 GB ram. I swapped to a smaller (250 GB) SSD and upgraded to 8 GB ram and it's like a new machine for me--a great upgrade.
prewett 8y ago
Is using an external SSD drive with USB 3 a reasonable alternative? I'm considering an iMac, but I'd rather not do that iFixit kit on a brand new machine if I can avoid it.
subpixel 8y ago
huh - back to Craigslist for me!

com2kid 8y ago

My $999 Asus from Costco 18 months ago came with a 480GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and a discrete GPU. The screen is 1080p, I would've had to pay a couple hundred extra for a 4k screen instead, not worth it when I'm mostly connected to external, and battery life is better with 1080p when I'm mobile. My desktop is 7 years old now. I've spent ~$1400 in parts over the years. 32GB of RAM, CPU that does its job (Intel i7-whatever), and a GPU that consumes more power but is just as good as a GTX 1050 (A lot less VRAM though!). I fully expect that machine to last me until the physical components start to give out. Probably the capacitors. It is always the capacitors.