Mac Ram Upgrade?

[Aidanlockett1]

Hey guys I just put an ssd in my old mac and it has 2gb of ram im mostly gonna use it for school so that means lots of tabs, should i spend 25$ and upgrade to 2x2 kit of 4gb or 60$ and get a 2x4 and get an 8gb set

[Guest]

8GB will give you a greater quality of life.

[Aidanlockett1]

Just now, tjcater said:

8GB will give you a greater quality of life.

yea but its a lot more and im only gonna use it for school, the cpu is a 2 core 2.4 ghz cpu soooo yea

[Guest]

Just now, Aidanlockett1 said:

yea but its a lot more and im only gonna use it for school, the cpu is a 2 core 2.4 ghz cpu soooo yea

4GB is usable(On that topic 2GB is too, just not as much) however 8GB should give you a smoother experience overall when you have a greater  number of tabs/applications open. The last thing you want are pages unloading or things being saved on a paging file (That can easily reduce the lifespan of SSDs by a few years or more). Also CPU performance has little to do with ram usage.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Aidanlockett1 said:

yea but its a lot more

Just be glad you're not doing something that requires a lot of ram. I intend to upgrade my laptop to 32GB(2x16) before 2018 2Q and that will cost around $250 usd if prices don't come back down. (BTW ram prices are up due to a shortage and demand of flash modules)

Edited September 17, 2017 by Guest
Grammar

[Aidanlockett1]

2 minutes ago, tjcater said:

Just be glad you're not doing something that requires a lot of ram. I intend to upgrade my laptop to 32GB(2x16) before 2018 2Q and that will cost around $250 usd if prices don't come back down. (BTW ram prices are up due to a shortage and demand of flash modules)

i know about the shortage, if i do something that big i have my desktop to compensate 16gb dual chanel

[Aidanlockett1]

6 minutes ago, tjcater said:

4GB is usable(On that topic 2GB is too, just not as much) however 8GB should give you a smoother experience overall when you have a greater  number of tabs/applications open. The last thing you want are pages unloading or things being saved on a paging file (That can easily reduce the lifespan of SSDs by a few years or more). Also CPU performance has little to do with ram usage.

i know i just mean its a slow pc and 8gb of ram will be bottlenecked by the cpu in terms of raw throughput

[scighera2]

2 minutes ago, Aidanlockett1 said:

i know i just mean its a slow pc and 8gb of ram will be bottlenecked by the cpu in terms of raw throughput

Any increase in RAM will be useful. 8GB of RAM is wayyy too excessive if you just need it for general web usage. 8GB of RAM is what you need for gaming lol. 

Short answer is for $25 you can't really go wrong with more RAM.

[Guest]

Just now, Aidanlockett1 said:

i know i just mean its a slow pc and 8gb of ram will be bottlenecked by the cpu in terms of raw throughput

Well the benefit for more ram in this case would a) the applications/pages wouldn't close/crash from insufficient ram and b) if the case ever arrives that you used up that much ram, you wouldn't be bottlenecked by it. It will always be better to have more ram than needed rather than too little. In the end, you as the consumer decides what your money is worth, you could try buying a single 4GB module and using it alongside the other 2GB unless macOS has some weird issue against it.

[Aidanlockett1]

1 minute ago, tjcater said:

Well the benefit for more ram in this case would a) the applications/pages wouldn't close/crash from insufficient ram and b) if the case ever arrives that you used up that much ram, you wouldn't be bottlenecked by it. It will always be better to have more ram than needed rather than too little. In the end, you as the consumer decides what your money is worth, you could try buying a single 4GB module and using it alongside the other 2GB unless macOS has some weird issue against it.

i might buy a single 4gb stick and wait for a while and buy another 4 when the price is right

[Guest]

Just now, Aidanlockett1 said:

i might buy a single 4gb stick and wait for a while and buy another 4 when the price is right

This would probably be the best solution. Just make sure to get the right type.

[Aidanlockett1]

27 minutes ago, tjcater said:

This would probably be the best solution. Just make sure to get the right type.

yea dont want to buy a full sized stick lmao, thanks for the help

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

I have a core2 mac mini. Its has been upgraded to 8GB ram. I also use to own a desktop core2. Its really does not need more than 4GB ram. If you are study computer science and you need virtual machines then you will need 8GB ram.