I have a 2013 21.5" iMac. It currently has 8GB of RAM (upgradable to 16GB) and a 1TB disk drive. Last Mac OS update slowed it down a bit and I'm thinking of doing some upgrades. I also have a 13" MacBook Air with a 256 SSD that is smoking fast. I even upgraded my work PC to an SSD and love it. Getting back on the iMac, is like going back to dialup.

It has a 2.7 Ghz Core i5 in it. My plan is to upgrade the HD to a 500GB SSD and use the 1TB disk drive as a storage device. I know going SSD will speed boot times and programs up, but will I see a major difference by doubling the RAM?

I'm looking at around 200 dollars to do the full upgrade. That includes the tool kit with adhesive, HD and 2 8GB chips. Either way, my iMac is a model that doesn't have the back door for memory upgrades, so I will have to remove the LCD. That part is not an issue, but for the memory, I have to basically strip it down to access it. It's very straight forward, but if doubling the memory is not going to make a huge difference after adding an SSD drive, I'd rather not go that far.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know about OSX, but for 'normal' win10 usage, 8GB vs 16GB isn't really noticeable.

Closing a few browser tabs is a better 'upgrade' than adding RAM IMO.
SSD will make a big difference.
I don't think $200 & a pain in the ass swap is worth it. If RAM was sanely priced & you needed to remove 1 screw to swap it, no question.

I just put a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD in my 2012 Macbook Pro. It had gotten painfully slow to the point that I just wasn't using it.

So for $85 for the SSD, I decided it was now worth a shot. I hooked it up by USB, formatted the drive to a Mac drive, installed Mojave directly onto the drive, then transferred all the data over (that took about 4 hours).

Then after that was done I opened the Macbook up, switched out the HDD's and fired it up and now it's like a brand new machine.

Easy peasy.

I'm trying to decided if it's worth it to go from the 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
I don't know about OSX, but for 'normal' win10 usage, 8GB vs 16GB isn't really noticeable.

Closing a few browser tabs is a better 'upgrade' than adding RAM IMO.
SSD will make a big difference.
I don't think $200 & a pain in the ass swap is worth it. If RAM was sanely priced & you needed to remove 1 screw to swap it, no question.

My problem is more than 1-2 programs running at a time, bogs it down to stupid slow. HD is 70 with 25 for the tool kit. 100 for just the HD drive upgrade. RAM is almost 98 dollars. Crazy how the prices of SSD drives have come down

I don't look at the HD replacement as pain in the ass, but the memory I do. I appreciate your input on the memory. Thank you!

quote:

Originally posted by kx90:
I just put a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD in my 2012 Macbook Pro. It had gotten painfully slow to the point that I just wasn't using it.

So for $85 for the SSD, I decided it was now worth a shot. I hooked it up by USB, formatted the drive to a Mac drive, installed Mojave directly onto the drive, then transferred all the data over (that took about 4 hours).

Then after that was done I opened the Macbook up, switched out the HDD's and fired it up and now it's like a brand new machine.

Easy peasy.

I'm trying to decided if it's worth it to go from the 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM.

My work laptop is a Dell Latitude E5570. It came stock with just 8GB of RAM and a 500 GB disk drive. My laptop is also my work station connected to two 30" monitors. I run upwards of 20-25 programs at a time with 4 of those containing security cameras with 20 plus windows. The old drive with 8GB of RAM couldn't do it. We upgraded the drive to a 500GB SSD and it was night and day difference. I ended up not getting a RAM upgrade as everything runs like a champ without doubling it. I'm on year 4 with this Dell, so we decided not to do anymore upgrades. I'll have another one built to spec when this dies.

quote:

but will I see a major difference by doubling the RAM?

No
Only where you use memory intensive programs or have extensive multi-tasking.
It will help some but not anywhere close to the improvement to the I/O aka SSD will have.

In my opinion I would not go to the trouble of disassembling that iMac and not upgrade whatever is feasible to do. Anything that much of a pain in the butt to work on gets fully upgraded - one and done. The SSD will give you the most noticeable performance gains but as cheap as RAM is I would max it out while the case is open.