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I i’ve seen questions on this before. The recommendation was an external SSD drive. My question Is would adding more ram increase the speed? Mine is one of the iMacs without a bottom access to the RAM. TIA
iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 13.1
The general " Rule of Thumb " regarding RAM is dependent on two main factors
1 - How Deep your pockets are $$
2 - The need for to hold a lot of Programs as Active
As @steve626 rightly mentions - the Write to Disk factor comes into play especially on Rotational / Technical Drives.
It could be a Catch 22 where more RAM may or may not fulfil some your computer needs
From a cost point of view alone, a Reliable External Enclosure and a Reliable External SSD Drive may cost much less than the costed of additional RAM and cost of having the machine opened to add the RAM should also be considered
The general " Rule of Thumb " regarding RAM is dependent on two main factors
1 - How Deep your pockets are $$
2 - The need for to hold a lot of Programs as Active
As @steve626 rightly mentions - the Write to Disk factor comes into play especially on Rotational / Technical Drives.
It could be a Catch 22 where more RAM may or may not fulfil some your computer needs
From a cost point of view alone, a Reliable External Enclosure and a Reliable External SSD Drive may cost much less than the costed of additional RAM and cost of having the machine opened to add the RAM should also be considered
Additional RAM will not make your 2017 iMac boot faster, open apps or files faster. It will let you process videos and other media faster once they are open.
However, the 21.5" model's memory is not user upgradeable. You'll need to take ti to an Apple Authorized Service Provider to have additional memory installed. That will not be inexpensive.
If you run Etrecheck you can see what the read and write speed is for your Mac. I have the same year (a 27" model) and I get these read and write speed on an external SSD:
And these speeds are not with a optimized case but just a USB to SATA adaptor:
If you're considering this route I recommend you contact OWC (MacSales.com) Customer Support to get their recommendation for the best of their units for your particular iMac Model and budget.
Added RAM would only allow more Processes or Applications to held in RAM.
RAM is by far way faster than a Spinner / Rotational Drive or Fusion Drive
As for this machine running slow on macOS 13 Ventura.
Does this computer contain a Spinner / Rotational Drive or Fusion Drive ?
Added and as per " iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 13.1 "
The current version has now reached Ventura 13.4.1(c )
Some of the computer issues may be fixed or partially fixed when updated.
Refer to links below
Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support (CA)
About the security content of Rapid Security Responses for macOS Ventura 13.4.1 - Apple Support (CA)
Fusion drives can be slow because they rely mostly on a mechanical drive, especially for large audio and video files. That access is very slow. In addition, with audio and video software, one needs typically to page to disk and that is very slow when the mechanical drive is pulled in.
My experience with a 2008 iMac with just 4 GB RAM and an internal HDD was that when the HDD was replaced with an SSD, it was like a new machine. I think the SSD is much more important than the memory.
I suggest you have a look at this: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community
With that ancient 2008 iMac, and more recently with a 2015 iMac (just 8 GB memory), the internal HDD was replaced with an internal SSD. The 2015 iMac can run Monterey and it is very fast now. I did not use external SSD as the boot drive but I think that would have been almost as fast.
I think you should have a look at the link above and also ponder putting in a new SSD internal drive. Even if you decide to go with the internal drive, you can start with the external to see how fast it runs. If you end up with the internal SSD, the external one can become your backup drive. One nice thing about the external boot drive is that you can continue to use your internal fusion drive for misc. storage, which could be convenient.
Additional memory would help the audio processing but would be expensive as it's not user upgradeable. You'd have to get an Apple Authorized Service Provider to do the work and it would be more than the Mac is currently worth in a trade-in.
An external SSD would definitely help with system and application performance and you can take it with you easily when you upgrade to a new iMac.
Thanks for responding. The machine in question has a 1 Tb Fusion Drive. The present plan is to move everything to an external SSD drive to improve bus speed. I am running memory hungry audio production software; perhaps a memory upgrade is on order?
Thanks again.
@P. Phillips and @steve626, thanks. You’ve been really helpful, I have a way ahead.
Welcome and do come back when new question arise
@Old Toad thanks for your reply. It is quite in line with my intentions. Cheers.
With all due respect to you @Old Toad, the previous respondents answered my question. I consider this topic closed, I have other things happening that require my attention. Thanks for your input.
No problem. Mark the reply that answered your question best as Best Answer so others will know there's a solution in this topic.
iMac mid 2017 runs slow since Ventura
