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Don’t Upgrade The RAM In Your New Apple iMac, Do This Instead

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Yesterday's Apple event was both the beginning and end of an era for the iMac. 

Ever since the original "Bondi Blue" G3 iMac, Apple's considered RAM a "user replaceable part." While the majority of the iMac's internals required dismantling the iMac to access, RAM sat behind an easily-opened hatch, allowing users to make their own upgrades.

And it was smart to do so! Buying RAM upgrades from Apple at the time of purchase was an expensive affair, requiring as much as $1,000 more just to max out the system. It just didn't make sense when faster, larger upgrades could be had from resellers like OWC for half the price. 

Enter M1

That's all changed with Apple's new system on a chip (SOC) architecture. The M1 chip combines the discrete CPU, GPU, RAM, and SSD components (pictured above) into a single piece of silicone that's soldered onto the logic board (pictured below.

For those who like to tinker with their hardware, this is pretty much the worst possible news. With everything on a single chip, you're no longer able to make any changes to your iMac configuration outside of your initial order. Whatever you choose, that's it for the life of the device. 

As someone who falls into that category, I expected to be more upset at the change. But the more I researched the new M1 chip and how it's performed in the new MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, the less concerned I was. 

Here's why.

Who Needs More RAM Anyway?

Traditional thinking has always said, add as much RAM as you can afford. RAM is a system's short term memory and having lots of it means you can do more and larger tasks simultaneously without slowing things down. 

Having everything on a single chip changes that fundamentally.

The M1 chip can dynamically use whatever it needs, from whichever component it needs, instantaneously. There's no memory swapping or rewriting of data between your RAM and SSD. The CPU and GPU aren't both trying to access data pathways on the logic board. Everything just works together and borrows processing from each other as needed. 

Reviews of the first M1 systems (the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini) show that Apple has finally been able to create a system with a base of 8GB of RAM that not only performs well but outperforms previous systems with twice as much RAM (also, it's called "unified memory" now). 

However, if you're editing large 4K videos or doing other extremely intensive tasks, you might benefit from additional unified memory in your system. You can upgrade to 16GB for a measly $200. This number is far from the wallet-blistering Apple-tax that upgraders used to pay for factory RAM. 

With a unified memory upgrade being so cheap, you might wonder why I'd recommend not spending the money. For most users 8GB is going to be more than enough for day-to-day computing tasks. If you have the money, there's no reason to not upgrade. But your money could be spent better elsewhere.

Where To Spend Your Upgrade Cash

While you might not need more than 8GB of unified memory in your new iMac there is one thing that you should immediately upgrade when you configure your new machine. 

Chances are your current system's storage is already bursting with documents, images, movies, and apps. Even offloading storage to my iCloud Drive, I've still nearly filled the entirety of my 1TB SSD drive. 

While upgrading your storage drive was possible (albeit difficult) with previous iMacs, it's impossible to do so with the new M1 chips. Sure, you can plug an external SSD into one of the Thunderbolt ports for fast transfer (and I'll have a list of excellent ones for you in the near future) but it's not as fast as on-chip storage. Also, if your SSD is full, that means your system can't swap out some of that memory to boost performance as needed. 

That's why I recommend you spend your upgrade money on doubling your SSD storage. For the top-tier iMac, which already has 512GB of storage, that means spending $200 to increase it to 1TB. It's an easy decision that will future-proof your system and deliver performance gains as well. 

You'll be able to pre-order the new 24" iMac next Friday at 8 AM EDT. Delivery will begin the second half of May. Learn more about the new iMac on the Apple site.

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