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I am new with Apple products. i just bought iMac 27 5k, 3.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 , 8GB Ram, 2TB Fusion Drive. i wanted to know if it is possible to increase its RAM? i asked the dealer here in Pakistan but they say you can't upgrade the RAM. you will see to send the to Apple USA which will be another expensive story.

I want to know if i can increase its RAM to 32GB or 64GB?

Also what are the good supported ram which was not really expensive but affordable. can you guys directly what kind of ram i need and how to upgrade the ram? i have no idea what of ram i need to purchase online, its so confusing

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  • There are current 2 different iMac 5K models that have a 3.3 GHz Intel Core i5 Processor. With both, Apples specifications state 32 GB for Maximum Memory however the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) can actually handle 64 GB.
    – user3439894
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 1:13
  • why do you think you need that much? bragging rights?
    – OzzieSpin
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 8:21
  • I am using illustrator, photoshop and premiere and after effects and i thought increasing the memory might reduce the loading time specially with after effects and illustrator for vector artwork. i might go with 32GB since i doubt 64GB is supported in my model.
    – Learning PHP OOP
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 23:10

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Yes, you can upgrade the RAM, and have many different options. I bought the very same system you did, and it came with 2 4 GB chips in the four available slots. I ordered two 4 GB chips for $100 US from https://www.macsales.com, received them 3 days later, popped them in the two open slots and the system recognized the full 16GB; even though the chip pairs are from different vendors, I had no problem with it.

It is incredibly easy to change the RAM on the iMac and MacSales even has videos to show you how to do it. You can take it all the way up to 64 GB. The best way to see if you need more RAM is to open up Activity Monitor and watch the swap space in the memory tab. Under normal circumstances, the only time swap space is used is when the system needs more RAM than is physically installed. So if you see a lot of swap space being used, that means you are using up all the available RAM.

One note: Unix-based systems like Mac and Linux use far less RAM than Windows, so do not compare the two platforms for RAM capacity needs.

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  • Thanks for your guidance, i looked at the website and i am looking forward to go with 32GB which i find it reasonable. So even if the RAM is from different vendor it should be working fine? further more i looked it up at the Activity monitor, with just Chrome only opened it says: Physical Memory 8GB, Memory Used : 3.49GB, Cached Files: 1.19GB and Swap Used: 388.3MB , what does that mean?
    – Learning PHP OOP
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 23:06
  • First, yes, different makers for the RAM is ok; I have 2 from Apple and 2 from OWC (MacSales) in my iMac 5K, and I have had no problem with them. It is probably a good idea to keep them in pairs, and definitely do not mix RAM sizes. Memory used is kind of a snapshot of the amount of RAM being used a the moment. Swap is used when the system runs out of available RAM and the processes need more to continue to run. What the OS does in this situation is it begins to copy portions of memory to disk (swap) and frees it for other processes to use.
    – Michael Sheaver
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 0:20
  • In your case, sometime in the recent past, the system swapped out a total of 338 MB of memory content to a special area on disk called swap space, then freed it up for other processes. RAM I/O is always much faster than disk I/O, so anytime the system needs to use swap space, application performance takes a big hit. Hope this helps!
    – Michael Sheaver
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 0:25
  • BTW - welcome to AskDifferent! If this did help you, please click the green check mark, if you don't mind. Those checks and upvotes are how we gain reputation and privileges here in the StackExchange family.
    – Michael Sheaver
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 0:30

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