Hi I'm David Connelly from CNET, I'm going to show you how to upgrade the RAM on your iMac, which will definitely speed up your machine.
It's really pretty simple and we recommend upgrading your RAM yourself, as you can save a good bit of money by not ordering extra RAM from Apple when you initially purchase your iMac.
The first thing to do is figure out just what iMac you have and check on Apple's website
To figure out which model you have and what kind of Ram it takes and how much memory you can put in to your machine.
The last couple of years, the basic configuration of the iMac has come with 4 Gigabytes of RAM in 2 Gigabyte Memory Modules which takes up 2 of the 4 memory slots in the iMac.
To get to the memory compartment, you lay your iMac on a soft surface with the screen facing down and all you have to do is take a Philip screwdriver and unscrew the 3 screws for the plate that covers the compartment on the bottom of the iMac
and you be able to find where your memory is hiding.
As you can see here, we have 2 slots open for additional memory.
This iMac which is a 2011 model accepts up to 16 Gigabytes of RAM, add to the 2010 models.
Well a lot of people do is keep the existing 2 Gigabyte modules in place and add an additional 2, 4 Gigabyte modules, bringing to a total of 12 Gigabytes.
Alas the modules only go up to 4 Gigabytes, so if you wanna get to the full 16 Gigabytes, you have to replace your current 2 Gigabyte
modules with 4 Gigabyte Modules.
It's probably not worth it for a lot of people but as we said you do save a lot of money by installing it yourself, for instance to add an additional 8 Gigabytes of RAM, Apple would charge you 200 bucks, while 2, 4 Gigabyte modules of this Kingston Memory.
Kingston provide for this demo running you around $70.00.
Ridiculously Apple charges $600.00 for a full 16 Gigabyte upgrade but you can do the same, install yourself for less than a 3rd of the cost.
To get the modules installed, you just slide them in to their respective compartments; wait till you feel a little click that tells you, it snapped in place.
To get an existing module out, you gently pull up on the ribbon and slide the new module in.
It's really all there is to it, once you got your memory installed and you put the plate back on and should be good to go with the machine that feels noticeably zippier.
I'm David Connelly and thanks for watching the CNET How To Video.
