Expensive Laptop Ram. Is it an easy solution?

aiolos

So I was looking at the apple site for the macbook pros, and I saw that the upgrade to 2 gigs of ram for 1 gig (1-SoDimm) is 300 bucks! Thats a crapload of money. I saw websites selling "macbook pro" compatible ram for as low as 86 bucks with shipping!



Question:



Is this ram actually compatible and if so, does putting it in your MBP void the warranty?



Thanks in advance for feedback and also, if this was already discussed, please just link me the appropriate page.



Thanks,



Aiolos

lundy

Already discussed? About 1157 times, but never mind.



Apple memory is expensive and many if not most experienced Mac buyers get the least Apple memory and then buy third-party RAM from a reputable company like Crucial, Kingston etc.



It does not void the warranty.



Apple tries to prevent this by loading both RAM slots so that the customer realizes that he won't have to throw away a DIMM in order to add his own third party RAM.

fongyuen

a quick question regarding ram. i just bought my wife the 1.8 macbook. it runs ok on 512mb of ram and i'm thinking of upgrading it. i don't think she needs 2 gb of ram so i was thinking of buying a stick of 1 gb and replacing one of the 256 mb ones. any performance deterioration due to mismatching size ram or i don't need to worry about it?

lundy

It will work, and the speed difference probably won't be noticeable. But some of the fancy graphics stuff may not work at top speed, especially if you are going to dual-boot Windows. Also, if she is going to run Office or other PPC apps she probably can use the 2 GB - Rosetta uses a lot of memory.



Try it and if everything is satisfactory, you are OK. If not, you can add the second GB.

fongyuen

yeah, you're right, thanks for the response!

jbl

A month ago I took my G5 into the Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center, because it was having some random kernel panics. The "Genius" there said they wouldn't look at it unless I could reproduce the problem without the third party RAM. I don't know if this is going to be their new policy.

smashbrosfan

I don't have a clue why they do that since Apple's own RAM isn't even as high quality as most sticks from Crucial...

lundy

They do it because the machine booted when it left the factory, and if it panics now after adding RAM, odds are that the problem is the added RAM.

smashbrosfan

Can someone explain to me why OS X seems to be so much pickier about the RAM than other OS's or hardware venders? Is it just coded for certain kinds/brands of RAM or what?

formerlurker

They do it because your warranty coverage does not pay for Apple techs to troubleshoot 3rd party RAM. You're expecting them to test it and remove it and reinstall it for you, but it's something that is not covered by your warranty.



If it's Apple RAM, they can and will troubleshoot it.



Besides, the first thing you should do in troubleshooting KPs is to remove any RAM that you added yourself and see if the problem persists.

lundy

Quote:

Originally Posted by smashbrosfan


Can someone explain to me why OS X seems to be so much pickier about the RAM than other OS's or hardware venders? Is it just coded for certain kinds/brands of RAM or what?

It's just adhering to the JEDEC standards, that's all. Some other boxmakers might not, although the major ones are members of JEDEC.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_SDRAM



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JEDEC

fongyuen

hmm, in that case, if i do upgrade my ram, i should probably hold on to the original ones in case i ever need to send it back for something....