Is your Mac slowing down? Do you spend more and more time waiting for applications to do what you want? If so, there is a very good chance that you have high memory usage and need a Mac RAM upgrade.
Select the device you want to upgrade RAM for (Mobile, Desktop, Laptop). Select the amount of RAM to which you want to upgrade and click Download. Dec 08, 2018 The RAM usually decides how fast your system is especially when multiple programs are run simultaneously. More RAM = better performance. Now, by default, the computer assesses the needs of a certain program and allocates RAM accordingly. However, more often than not, this is not enough. A program may be lagging because it needs more RAM.
What is RAM?
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. This memory is temporary and used by the CPU to hold information that processes are actively using on your system. Your Mac slows down when it experiences high memory usage, in other words, when the running applications demand more RAM than your Mac is able to provide. The more RAM available, the better your Mac is able to execute on the tasks that are being thrown at it.
The obvious solution would be to increase Mac RAM, but before we show you how to do that, let’s make sure that your lack of RAM is actually the cause of your Mac slowdown.
Note: Not all devices are able to upgrade RAM, like the Macbook Air and the 2014 edition of the Mac Mini.
How to manually check Mac RAM
Checking your RAM is dependent on the version of OS X that you have installed. You should check your Mac RAM after you have been using your Mac for a bit of time. When you are in the middle of normal daily tasks, follow these steps.
El Capitan OS X
Memory Pressure is the graph you need to study.
If there is mostly green, your system RAM is currently fine. If there is a lot of yellow, the jury is still out. If there is a lot of red, your memory is under strain and your Mac has a high memory usage.
Older OS X versions like Leopard and Lion
For older versions of Mac OS X the steps are the same but the System Memory tab looks a bit different. You’ll want to look for Free and Page Outs.
Free – This is how much free RAM your Mac currently has. If you’ve got a bunch of applications open and there is still a good number of free RAM, then your Mac may have enough memory.
Page Outs – This number tells you how often your Mac has run out of RAM and needed to use the slower hard disk instead. A high number here is very bad and a sure sign that your Mac doesn’t have enough RAM.
Use a Mac memory analysis tool
Another alternative, which will work easily on all versions of Mac OS X, is to use a 3rd party tool to check your RAM usage. We highly recommend CleanMyMac X, which will not only clean and speed up your Mac, it also has a RAM monitoring tool called Menu App.
Simply click on the Memory Monitor tab for a clear overview of your Mac’s memory usage. The tool will also enable you to free up memory by closing down unnecessary applications, which will become really helpful when your system is slowing to a crawl.
CleanMyMac X is a free download so try it out and get to the bottom of your high memory usage problem.
Note: With all above solutions we recommend checking the results on a regular basis until you are certain that your Mac needs a RAM upgrade.
How to upgrade your Mac RAM
If you have reached the conclusion that you need more memory, we are going to show you exactly how to increase your Mac RAM. Don’t worry if you’ve never done it before, as this guide will help you every step of the way.
The first steps are to gain knowledge about your system. This will help ensure that the RAM that you get will be compatible with your system.
Step 1 – What kind of Mac do you have?
Whether you have an iMac, a Macbook Pro, or any other kind of Mac, there is a lot more information to be found out in order to identify your exact system. To get these details, follow these easy steps:
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Step 2 – Do I have space for more RAM in my Mac?
This may not be what you want to hear but it’s possible that you can’t add more RAM to your Mac, even if you wanted to. Let’s look under the hood and see what your RAM situation is like.
On the right you will see exact details of your RAM modules or sticks. The “banks” are the slots that the RAM is inserted into. If you have an empty bank or two, you’re in luck, upgrading your Mac RAM just got that much easier.
Step 3 – Check how much RAM your Mac can take
Now let’s really make sure you can upgrade your RAM. Head over to Technical Specifications on Apple Support, find your exact Mac model. Once you find your Mac, click it to reveal a ton of information. What you’re looking for is the information, which will tell you how much RAM your system can work with. Compare it to your Mac’s current RAM (from Step 2) and now you know if you can upgrade your RAM or if you are stuck with what you have.
If you can’t upgrade your Mac RAM, download CleanMyMac X and use all of the cleaning tools to boost your Mac performance. You should also take a look at the performance improving solutions found in How To Fix Mac Running Slow.
Step 4 – Purchasing RAM for your Mac
In Step 3 you navigated to your Mac model and discovered what memory your system could potentially add. Now it's only a matter of choosing your new RAM and we recommend to start with this source. If you're located outside of the US, Google will probably tell you which stores sell RAM nearby.
Step 5 – Installing RAM into your Mac
Adding your new RAM into your Mac is not as hard as it sounds. This is definitely an upgrade that you can perform yourself, as long as you have a screwdriver on hand. The only tricky thing is to know exactly where the RAM is, and that it varies between types of Macs.
Below are handy tutorials to install new memory on your specific type of Mac.
How to upgrade RAM on an iMac
How to upgrade RAM on a Macbook Pro
How to upgrade RAM on a Mac MiniDownload More Ram
Due to the form factor of the Mac Mini, it is one of the more challenging devices to upgrade. We recommend getting help from professionals or someone that has experience upgrading Mac Mini RAM.
The final word on Mac RAM upgrades
In this guide we showed you how to identify high memory usage on your Mac using OS X and the ever-useful CleanMyMac X. We then outlined the steps to determine what RAM your Mac has installed, whether it can be upgraded, how to purchase new memory for your Mac and finally how to install your new RAM into your Mac.
Once your new RAM is installed, depending on how much you were able to add, you should see a considerable boost to your Mac performance.
You will also gain a boost to your social status, as now you can confidently boast, “I know how to upgrade my Mac memory”.
These might also interest you:
A software developer asked me about a website called Download More RAM. I don’t think he heard my other coworkers snicker. He asked if it was a security issue, while missing the even more important question: Can you download RAM? I said it’s best not to visit the site, and spared him the history lesson.
Downloading RAM isn’t possible because RAM is physical hardware–computer chips on a circuit board. You can only download software. But still, the sites remain.
The origins are credited to a 2004 post in a discussion forum–a Mac forum, appropriately, and I’ll have more on that in a second–where someone asked how to download more RAM and apparently he was serious.
Can you actually download more RAM?
Since the question has come up, I’ll answer it. You cannot actually download RAM, just like you can’t download a second monitor. Or a newer CPU, or more GHz for your CPU. Or a million dollars.
Download More Ram Review
RAM chips are a physical thing–silicon chips that store information and allow a CPU to store and retrieve it very quickly. And no, there aren’t any extra RAM chips in your computer waiting for some secret code to wake them up.
If you need more RAM, you need to buy some and plug it into your computer. Not visit some dodgy web site. For general computer use, I recommend 8-16 GB of RAM.
The concept of “Soft” RAM
I say it’s appropriate that this question first appeared in a Mac forum because in the 1990s there was a software product called RAM Doubler, produced by Connectix, originally for the Mac. You couldn’t download it. It cost around $50 back when retail stores still sold software. It used some of your memory to compress data that would otherwise be swapped out to the hard drive, under the theory that it was faster to compress and decompress to RAM than to swap from disk. The product did actually work to a degree. But when people bought half as much RAM as they knew they needed and counted on RAM Doubler to make up the difference, it usually didn’t work out too well for them. Tragically, it worked best for the people who needed it the least.
How To Download More Ram On Mac Windows 10
The product sold well, though. That led to Connectix developing a similar product for Windows. And Syncronys marketed a program called SoftRAM that claimed to do the same thing, but the Syncronys product, it turned out, didn’t actually even try to compress RAM. When word got out about the Syncronys fraud, it pretty much destroyed the product category. Connectix went on to develop a number of very successful emulation and virtualization products. Syncronys went out of business.
“Soft” memory today
The idea hasn’t completely gone away though. Linux has the built-in ability to compress memory, and some Android phones use it. Quietly. Windows 10 has the ability to compress memory too, but Microsoft doesn’t talk a lot about it. Basically, the issue all along has been that memory compression is faster than swapping out to disk, but it will slow you down if you’re doing it constantly. And if you’re doing it constantly, it’s one more thing that can go wrong, which was what my Mac users from the previous century taught me the hard way.
But that feature, if you have it, is part of the operating system. You’re not actually downloading more RAM. It’s reaching a bit to call the downloadmoreram.com website a scam, since they’re not charging you anything (though I bet their ad revenue is non-trivial). Downloadable RAM is definitely a meme or joke for people who understand computer hardware to play on people who don’t.
Is downloadmoreram.com safe? A scam? A joke?![]() How To Download More Ram On Mac Os
Is it a security issue? Not intentionally. The guy who created the site did it to be funny. But due to the site’s popularity I would imagine it’s an attractive target. If someone were to get into the site and inject a little extra into his downloadable code, they’d spread pretty far. That’s called a watering hole attack.
And running strange code you got off web sites that make too-good-to-be-true claims is a good way to get into trouble. You miss some jokes that way, but you also miss computer repairs that way. Malware is nastier than ever, so I’m fine with missing some jokes. I recommend you do the same. And it’s not like the joke is all that funny anyway.
Rule #1 of security, going back to the 1980s, was to not run something if it claimed to do the impossible. It’s best if we continue to follow that rule.
Is downloadmoreram a scam? Legally probably not, since they don’t actually take anything from you. A waste of time, sure.
What does downloadmoreram.com do if you can’t download RAM?
I visited downloadmoreram.com so you don’t have to. I did it in the only safe possible way to visit dodgy web sites that make impossible claims. I used a freshly installed computer on an isolated network, then I wiped and reinstalled the machine.
You make your selection of how much RAM you want to download, and then it rickrolls you. If you’re not familiar with rickrolling, it’s an old joke of making people unintentionally listen to the 1987 pop song “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.
If you visited the site and now you’re here because it didn’t work, that’s why. The site doesn’t exist to help you, it exists to see how many people it can fool every day. Downloadmoreram isn’t really a scam. It’s a series of worn-out jokes run by a guy who likes to feel superior to people who don’t know as much about computers as he does.
Unlocking disabled computer capacity
One of the reasons people believe it might be possible to download RAM is because some types of computer chips ship with disabled capabilities. And in rare cases, it’s possible to unlock those capabilities. But it’s far from universal, and RAM chips don’t work like that.
Even when you are able to unlock disabled capabilities in a computer chip, there’s more involved to it than visiting a website and downloading something.
What to do instead of trying to download RAM
If you want to make your computer faster without adding more hardware, here are my tips for optimizing Windows 10. Unlike downloadmoreram.com, they work. They will probably help you like they’ve helped thousands of others. If you actually do need more memory, here are some tips for buying memory that will help you get a good deal on good quality.
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December 2020
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