Experience with non-Apple RAM ???
 

Hello,

I just bought an Mac Mini yesterday and think that I want to upgrade the meager 256MB RAM to 1 GB. The trouble is that the 1GB RAM sold by Apple is extremly expensive. I am therefore considering buying the RAM from some third party distributor and get it send over to Borneo.

MemorytoGo currently offers the 1GB RAM for USD 128 which is considerably less than what Apple is charging.

http://www.ramseeker.com/scripts/sor...6&sortSize=1gb

Do you think this is a good idea? Has anyone had a bad experinece using non-Apple RAM? Anything I need to be aware of when buying RAM from a third party supplier?

Thanks for your comments!

Andreas, Brunei

Probably the most popular place to get memory would be www.crucial.com, if you go there I doubt you'd have any issues. Not that you might with the other site you mentioned, but I've had friends get their memory from Crucial and not complain.

I put an additional 512MB of RAM into my 12" PowerBook, and I have to say that the first DIMM I ordered (not from Crucial, though) was faulty. The vendor, www.pbparts.com, were great about it & replaced it free of charge. The replacement worked a treat! So long as you use a reputable vendor, I wouldn't worry too much about using non-Apple memory.

incidentally, if the RAM is faulty what happens?

does the computer report less RAM than expected, or does it just start *acting* like it's got less?

i added 256MB to the 128 my 2003 iBook came with, but it doesn't always feel like it. activity monitor reports lots of unused RAM but the amount of "free" space is always quite low.

my vote is with crucial - they sell memory which is suitable for all apple computers. your mac wont work with some (allegedly "low quality") 3rd party ram. the crucual stuff is top notch - ive used them several times. they give lifetime warranty on their memory and give a speedy service.

if the memory you put in is fautly, or not allowed to work (ie if from non-authorised RAM supplier, the firmware disables it to protect you from using unreliable, but cheap, memory) then it wont show up on the machine. if the only memory in is fautly, the machine makes a different noise at startup, and obviously, doesnt boot.

if the memory is faulty in an intermittent fashion, you will have a machine which crashes often (caused by the mistakes made by the RAM). its best avoided - go with a good supplier like crucial or a brand name like kingston RAM.

Just got the 1gig kit (two 512 sticks) from Crucial for my G5, popped them in, turned on computer and it showed up. Couldn't have been easier, and hat a difference! And, there isn't really "Apple" ram, they buy it from different people; so one mac could have it from one company, and another from another company. My stock ram was a brand I'd never heard of.

I haven't found any that doesn't work in current Macs. I just look for the best price on any name-brand memory at newegg.com.

I have 4 sticks of non-"Apple" RAM in my G5. Two from Corsair, 2 from Crucial.... No problems.

Just by memory that meets the Apple spec.

We bought two 512 MB sticks of Transcend memory from Newegg a while back. Popped one in our iBook, one in the PowerBook, and both worked like a charm. Apple does use standard memory now, so get yourself a good deal!

I wok in the IT field, and am a certified apple tech. I have been doing this for 6 years. One thing I keep finding in the last year is RAM is sketchy nowadays. I have seen this in PCs and in Macs.

For example. High end expensive corsair memory. Installs fine, loads an OS fine, but when running the system for several hours, eventually it will error out. Ran diagnostics system passed all tests. Again after some stressful usage of the system for a few hours the system errors out. Down to trial and error at this point. Remove the expensive, fast access time ram, and the problem goes away.

I think some of the higher end ram can cause bottle necks and eventually cause memory leaks, memory errors, etc when using the machine for a few hours at more in one session. I have seen this happen in both macs and PCs. However, it doesn't always happen. So choosing the right ram can be tricky and the best test is to stress test the system after you get the memory in. After I install ram in a system now I run it through a stress test for about an hour. Typically if it doesn't error out, then its fine. If the ram is not compatable with some aspect of the machine it will probably spit out a few errors.

I have duplicated this problem with all major types of ram and in all systems (mac and PC). So really, the best test is just trial and error. In a real world useage of a machine ram is ram. So if it works use it. I would recomend only buying from a company that allows you to return the ram if incompatable. Crucial has a compatablity guarantee, and generally, they work with just about everything.

Kingston has also been a good source of RAM for Macs. When you go to their website, make sure to choose RAM by "manufacturer" and select Apple. Otherwise, you won't end up purchasing RAM that they have specifically certified for your system.

Can't believe no one has yet plugged OWC. I installed a 1GB stick from them in my iBook G4. Works great, and is perfectly compatible.

I too, like tlarkin am Apple certified and agree with his assessment for mac RAM. A good rule of thumb is to go for "high quality" ram from the OEM manufacturers like Samsung, Hynix, Micron, etc....

Crucial is rebranded micron memory which is one reason why it works so well. I've seen the same Kingston sticks work fine in a powerbook and not in an iBook with everything else constant.

I bought 1 gig strip for new G4 15" PB from OWC (macsales.com) and it works sweet. I also bought a gig of RAM on eBay about 2 years ago from Omni which appeared to be a serious apple RAM seller and it died after about a year. So I'd say stick with an online retailer like OtherWorldComputing or NewEgg and just look for cheapest price.

And BTW, I heard somewhere that Apple tends to mostly use RAM made by Samsung, if that helps ...

I admin around a dozen Windows/AMD servers using Corsair's low-latency memory, and a couple of PowerMac G5s. I've never seen a single memory issue. A couple of the Windows servers are going on six months of uptime. It would be longer if they hadn't needed to be moved. Because of that I generally recommend and nearly always use Corsair.

sooooo, to answer your question....ummm, I dunno :D

the one point that everyone here would agree on is to go with a reputable vendor that will replace your RAM if it's faulty.

Yeah, but I support everything from end users to buisness class servers. Most of the problems I have seen have been with end user computers running multimedia software or games. And yes, I have reproduced this problem on both macs and PCs.

Servers mainly just crunch numbers or move large amounts of data. When playing a heavily intense 3d game (which they are hardly ever coded perfectly) you get things like memory leaks, and I have seen it with the higher end more expensive memory it will crash the OS. Where if you just use basic ram from like simpletech or crucial, samsung, etc, the games/multimedia software (which includes graphics, photo editing, video and audio editing) will run for hours on end with no errors.

Of course there are so many revisions of chipsets out there, and yes I always update to the newest firmware/driver version for that OS the system is running and I can still duplicate the problem. However, sometimes on other systems high end expensive ram works just fine.

Like I said its trial and error. On average my shop repairs over 120 systems/week and thats just the macs and PCs. That doesn't count towards the pritners and other peripherals we look at. We basically support almost anything as long as you want to pay us, except warranty laptops, they always go back to the manufacturer under warranty. That also doesn't count any extra network or tech support we do.

I agree with tlarkin and TazmanDman 100%. I'm also Apple certified and have supported a wide range of Macs for years (Phil can vouch for me on this one ;)). G5s tend to be the most "picky" about memory. I've only seen Corsair, Crucial, NewerRAM (not EDGE), and Apple memory consistently work in G5s.

That's a good point, I never have contact with gaming systems.

Stress Test
 

I just bought a new G5 and added some ram (Infineon). I am wanting to run a stress test to see how it's holding up, but I'm not sure how to do that. Does the computer already have the ability to run a stress test, or do I need to download software to do it?

Any help would be appreciated.

why not just use it intently?

compress a DVD or something... you can also buy memory test programs for OSX, cant remember the names....

I once had to work on a PMG5 with random freezes. Apple's service-provider-only testing utility passed the RAM after looping the tests for many hours. The only way I could reproduce the problem was to manually open enough stuff so that all the RAM was in use -- basically, I launched several pro applications, opened a bunch of images in Photoshop, and started running filters. I could get it to crash easily. It turned out to be one of only a handful of times I ever saw faulty Apple-branded RAM.

Anyway, the moral of the story is the best way to test RAM is to use it.

Maybe you were thinking of "memtest" ? It's free:
http://www.memtestosx.org/

Elixir and VDATA DIMMS are *not* compatible with G5's.

I have never found any third party stress test app for the macintosh. I would recomend winstress for windows boxes. However, you can have the computer play against itself in chess at the highest level of difficulty, play a dvd movie and type an apple works document all at the same time, just keep your memory and processor usage utilities up and running to. That way you can see how much of the processor(s) and memory you are using while doing this. If you have anything you can loop over and over (like a movie, or some kind of demo) keep those running as well. If the system runs mutliple things like that for several hours then I would say it passed the stress test.

The best way to test your memory is like Hayne stated above, the (free) app memtest:

http://www.memtestosx.org/

After having had a few bad experiences with faulty (non-compatible) ram dimms, I ordered new memory on www.crucial.com as suggested in previous posts. I must say I couldn't be more happy about their service! I ordered it yesterday around 1 PM and it arrived less than 24 hours later.

Memtest didn't give errors, so I guess my troubles are over. So my vote is for crucial, definitely.

I have not used this utility before. Does it actually stress the memory for bottle neck issues or does it just do a block by block scan on the memory? I have a ram testing machine in my shop where I can test memory outside a computer. I also have several bootable diagnostic applications I can use on computers to test memory. However, none of the memory tests I have do a stress test and do not test for bottle necking issues. Which is why I stress a machine when I first install ram.

I purchased my Power Mac with 1 gig from Apple, but anything more than that was too expensive. I ended up buying an extra two gig from Datamem.com and I have had no problems with it.

Here is their link for the Mac Mini...

http://www.datamem.com/viewcat.asp_Q_C_E_1168

Could someone please switch the Reality Distortion Field off ?

+Any+ RAM that is up to spec will do and it is even better to buy it from a reputable place where you are sure to get it changed should it be faulty.

It's just about soldering a couple of chips onto a not even mildly complex lil' board.

Depending on the circumstances you may be ready or not to pay a premium to get statistically slightly more reliable RAM but that's about it.

Proper antistatical handling and having spares handy for mission-critical machines will go a long way.

I jut bought a G5 (1.8 dual with 4 memory slots), it came with 2 samsungs dimms x 128, and bought elixir ram (2x512), I've installed that Ram, the finder info "about that mac" showed 1.25 of Ram. Fine.
I had a kernel panic. reboot. Then I had apparently 256 megs of Ram!...I've tried to swap the sticks. Then looking in the system profiler, I still had my 2x128, in the other slots 2x256, instead of 2x512.
So I took the ram back to the shop(by testing it,they've experienced the same amount of ram as I did), they've exchanged it, tested it on their g5, it showed up, fine...
I install the new ram (still elixir), boot up : 1.25 g ram... normal.
I've had a few more kernel panics, then couldn't boot...I removed the new sticks, left the original samsung from apple. Impossible to boot! swaped them...nothing!
Replaced them with the elixir...first my mac booted with the usual grey apple screen, then I saw all sorts of wrinting on that screen, I just remembered, that it said "hanging there" in the end.
Then I invert the two modules... it managed to boot without any problems, but still my memory is 512 instead of 1 Gig...

I mention also that I've been trying to re-install Tiger several times during these problems, and the installation process wouldn't complete, saying "error during installation, try reinstall..."

I've tried to find more info about these elixir chips, there seems to be a few problems with them... I'd like to get more info before sending them back to the shop again...
btw my stock "samsung" memory seems to be dead now...
thanks for any help!