Comments | tongodeon: Mac Memory

tongodeon

Mac Memory

Jan 02, 2008 13:53

rwx recently asked:

I have to go at noon and buy 2G of RAM for my mbp to bring it to a total of 3g of RAM. Do you have any advice on this purchase in terms of brands or whatever? It seems like you have all sorts of opinions about mac hardware, but searching your blog didn't turn anything relevant up, so i thought i'd mail you and ask.RAM sold by ( Read more... )

macintosh, apple, ram

Comments 5

haineux January 3 2008, 01:03:46 UTC

I buy RAM mailorder from http://www.datamemorysystems.com/ because their prices are almost always a couple of bucks away from "best" and I've dealt with them many times and visited their offices (which aren't a store, but they are willing to do it ( ... )

tongodeon January 3 2008, 01:35:03 UTC

In the PC world you can just run memtest86+. If that doesn't show memory errors, nothing will. (That's what identified and isolated the linux problem.) Unfortunately the EFI bios seems juuuust different enough from a conventional bios that my MacBook won't run memtest86/+. Fooey.

The Apple Hardware Test has tests for bad memory, but it doesn't say much more than "passed" so I'm not sure how rigorous the tests are. memtestosx runs inside OSX; maybe the OS is protecting the RAM from overly strenuous memory access.

ikkyu2 January 3 2008, 06:25:40 UTC

About once every 18 months or so, Mac RAM prices appear to achieve parity with the regular market. They just don't bother to adjust them after that for another 18 months.

I have been happy with http://www.thechipmerchant.com for years. They always send a stick of RAM that works right the first time.

tongodeon January 3 2008, 23:43:31 UTC

About once every 18 months or so, Mac RAM prices appear to achieve parity with the regular market. They just don't bother to adjust them after that for another 18 months.

Next time that happens let me know. I've *never* seen Mac RAM prices anywhere close to market prices. I don't remember when it last cost $1000 for 4GB of RAM but I'm pretty sure that was longer than 18 months ago.

freeasinbeer January 3 2008, 16:04:56 UTC

I have had good luck with www.ramjet.com

They were recommended to me by a long time machead.
They make is easy by filing the memory under "what type
of system do you have?" and they have a "lifetime replacement
warranty".