Keeping my mac running like new

Heyah folks, I'm a recent switcher.

Started getting blue screens on my gaming rig and rather than start replacing hardware (video cards went bad) decided to jump ship all together as I no longer had time for hardcore gaming. And needed something reliable for work.

So went out in mid 2011 and got a nice shiny glossy iMac 2.7 Ghz i5 27 inch.
4GB ram, etc etc.

Well, that was mid 2011, and I love it so far.. however i've run into a few snags.

Some slow downs when under load. It used to be lightning fast, and dont get me wrong, it still is usually, but i'm seeing signs of sluggishness.

heres my questions, on my windows machine i'd have to do periodic disk scans, clean ups, registery clean ups, defrags, startup cleanups, list goes on and on.


What regular maintenance should I be doing on the iMac ?

I'm not keen on the idea of formating it once every 4 months to get a fresh feel ;P


also, I'm looking to upgrade the ram from 4GB to 8GB, but i'd really like to kick it up to 16GB, however i'm not 100% sure what the max is for this system, I've seen on some sites, max is 4, others i've seen 12, and others i've seen 16.

While I know apple tests out their products, I'd like to know if buying ram from another source would void my warranty, etc. As Apples choice of ram is um.. shall we say obscenely priced ?


Thanks guys!

Max RAM is 32 GB per MacTracker, though Apple says 16 GB

Download Onyx and run (free download)
Repairing Disk permissions is about the only semi-routine maintenance I do

Keep disk free space to at least 15%

Absolutely won't void your warranty to upgrade on your own (what we reccommend). Just make sure the modules are compatible with your Mac.

If you wish to make your mac run faster I recommend the program CPU speed accelerater.

Whenever your mac is running it will be nearly 5 times faster and if your worried about your cpu overheating just use smc fan control.

trampsky said:

If you wish to make your mac run faster I recommend the program CPU speed accelerater.

Whenever your mac is running it will be nearly 5 times faster and if your worried about your cpu overheating just use smc fan control.

Click to expand...

Have no experience with this program, but I don't think over clocking is something to normally consider as it was on PC's.

Google it, read the comments and steer well clear.

If you go to RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, SSD at Crucial.com, Crucial make good RAM and it is a fraction of the price of Apple. Just like for a PC they also have a scanner which will look at your system and tell you the various options. I found that Amazon is cheaper than their online shop.

I am highly suspicious of any software program that claims to make CPUs faster, as that is a physical impossibility. I suggest to you that perhaps you've been bamboozled there just a bit.