iMac upgrade

I have an iMac with 4Gig Ram and a 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor which seems to be struggling now I have installed Mavericks. I have the maximum Ram for this model but I gather I could upgrade the hard drive to a solid state version. Would this solve the speed problem or should i go the whole hog and buy a new iMac?

Welcome to Mac-Forums..

Upgrading from a HD to SSD will definitely help in read/write times which means that things will load faster and getting written faster. In a lot of cases, that upgrade alone will seem to give an older machine a new leash on life.

However, what you need to determine is if the struggling is happening at specific times which will determine if the SSD is the upgrade that will help. That is, are you seeing issues when you load an application? Issues when you load or save files in that application? If you are experiencing issues here, then an SSD would help.

If you are seeing issues during the operation of an app when it likely has already been loaded and isn't trying to access the HD, the likely culprit there is the amount of available memory and the CPU. Since you can't upgrade either of those, a newer iMac might better suit your uses..

Exactly which model iMac do you have? Are you sure you can only stuff 4 gigs in there?

Thanks for the excellent replies. I think the trouble is with the lack of RAM and unfortunately there doesnt seem to be anyway to upgrade this beyond 4 GB. I use photoshop and photo magico a lot and this is where i mostly seem to slow down or when running two programs at once like Bridge and Photoshop.

Will you please go to Apple and about this Mac and give us the Specs shown there? With the CPU spec you provided that machine will at least take 6GB from OWC.

Apps like Photoshop and other photo/video editing apps are very memory hungry and not having enough will definitely lead to slow downs or pauses..

As Dennis said, do give us the specifics about your Mac and we can tell you if you really can run 6GB of memory as opposed to the Apple recommended 4GB.

Now going from 4GB to 6GB isn't likely going to make everything better, but might just be enough coupled with an SSD upgrade.

Unfortunately, this might be one of those situations where the only way of knowing is to do the upgrade and see what happens..

I imagine that the price of the upgrade is likely less than that of a new iMac, so it might not be a bad thing to try..

My Mac's specs are
24" iMac 2.8GHz Intel Core2 Duo
4Gb 800MHz DDR2 SD Ram
320G HD Early 2008
I checked with Crucial and they confirm that 4G is the maximum RAM available.
I have a feeling that my HD is not working properly either as the whole machine seems to have slowed appreciably in the last 24 hrs, with every program now taking ages to load up.

It's OWC that offers the 6-GB upgrade, Let me double check that and get right back to you. My iMac is the 20" version of yours with a 2.4Ghz CPU and with OWC ram it will take 6GB for sure.

Just checked and your machine is the 24" version of mine basically and will go to 6-GB if you get your ram from OWC. I know many with the 6GB and it's dead stable.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac/Intel_Core_2_Duo

Extreme sudden slow downs like that can be the hard drive going. The 320 GB in this machine started doing that maybe 3 years ago and i replaced it with a 1TB WD Black and it's never had one issue.

Thanks Dennis,
I checked with OWC and of course you are right they do offer 6GB which would probably help but I am suspicious that the HD is failing as the problem seems to be getting worse by the hour. Thanks for your HD comments too, I will investigate further.

Davidharle said:

...but I am suspicious that the HD is failing as the problem seems to be getting worse by the hour.

Click to expand...

An iMac with 4gig of ram and a core 2 duo 2.8ghz cpu really should't have too much trouble. We get lots & lots of folks starting threads about a slow computer...and this can be due to a number of things:

- failing HD
- HD too full
- computer is not restarted enough (swap file gets too large)
- HD needs some maintenance (run the app "Onyx")

Of course a slow computer can be due to too little ram or too slow a cpu. But in this case...I don't really think this is slowdown source.

- Nick

I have cleaned the hard drive and now have 70G free and have run MacKeeper and deleted all the startup files I don't use but things are still not as good as they were a week ago. How would I know if my HD was actually failing?

Oh man...
NEVER NEVER NEVER use Mackeeper!!!!
I cant say this enough. http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-rumors-reports/301553-mac-forums-investigates-mackeeper.html
Nothing but problems.

Ohh David wish you had imparted the information about crapware Mackeeper earlier. Get rid of it today!

Have a read of this, and do not simply drag it to the Trash:-


https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6221

First Agree with Craig, PLEASE do not use Mackeeper!

One quick thing to try running Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. Click on the Macintosh HD and check at the bottom right and look for SMART. Does it say Pass?

Also a better test is there is a SMART utility for OS X that is more comprensive and will tell you if there is a issue with your hard drive.

I have seen a lot of those WD 320 GB hard drives in that year Mac die so run those two tests and let us know what you find!

Davidharle said:

My Mac's specs are
24" iMac 2.8GHz Intel Core2 Duo
4Gb 800MHz DDR2 SD Ram
320G HD Early 2008
I checked with Crucial and they confirm that 4G is the maximum RAM available.
I have a feeling that my HD is not working properly either as the whole machine seems to have slowed appreciably in the last 24 hrs, with every program now taking ages to load up.

Click to expand...

Deal with a memory company or at least someone who knows what they're talking about - and in your case Crucial is full of BS!!

That iMac can take and utilize 6GB RAM!!!

See:
iMac "Core 2 Duo" 2.8 24-Inch (Early 2008) Specs (Early 2008, MB325LL/A, iMac8,1, A1225, 2211) @ EveryMac.com
and
Apple iMac Specs (All iMac Tech Specs) @ EveryMac.com

We have a late 2007 2.4GHz 24" iMac here, and it's had 6GB of RAM installed for years and I'd suggest doing what I did and replace its HDD with a WD Black 7200 RPM drive - I used a one GB model. Runs cool, fast and quiet!!

And, geesh, I just read that you've been running MacKeeper, so you may want to consider downloading and running the compatible Mac OS X COMBO Update.

PS: I sure hope you have a current backup of your data at least with that original HDD!!!

Davidharle said:

…and have run MacKeeper…

Click to expand...

I wish you hadn't said that!

- Nick

pm-r said:

We have a late 2007 2.4GHz 24" iMac here, and it's had 6GB of RAM installed for years and I'd suggest doing what I did and replace its HDD with a WD Black 7200 RPM drive - I used a one GB model. Runs cool, fast and quiet!!

Click to expand...

Same exact iMac I own. Works great with 6GB RAM. I also put in the same WD Black 1TB drive and it's GREAT!

Disc utilities wont work with my current OS apparently! I have a current backup and from what people say it is increasingly sounding like a HD problem anyway. I know that Mac Keeper is rubbish but its been there all along and I don't think is relevant to the present problem which is only a recent thing.
I will explore increasing the RAM to 6GB and fitting a new HD before I consider a new machine.
Thanks to everyone for the excellent advice. Oh and I will uninstall Mac Keeper!

Davidharle said:

I know that Mac Keeper is rubbish but its been there all along and I don't think is relevant to the present problem which is only a recent thing.

Click to expand...

It may or may not be related to the issue. But given MacKeeper's reputation…it's always possible (especially if the problem is software related). But it is possible that a failing HD is the problem (after other possibilities have been eliminated).

I think that you asked how would you know if the HD is the problem. As I mentioned…eliminate all other possibilities:

- free up a bunch of free space
- run Onyx
- maybe try a ram upgrade (although I'm thinking that since the computer has 4gig of ram…low ram may not be the issue)
- since you sort of thought that the problem was related to the upgrade to Mavericks…you could resort back to the OS version you had previously (but I don't think that the Mavericks upgrade is the issue)
- You could try booting from a different HD.

* Nick

Davidharle said:

Disc utilities wont work with my current OS apparently! I have a current backup and from what people say it is increasingly sounding like a HD problem anyway. I know that Mac Keeper is rubbish but its been there all along and I don't think is relevant to the present problem which is only a recent thing.
I will explore increasing the RAM to 6GB and fitting a new HD before I consider a new machine.
Thanks to everyone for the excellent advice. Oh and I will uninstall Mac Keeper!

Click to expand...

That sounds like a good move, and as for removing MacKeeper, it may depend on which version you have and I believe its latest version has some sort of uninstaller, and I don't know if you got sucked into any of their payment plans.

You might find this article handy:
how to uninstall MacKeeper – updated |

I ended up using 'Find Any File' (an essential tool IMHO) and did a search for anything containing the word: MacKeeper; and zeobit. That got rid of everything!!