My memory needs an upgrade.....

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...and I am referring to my MACHINE'S memory! :cool: Not much can be done for my cranial memory.

I use my 9 year old iMac for surfing and e-mail. It just keep plodding along just fine and is maxed out on memory at 16GB.

My one year old iMac needs a bump in memory. I am seeing occasional beachballs too...but I think that is due to what I am doing with it. They don't last long though...usually just a few seconds here and there.

Here are the stats for it:

iMac Retina 5K
4.2 GHz Core i7
8GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 580 8GB
OS-High Sierra 10-13.2
887.9 GB available on the drive.
2 empty memory slots. (2 4GB memory cards installed).

Initially, I wanted to just max the memory at 256 GB, but that would have more than doubled the initial cost of the iMac and I thought it would be overkill.

This machine never sees the internet (unless I am upgrading Lightroom or Photoshop-it has logged on now 3 times-then it is Unplugged--just it's electrical power cord is plugged in).

IOW, no email, no surfing, no iTunes, no Garage Band....nothing like that. All I use if for is Nikon ViewNX-i; Lightroom and Photoshop. (And yes, it gets backed up regularly using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner).

I occasionally see a beachball here and there when editing RAW picture files....it's not often, but I do see them occasionally. The copying speeds from my cameras' SD cards to the HD are phenomenal, comparing them to my old iMac. What takes 20 minutes on that machine can be done in 2 minutes on the new one. There's that big of a difference.

At this time, I do not plan on doing much video work, although I'll never rule that out, occasionally.

I just spent a year obtaining a certificate in photography and that's where I want to concentrate. My Lightroom skills are much better than they ever were and as for Photoshop? Getting there too, but much more slowly because of PS's depth and complexity.

So that should cover background. ;-)

I intend to get the memory at MacWorld because it is considerably less than memory from Apple.

So how much should I add to my basic memory?

16GB? 32 GB? 64GB?

Any suggestions you may have for me will be greatly appreciated. This is probably going to be my Christmas present to myself. since the lens or two I'd love to have are just WAY out there for me right now.

Thanks, everyone!

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Where do you store the image files you are editing? It could be when the machine is accessing the file, and it's waiting for the drive/file to respond, especially, if you only have an HDD, and not an SSD?
 
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Bob:

You have a point there. Usually, when post processing, I import the images from whatever disc they are on into the iMac. When done, I export them so as to keep the main SSD 'clean'.

I have some work to do up there this afternoon....so I will take notice as to exactly when the beachballs appear. But I think it is usually when either Lightroom or Photoshop is 'accessing' images stored within the computer itself. The beachballs do not last long (seconds), and this just kind of started recently....it wasn't doing that 4 months ago.

But I was thinking that just increasing the memory a bit wold eliminate that and possibly make transfers a little quicker.

Cheers!

Pat
 
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So, you do have an 1TB SSD in your iMac? If so, then that shouldn't be making it beachball.

Increasing the memory, will never hurt. It will really depend on how much editing you're doing and how big the files (file size) are?
 

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To know how much more you want to go, you need to know how much of your 8GB you are actively using. So with your normal apps/data loaded, open up Activity Monitor and go over to the Memory tab. Take a look at the bottom part and what you care most about is Wired Memory and Swap Used.

If your Wired is high, then you have less free memory available from your 8GB and as such your Swap will be high as well. This means that your apps are keeping a lot of things in memory and as such, you will benefit from going higher on memory (based on your budget).
 
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256GB of memory is not possible do you really mean a 256GB SSD?

If this is a 21.5" or 27" model with a 1TB platter hard drive, sorry you purchased a lemon as that model uses a slow as molasses 5400rpm had drive for the 21.5", and a not much quicker 7200rpm drive for the 27". The go was an SSD.
 
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Ferrar asked:

So, you do have an 1TB SSD in your iMac? If so, then that shouldn't be making it beachball.

Increasing the memory, will never hurt. It will really depend on how much editing you're doing and how big the files (file size) are?

Bob: Yes, Bob, it is an SSD drive. Sorry I didn't put that in the stats.....

Then Ashwin said:

To know how much more you want to go, you need to know how much of your 8GB you are actively using. So with your normal apps/data loaded, open up Activity Monitor and go over to the Memory tab. Take a look at the bottom part and what you care most about is Wired Memory and Swap Used.

If your Wired is high, then you have less free memory available from your 8GB and as such your Swap will be high as well. This means that your apps are keeping a lot of things in memory and as such, you will benefit from going higher on memory (based on your budget).

Ashwin:

I will do that right after I send this to y'all. Thx!


And Harry said:

256GB of memory is not possible do you really mean a 256GB SSD?

If this is a 21.5" or 27" model with a 1TB platter hard drive, sorry you purchased a lemon as that model uses a slow as molasses 5400rpm had drive for the 21.5", and a not much quicker 7200rpm drive for the 27". The go was an SSD.


Sorry, Harry...I didn't put the SSD in my 'specs' in the original post. And yeah, it's a 27" screen too. In fact, before I bought the new unit, you, along with a few others, convinced me that the SSD/27" was the way to go.

.....and it has! :)

Always good to hear from you, Harry! Thx!

...and all my external HD's for the new machine are now SSD's too. (With Thunderbolt cables). All my older spinning HD's are relegated to the 2009 iMac. Not really much on there worth saving if it crashes.... but I do us Time Machine and CCC on it too! :)


Thanks to all...... the rains are coming here to GA, again, this afternoon.... so as long is there isn't any lightning....I'll be on the other machine for awhile looking to see what is causing the occasional beachballs!
 
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If you have SSD, both internal and external (with Thunderbolt connections) then the ram/memory is the only thing that I can see causing the beachballs? The file size of the pictures will also impact the results too. Which, if you have multiple GB files open at one time, may be the reason.
 
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If you have SSD, both internal and external (with Thunderbolt connections) then the ram/memory is the only thing that I can see causing the beachballs? The file size of the pictures will also impact the results too. Which, if you have multiple GB files open at one time, may be the reason.

Yes, the iMac has an SSD. 2 of the 3 externals are also SSD with TB connections. When these electrical storms go past, I'll plug it back in and double check all of that by transferring multiple files to each one. That may be the problem right there (the NON-SSD). I also want to run a check like Ashwin suggested using Activity Monitor.

Thanks, Bob!

Cheers!

Pat
 
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THREAD UPDATE!

Just a quick update!

I was able to get a couple of beachballs to spin on this machine, but they didn't last long (less than 5 seconds). Usually they occurred when either copying very large amounts of files (and usually ONTO a normal thumb drive), NOT when copying onto an SSD via a Thunderbolt cable. Actually, not a biggie, overall.

Activity Monitor didn't show anything actually hogging huge amounts of resources either. But I am not not really proficient with AM either.

Long story short... I did order some extra memory via Otherworld Computing after 'chatting' with one of their techs. I decided to go with 16 gigs of 'fresh' memory and added to the 8 already onboard he told me that that should be 'more than enough' to do what I want to do. 32 gigs were just about double the price and with the time of year we are entering, I thought I'd save a little for something else and I feel that tripling my RAM form 8 to 24 should do the trick.

Thanks to everyone here who offered their assistance with this.

Cheers!

Pat
 
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I was able to get a couple of beachballs to spin on this machine, but they didn't last long (less than 5 seconds). Usually they occurred when either copying very large amounts of files (and usually ONTO a normal thumb drive), NOT when copying onto an SSD via a Thunderbolt cable. Actually, not a biggie, overall.
Copying large amounts of data to a USB thumb drive is slow, molasses slow. Hence the beachball. If you want to see in AM what's happening, pick the "Disk" tab and see the reading/writing going on. Memory probably won't get rid of the beachball in that circumstance, but going from 8 to 24 will give you a lot of headroom for other activities.
 
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Thanks, Jake, for the super-quick reply!

Yeah, after playing around with the new machine for a couple of hours, I finally figured out what was happening... a real DOH moment for me (I seem to be getting more of this e as I age) ;-)

And I appreciate the AM tip too.

Cheers!

Pat
 
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Pat, I have a dual monitor setup, so I parked a small window of AM on the second monitor just to see what was going on. Fascinating. When I see beachballs, it's almost invariably either network or disk. Rarely the CPU will get busy, usually when I trigger Parallels to run Win7 for one app that I need that only works in Win7, but that's rare.
 
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Hey, Jake!

I will do that after sending this out to you. Just be aware, once I do that I'll most likely be back, asking WTH is this or WTH is that? :)

Thanks, Jake!

Pat
 
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UPDATE!!!


Hey, everyone! I promised I'd respond when I updated my memory, so here goes.

About a week ago a package from Otherworld Computing arrived, and in less than 3 minutes (thanks to one of their videos) my photography iMac went from 8 gigs to a total of 24 gigs of memory. I thought tripling the RAM would do the trick, and for all general purposes, it has. Beachballs are now an extreme rarity (yes, I do see one occasionally when copying lots (hundreds) of large files (averaging 15-30 mb apiece) to a standard thumb drive).

When copying to an external SSD drive via Thunderbolt cable? Haven't seen one yet! :)

Importing and exporting photos from the HD to both Lightroom and Photoshop are much faster too...so for a reasonable amount of money the extra memory has been a plus.

I hope all of you had a good turkey day yesterday and that the "turkey coma" didn't hit you too hard! :cool:

Cheers to all!

Pat
 

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