Memory upgrade for Mac Pro

[statuko]

Hi Guys,

I'm going to buy my Mac Pro soon, the basic one with 1Go of Ram. I'm a newbie in this Mac world. I saw that I can find 2Go of Ram (2 x 1Go) for a good price to upgrade to 3Go (2x512Mo and 2x1Go). I would like to know if it's not a problem for the computer to have 2x512Mo and 2x1Go ? On the Mac store they sell just 1Go, 2Go, 4Go, 8Go and 16Go. Is there a reason ? I really want to be sure before doing anything. It's a lot of money.

Thanks.

 

[rman]

You should not have a problem. I believe the rule stil is that you must install the memory as matched set or pair. meaning that if you are installing 1GB then you will use two 512MB memory sticks, of you are installing 2GB you use to 1GB memory stick.

 

[statuko]

Good

Thanks rman.
So I'm ready to join the Mac World !

:dive:

 

[mac57]

Agree with rman. I have done just that. My PowerMac came with 2x256, for 512 MB total. I *added* 2x1GB (or another 2 GB) for a total of 2.5 GB, and it works like a charm. The key *is* to get matched sets always (and the right sort of memory for the technical needs of your machine of course!).

 

[statuko]

Advise for the brand ?

Do you have an idea for a good brand, Crucial, Wintec, Techworks?
My choice was Crucial (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin Dual Channel Kit Memory.
I found this http://macramdirect.com/macpro.html, what do you think ?

Thanks

 

[mac57]

I will defer to current Mac Pro owners for their best advice.

Personally, I purchased Kingston memory for my machine, PC2 4200 DDR 533. However, I suspect a different spec set would apply to the Mac Pro. Since I don't own a Mac Pro, and memory is critical to performance, I won't speculate. Can a current owner chime in?

 

[lornegustafson]

As a new Mac user and MacPro owner running Photoshop CS2, I upgraded from the stock 2x512mb RAM with 2x1gb CRUCIAL chips and it came up without any problems whatsoever. I'd considered 2x2gb RAM but the price was more than I wanted to pay. There are still four slots to fill in the future when RAM prices may decrease.

I read about heat issues with RAM in these machines so I decided not to go with cheaper off-name chips. Even so, the CRUCIAL chips don't have heatsinks anything like the ones that came with the Mac RAM. I leave the machine on 24x7 and have had no visible problems with heat effects.

I also added three SATA 500gb hard drives to the existing 250gb and they were plug-n-play. I couldn't be more pleased. Since they were only $130 each, I decided to fill the bays and use two of them as mirrored RAID for our photo files.

 

[seanarmenta]

i went with 4GB of OWC's modules -- great price and no problems whatsoever. they offer a rebate for the original apple modules that ship with your machine, but i decided to put the 1GB back in so i'm running 5 now. works great.

 

[SunsetRoadzter]

I got my memory from newegg. I went witha brand called wintec they work fine for me. I have 10 GIG's installed. I can have a ton programs open and no slow down.