RAM VS SSD, Which Is More Important?

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  DrStinge on 19/05/2015 - 10:25

  Installing an SSD will see the biggest gain - 32gb is a lot of ram - what kind of apps are you using?

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    msmhw on 19/05/2015 - 10:45

    over the regular apps, I am using photoshop, xcode, and final cut. these are my main apps.
    also I play some games such as RAGE and Tomb Raider.
    Also want to point out sometimes I am using parallel desktop

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      geoffellis on 23/05/2015 - 00:13

      I use xcode and photoshop… with 8gb ram on a macbook pro. works well enough. 16gb is more than ample for all that.

      You would see an increase in performance by putting an SSD in as your root drive -but it may not be noticeable to any significant degree. I think people tend to hype up SSD's more than they need to be.Yes they do offer advantages but it seems like most people hype it and recommend them without actually understanding what performance gains they will have.

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  scrimshaw on 19/05/2015 - 10:32

  If you don't see a decrease an improvement with going with less RAM that probably means you have more RAM than you need.

  Few people require 32GB of RAM.

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    msmhw on 19/05/2015 - 10:47

    how much improvement do you reckon I will see after installing sdd and remove 16gb of ram ? is it worth the hassle?

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      scrimshaw on 19/05/2015 - 10:50

      +1

      Going from a HDD to an SSD is one of the best improvements you can do to a computer. Even if you only had 8GB of RAM, upgrading from HDD => SSD makes for about a 60~80% increase in speed.

      That's just me pulling percentages out of my arse, but you get what I mean.

      It won't make a difference to gaming performance, or CPU related tasks but for everyday usage you should notice a difference in loading times. This also includes VM (virtual machine) usage — having your OS and VM on SSD will make for a big difference.

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  DealhunterMelbourne on 19/05/2015 - 11:11

  4GB of RAM is the tipping point for a Mac. You'll see a significant performance benefit upgrading to 8GB. However above that you won't see a huge difference – but the SSD + 8GB RAM will make a HUGE difference.

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  ZenOasis on 24/05/2015 - 00:35

  Got an iMac 2011 mid at work, upgrade to an external TB SSD, Not as fast as if installed internal, however still much faster than stock conventional drive.

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  KaTst3R on 27/05/2015 - 17:53

  These days SSD gives the biggest performance boost..

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  msmhw on 30/05/2015 - 10:00

  thanks everyone who replied. I decided I am going to get SSD in my imac. As I got a buyer for my rams ( will get $180) but waiting for a good deal for ssd.
  just saw this video, its not simple task as I thought but I think I will mange to do it.

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    Fobsessive on 07/06/2015 - 03:46

    You can get an external hard drive enclosure for $10 on eBay to put your 1TB in and use as an external drive.

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      msmhw on 07/06/2015 - 09:08

      +1

      if you watch the video, you will see I can keep the 1tb inside and put the ssd behind the cd reader. its a lot of work but I like the idea.

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  rickyygee on 08/06/2015 - 15:32

  -1

  Very simply, increasing your RAM is the cheapest first step to making things smoother is.

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  [Deactivated] on 08/06/2015 - 16:48

  You'll be able to do more with the RAM like Photoshop and stuff but I doubt you'll see a noticeable speed difference compared to an SSD. It really depends on what you're doing, if you use Photoshop a lot and game I would go with the RAM, but if you deal with just Photos, Movies, basic programs and web-browsing you should go with the SSD. If you do both like me, I'd go the RAM! :) RAM shortage can limit what you can do, but a slow-hard drive means you just have to wait longer.

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  gmatht on 15/06/2015 - 03:34

  Performance is OK, but it draws 0.6Watts on idle so it may drain the battery faster than other SSDs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8407/ocz-arc-100-240gb-review/…

  (0.6 Watts isn't bad if it will be used for a desktop though…)