If there are four slots on the motherboard, the pairs will be color-coded to indicate which slots go together for installing RAM. There will be two, three, or four slots where you could install RAM. If you have a PC, you will find the RAM slots on your motherboard near the CPU. Regardless of the fact that the 27” version of the iMac does not solder the RAM down and you are able to replace it, if you do not install RAM approved by Apple you could still void the warranty on your iMac. To get to the RAM slots on an iMac, all you have to do is unplug the power cable and press a switch underneath it to open an access panel and get to the RAM inside.

You will not be able to upgrade the RAM later without specialized equipment and voiding your warranty. When you purchase the 21.5 inch iMac you have to configure it at purchase with the amount of RAM you want. The 21.5 inch version of the iMac has the RAM soldered to the motherboard.

The only iMac currently on the market with user-serviceable RAM is the 27 inch model. If you use all four slots, your computer will run as if all the slots have DDR3 memory installed and will not make use of the performance of the DDR4 sticks. This is particularly important if you have one of the motherboards mentioned earlier where it has slots for DDR3 and DDR4 memory. Modern motherboards all come with a feature called “Interleaving” which will bring down the performance of all RAM to the slowest RAM on the board. Make sure the RAM you install is the same (same type, same capacity, same chip) across the pairs, or in the case of a triple channel motherboard, across all three slots.

The RAM slots will be color coded to indicate which RAM pairs go together. If you have a quad channel motherboard, that is a motherboard capable of supporting four memory cards, make sure you install the RAM in corresponding pairs. The RAM fits into long channels on the motherboard in sets of two, three or four. RAM slots on a motherboard come in sets, and it is important to make sure you install RAM in sequence corresponding to these sockets.

Some things to remember when installing laptop RAM:.

The steps to install RAM on a laptop are as follows:.

Some things to remember when installing desktop RAM:.

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