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I HAVE A 21.5" IMAC PURCHASED IN 2017. IT HAS 8GB OF RAM. THE COMPUTER IS REALLY SLOW WHEN USING LIGHTROOM AND PHOTOSHOP. IS IT POSSIBLE TO INCREASE THE RAM? I LOOKED AT THE NEW COMPUTERS. THEY HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF RAM. HOW DO THEY HANDLE THE NEW GRAPHIC REQUIRE
MENTS?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 12.5
The current iMacs are 24" iMacs, all come with SSDs and the maximum amount of RAM they support is 16GB which is also not upgradeable, meaning if you buy one buy it with 16GB of RAM and the largest SSD you can afford. They should be okay for non-professional grade graphics. If you are making your living doing graphics then you should be looking at the Apple's new Mac Studio. These are designed for professionals.
The current iMacs are 24" iMacs, all come with SSDs and the maximum amount of RAM they support is 16GB which is also not upgradeable, meaning if you buy one buy it with 16GB of RAM and the largest SSD you can afford. They should be okay for non-professional grade graphics. If you are making your living doing graphics then you should be looking at the Apple's new Mac Studio. These are designed for professionals.
First the bad news: no, you cannot add RAM. And, if yours is the least expensive stock model, it has a snail like 5400 rpm spinning drive - and that would be the major part of your problem, especially using graphics apps. Please confirm your hard drive; FWIW the newer models have SSDs, not spinning drives. Unless you clone your internal to an external SSD and use that, there is nothing you can do except only run one app at a time and fix dinner while you wait for the rendering process.
And please, do not use all caps - it is difficult to read and considered shouting online.
You can download and run etrecheck which will give us an idea of what could be wrong - I am betting on the glacially slow hard drive. Adding RAM will not fix the problem. Use the third little icon from right to post it here.
I have a solid state drive
If you have a fusion drive, you have a small SSD and the large drive will be a 5400 rpm spinning drive. Most all the work (except launching apps) is done on the slow drive.
here are the specs:
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i5-2.3-21-inch-aluminum-mid-2017-specs.html
excerpt:
At the original time of purchase, Apple offered a 1 TB "Fusion Drive" (which combines a 24 GB SSD and a 1 TB hard drive)
A Fusion drive-equipped iMac 21.5 should not have the speed issues that the straight mechanical drives cause in that iMac unless something is wrong with the Fusion drive. First thing to check:
How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support
Sorry for the caps. I didn't know that was shouting.
I have a solid state drive. Components are:
1.03TB Fusion Drive
Rettina 4 k
3.4 ghz quadcore intel core i5 processor
8GB memory,
Radeon Pro 560 4GB graphics card.
Will the new iMac work with the graphics programs?
thank you for responding so quickly.
It is much appreciated.
Jane
+1 on everything babowa suggested!
Thank you for the help Mr. Kaufmann.
Your welcome.
Can I increase the RAM in my 21.5" iMac from 2017?
