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You can buy a ready-to-ship Mac at any Apple Store, reseller, or online vendor, but if you want something custom, you have to go to Apple's website and build it to order (BTO). That way, if any of the standard configurations aren't enough for you, you can bump up the CPU, add more memory, and even go with faster storage. Not every Mac has every option, of course, but for the ones that do, it's worth asking — which upgrades are worth the price?
Are CPU upgrades worth it?
The CPU — central processing unit — is the engine that makes your Mac go. Currently provided by Intel, they range from the ultra-low power CoreM to the ultra-powerful quad-core Core i7 in high-end MacBook Pro and iMac to — yeah, it's still around! — the Xeon workstation chips in the Mac Po.
Generally speaking, faster cores let you do single things faster. More cores let you do more things at once. So, getting a faster core is like upgrading from a regular car to a race car. Going from dual to quad core is like getting a second car.
Buying Ram For Macbook
Since you can't change a CPU after you buy your Mac, you want to make sure you buy the right one — not just for your needs now, but for your needs next year and the year after that.
Are RAM upgrades worth it?
The more memory your Mac has, the bigger the images and videos you can work with, the more apps you can keep live, and generally the better performance you'll get. Modern Macs are more memory efficient than ever. There's compression and there's ultra-fast SSD for swapping. But if you want to work with a lot of files, and a lot of big files, RAM can still make your experience smoother.
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Increasingly, Mac memory is also soldered right to the board, just like the processors. iMac still lets you change memory after purchase but, with MacBooks, what you buy is what you're stuck with. So, again, don't buy for today. Buy for tomorrow.
Mac Pro: Server parts come with server prices. You get 16 GB in the baseline Mac Pro, but $400 will buy you 32 GB and $1200 will buy you 64 GB. If you have workstation needs, you'll have workstation budget. Get as much as you need. Then double it.
Are storage upgrades worth it?
Once you go SSD, you never go back. HD platters feel slow and unreliable, because they are, and Fusion Drive sounds like the best of both but still bottlenecks. There's an argument to be made that fast boot and voluminous storage make Fusion a must, but external storage is a viable option on a pure SSD-system as well.
That's probably why Apple is going pure SSD only on so many systems. For those, it's capacity and capacity alone that's the question.
Who should upgrade their Mac's processor?
Of all the upgrades, CPU configurations offer the most questionable benefit. A bump in overall processor speed is nice, but is it worth paying a couple of hundred bucks more to get another 10 or 30 percent improvement?
For people working with apps that can benefit from more processor cores — computationally-intensive operations that are optimized for multiprocessor computers, like math and science apps, video, 3D, video compression and other similar things, going from a dual-core to a quad-core can quite literally double performance and should be considered.
Who should upgrade their Mac's memory?
4 GB is almost extinct on the Mac and should be. 8 GB is the sweet spot for most people these days, especially given how macOS has optimized for fast storage. If you really want to future-proof, though, splurge for 16 GB.
Upgrading after the fact is only possible on a very few Macs these days and doesn't offer the price savings over fussiness benefit it used to.
Who should upgrade SSD or go with Fusion Drive?Mac Ram Kit
Undercutting yourself with storage space right off the bat will cause you problems, but take a long hard look at your current storage footprint and see what you can't live without. If you're like many people, you'll discover that you don't actually need everything you have, and that you'll be able to offload some of it to a server, external device or archive system.
Buying Ram For Macbook Pro 2012![]()
SSD is expensive, but the performance is spectacular - especially since has Apple incorporated PCI Express (PCIe)-based flash storage in newer models. Pay for as much as you can afford, but see what you can live without and try to save yourself some money.
Buying Ram For Macbook ProStill undecided?
There's a lot to think over, so if this hasn't helped you sort it out, please turn to our Apple Hardware forums and post your question there. Our legion of helpful forum posters will give you their expert feedback. You're also welcome to post comments here.
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