I have a mac mini with 2GB RAM and want to buy another stick (since mac mini only have to memory slots) of 4GB (all other specs are the same), will it cause a problem?
Thanks,
Matt
Mac – Use different memory capacity RAMs in mac mini
mac-minimemory
Related Solutions
The System Information app has this information (and a lot of other info about your computer). Access it by going to the Apple menu (top left of your screen), selecting About This Mac, and clicking the More Info button.
Fire up the app and click on the Memory tab. You'll get a visual representation of how much memory you have and how it's installed. There is a rectangle for each memory slot, and each rectangle will be labeled "Empty", or with the capacity of the chip inserted.
For even more info, go to File-> System Report.
In the new window that appears, click Memory in the list on the left. It will show you the number of slots and what's in each one. In the below screenshot, there is one empty bank. It's the one with the Size, Type, Speed, and Status as Empty.
If none of yours say empty, you've got something in every slot.
Note that if you have an older version of OS X than Lion, you won't have the visual representation. You can open System Profiler (/Applications/Utilities) and follow the directions from the second half of this answer.
For starters, OS X doesn't have the silly 64/32-bit dichotomy that Windows and Linux do. For most purposes, you can consider recent versions of OS X to be both 32- and 64-bit at the same time. The limiting factor in almost all cases of upgrading Mac RAM is the hardware chipset.
For your Mac mini 4,1: my copy of Mactracker says that the maximum RAM is 8GB. Your five-gig setup should work fine.
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Best Answer
You need to find out what RAM your computer is capable of handling before you just start putting RAM into it, even if the speeds are the same, it's never to much trouble to be careful and do a bit of research to make sure things go smoothly.
Thankfully there are a lot of websites that have already tested these things for you so that you don't make any mistakes. I usually go to:
http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx
They have a system scanner service that will scan your system and check your settings, it will redirect you to a page where you can buy RAM, you don't have to obviously, but it will show you all the RAM configurations that your system supports. It will let you know the max RAM capacity, if you don't see 4GB as an option, then it doesn't support it.
If you don't want to use the scanner you can also just input your make model year and cpu to get the same results, though the scanner is usually more accurate if you aren't sure which machine is yours. They do tests to make sure the RAM is compatible and list all the speeds and configurations for the RAM so you know which ones to get. Make sure everything matches up before hand.
Knowing these things will help you find out if the RAM you have or are about to purchase will work so that you don't waste your time. I hope this information helps you out.