3rd party Mini memory

[Baron Munchausen]

I see the Mini is DDR333 PC2700.

Apple sells 1GB for £250+VAT

I have seen the above as a single card going for £70+VAT.

Not being a perpetual memory upgrader, are there any gotchas?

[Luca]

The only gotcha would be that sometimes, third-party memory can be lower quality, which will occasionally result in instability and crashes when used in a Mac (Macs tend to be more picky about RAM than most PCs). What brand is it?

I'd recommend Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, and Viking as "for sure" choices. I also know that "Kingmax" (not to be confused with Kingston) sells some inexpensive 1 GB SODIMMs that don't work properly in PowerBooks, so I'd stay away from that brand even though I've had no problems with my non-Mac computers using Kingmax RAM.

Anyway, at the very least, go with Crucial. They're one of the most expensive places to get RAM, but they're still nothing compared to Apple, and their quality is just as good if not better.

[Ebby]

I could have sworn I read PC3200 when I opened System Profiler at Macworld this morning.

[NosferaDrew]

The biggest gotcha seems to be that the RAM is not intended to be user-servicable.

As far as I can tell there is no easy access and the tech specs say:
You can upgrade your memory later by taking your system to an Apple Authorized Service Provider..

[BuonRotto]

That's the official party line, but on the side, you can change upgrade your own RAM on the thing pretty easily if you can get the case open. Sounds like that's not so easy, but I've read once or twice online now that you don't void your warranty by doing this.

[Baron Munchausen]

Wasn't the 'Pixar' iMac also Apple service centre upgradeable only out of fears for user skillsets?

Maybe they say this as the enclosure is not built for multiple opening nor 'idiot-stickered'/'ambulance chaser resistant'?

Luca - Crucial looks promising - thanks for the tips!

[Paul]

I could have sworn I read PC3200 when I opened System Profiler at Macworld this morning.
was it the stock 256 or upgraded to 512?

I'd be interested in someone's "old" 256 stick if they upgrade the mini if it will fit in my G5 iMac as a pair (needs to be PC3200 256 @ 400mhz)

[Luca]

The "Pixo" iMac had two RAM slots... interestingly, one was a standard DIMM slot and couldn't be accessed by the user, and the other was a user-accessible SODIMM slot. So it was upgradable, to a point. The last time Apple prevented the end user from upgrading the RAM was... hmm... well, a long time ago. There were only two Macs ever that were completely locked into their set amount of RAM - the 128k and the 512k. The next Mac after that, the Plus, had RAM slots and was technically upgradable to 4 MB. But I've worked on a Plus before and it's probably far more difficult (and dangerous) to upgrade a Mac Plus or SE than it is to upgrade the RAM in a mini.

Okay, I think the last Mac where it was really difficult to install any kind of RAM upgrade was probably the tray-loading iMac from 1998-1999. Other than that, I really can't think of any recent Macs that have been very difficult to upgrade like this.