MOTUnation.com

I've been afraid to buy memory for my new 2017 iMac until I can successfully open the memory slot, which I didn't try until today as I had such a strongly tethered setup but today I needed to rearrange things to make way for the new OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock.

I tried everything in the house, but couldn't get into the slit and/or couldn't get it to budge. Of course I didn't want to use much force, without full confidence I was going about it correctly.

Do we have to go to the Apple Store to do this? I hope not, as they probably only allow using uber-expensive Apple memory.

Many videos online...

https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideo ... 4late_mem/

I don't have one but it looks like a very firm hinge.

I had a feeling that might have been a latch release button, but was afraid to press it too hard in case it would break. Good thing I didn't try any harder to pry the panel loose directly then! But I definitely didn't use enough pressure on the latch release button.

A few months back, I had seen a not-so-helpful video at another site, so the one at OWC is welcome and I hadn't found that one earlier for some reason. It can be tricky to find stuff at OWC as direct traversal of the site doesn't always find the same pages as internal or external searches.

I'll watch memory prices the next few weeks to see if they come down. They've been relatively stable (i.e. extremely high) for a half year so far. I'd be out $340 if I did it today. Ouch.

Oh, the reason I didn't find the tutorial earlier is that I looked ONLY at the new 2017 iMac page. Even last night while debugging issues with the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, I couldn't re-find the product page that included the links for drivers; just the description page, and no way to get there from here. So the OWC site definitely is missing some navigation links!

I did a Google search and it came up about 4th. A few were really bad and didn't describe the match as well. OWC rocks!

I'd be out $340 if I did it today. Ouch.

Still, it's half the price of buying it pre-installed with your iMac.

Double-Ouch!

Glad you got it figured out.

Yep, it's often easier to find things through a general external web search than assuming it's easy to get there on the site itself. OWC isn't the only site for which this is the case.

If I can get to a level of confidence that the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock can be "tricked" into not removing its connection at the most inopportune times, I may order the memory upgrade soon. Otherwise, I may just consider this iMac to be a stop-gap until the next Mac Pro's are released.

Do you let your iMac sleep other than just the display? Have you disabled App Nap globally?

I don't, but it puts drives to sleep anyway, in spite of having disabled AppNap globally, but I just realized that this has to be done after every update and I may have forgotten after the most recent one.

It is definitely true though, that the direct USB connections on the back NEVER go to sleep if the attached disc is actually in use; whereas anything attached via a dock can go to sleep even during disc partitioning (as happened last night) or steady disc copying.

I definitely want to do the memory upgrade soon though, because I can tell it is a limiting factor at the moment -- though not crippling across-the-board.

The next time I record multi-track (multi-mic) bass or guitar, I expect to learn whether I need to keep my PCIe SSD blade from OWC and buy an external host for it, or whether I can go ahead and sell it. But I might not be able to make that full evaluation until after a memory upgrade.

Due to sickness and other unexpected interruptions, I haven't been doing multi-channel overdubs recently; just MIDI-based rendering. So any issues of disc access time when recording atop a backing that hasn't been combined to a single two-track mix-down yet, are not yet known to me. It is my hope that I won't need to use the SSD for project recording, and that only the memory upgrade is essential for getting more out of this iMac than my 2010 MacPro.