hey all.

i am finally got paid and now am about to buy my imac, using edu on the website. i want to upgrade the hdd and the ram to 500/750 hdd , 2/3 gb ram.

do i pay apple for this or do i do it myself?

Upgrade the ram yourself to 2GB, 3GB is excessive (and expensive).

Don't know about the hdd. Seems hard to me in an iMac.

if you have the skill, and it doesn't require much, do it yourself and save some money. clockwork's ram is nice and cheap i believe. money saved could go towards a better gpu.

the RAM is a synch to install in an iMac. I would get Apple to install the hard drive - you will void the warranty if you do it yourself.

schweet thanks.

so ill just get the base ram installed. thanks guys

If you're interested see Darryl's Mac Manuals & Take-apart guides for instructions to replace the hard drive in the iMac. It's not super difficult, but i wouldn't do it on a machine that's still under warranty.
[edit]sorry i just checked the link. i have no idea why it's not working. it was fine on the weekend.

im not risking it.
yes i am handy, but not that handy.

personally i think buying upgrades from apple is a rip off .... you can easily buy a HD and RAM yourself and pay half the price they quote. is it possible to bring your own HD to them to install without voiding warranty and would they do it ?

Getting a stock machine is faster and safer, in the event that the machine doesn't work well out of the box.

I'm pretty sure an Apple Service Tech can install upgrades for you without any warranty being void. But the problem is Apple won't ship a machine without a hard drive / ram - and I highly doubt they'll let you send anything to install :P

i would hold off and wait (if you can as iMacs are way overdue for a revision) till WWDC is over and Apple announce the release of the 30" iMac ...

I think if it was a laptop or Mac Mini, they would install memory for a fee (but you can do these yourself... Mac Mini, not so much - the new Intel ones are a bit annoying from the looks of it).

So if you just want to upgrade ram, do it yourself (unless it is a Mac Mini... I would buy that BTO actually for peace of mind). When it comes to hard drives, I've only personally upgraded a MacBook and that was fairly easy. Just remember to have a Torx T8 screwdriver with you for the drive sled.

The only trouble with upgrading tha RAM yourself is that the imacs only ship with 2*512 or 2*1gb ram, not 1*1gb. So you would need to buy 2 1gb sticks in order to upgrade it yourself to 2gb.

2*1gb on apple store = $270
2*1gb streetwise = $278 +postage

Obviously you can sell the 2*512 that you take out from the imac - but how sought after is it? Is it a common sort of RAM that lots of people would want? How much would you get anyway? $100?

I was thinking of doing this in order to save a few bucks, but dont think it is worth my time.

I'd leave the iMac stock (ie 250gb HDD) upgrade the RAM yourself and buy something like this....
http://www.nexus.com.au/catalog/prod...roducts_id=868

It's about the same price as the 500gb HDD upgrade from Apple, with the added bonus that you also get to keep your 250gb HDD, giving you a total of 750gb! and you will have a multi port firewire/usb hub.

I bought a 320gb one of these about 5 months ago and partitioned the drive and use it as a backup/storage drive. It works fantastically well, and have had NO problems whatsoever.



(I have no affiliation with the linked site/product, I just think it's a great device.)