Mac Mini (late 2012) RAM Upgrade

I have been pushing back this long overdue upgrade but the time has now come to upgrade my main macOS machine – my Mac Mini (late 2012 model). I will now showcase the process I did to perform this upgrade.

Prior to the upgrade the machine had become almost unusable as load times and basic tasks became long chores as it ran into its biggest bottleneck – the stock 4GB RAM.

Disassembly

To get into these machines we will need to open it up and expose the RAM enclosure. Apple has kindly made this process an easy one with its sleek design. Simply twist the black base to click it into the unlocked position represented with a empty circle and remove (a filled in circle represents the locked position).

Removing and Inserting the new RAM

The RAM enclosure on this machine opens out to an angle of roughly 30 degrees to assist with this step. To then remove the first module you will need to unhook the gold clasps to spring it out. From here you simply remove both modules until you have freed them both.

With the RAM enclosure empty you now just need to carefully insert the new RAM modules in starting with the last one you removed. Ensure at this point that the RAM seats neatly and that the gold clasps secure back into place on each. This last process will lock them down and push it back into its flat position.

Performance and Summary

With the new RAM upgrade complete it was time to power back up to ensure it survives past the boot process and into the OS (the first good sign of a clean RAM install). First impressions on the RAM I choose was surprising. Basic usage of the machine had returned to its full glory and actually felt faster with the extra headroom. No longer do I have to micro-manage what apps are eating up the RAM before launching another app. No more hangs as the hard drive had to compensate for the lack of RAM space (especially bad as the HDD inside mine is just a normal mechanical one running at 5200rpm).

With such an increase in performance from such a simply upgrade I have not felt it necessary to benchmark it as the experience so far has been so impressive. If there is an upgrade you can do now on your machine to improve performance I will always recommend upgrading the RAM as usually it will always surprise you with the difference.