More RAM drains battery quicker?

[edmelvins]

I have the latest MBP 13'' with 4GB RAM 2,4ghz. I'm thinking to upgrade my RAM to 8GB (2x4GB) by using the memory provided by OWC or Corsair and to upgrade my HDD from 250gb to 500gb 7200rpm.

I was wondering if it will affect my battery life significantly? Has anyone tried this before? How fast is the speed difference?

 

[elshaneo]

It might affect battery performance a very tiny bit that there's no way you'll find out it makes a difference at all.

The best upgrade you can go for is to get at least a 240Gb Solid State Drive instead of the HDD and RAM upgrades. I can promise you that your Macbook will be so fast that you'll be amazed !!!

I can confirm that I'm totally amazed since I recently got the G.Skill Phoenix Pro 240Gb SSD, my Macbook is like at least 7 times faster overall than before 🙂

 

[ruby.monkey]

The uprated HDD might increase power consumption. The memory upgrade on its own shouldn't have any noticeable adverse effect, and may even improve matters by reducing the need to write to the HDD.

 

[kully]

As Double Negative and ruby.monkey said - you won't notice anything with the extra RAM.

You will notice something if you upgrade a 5400rpm HDD to a 7200rpm drive (check what your old one is).

I'd disagree that you need at least a 240GB SSD. I have a 120GB drive in my laptop and it makes it nice and zippy and allows me to keep everything I need to work with whilst extras are kept externally on a backed up HDD.

 

[Ronald M]

You need a decent, not superb processor. Photoshop uses uses 2 GB ram with PSD, perhaps more with TIFF. That is all it can use.

Unless you are working with 18/24 MP images or doing a process like a surface mask, do not expect a hugh improvement in speed.

The memory went bad on my 13" bare bones MB that I use for travel. I replaced it with 4 GB mem and saw no difference i performance. It ran decently with PS with the one GB stock.

I agree, to get the most you need a solid state drive and as much RAM as your version of PS is designed to use. More does not help.

The other thing you must do is keep the HHD clean. After 50% I move all files to storage with three one terabit redundent external drives. If I need to go back, it is easy to pick a file off an external. Clean will do more for you than all kinds of of other manipulations because the HHD does not have to mechanically hunt around. Same principle a solid state hard drive.

 

[edmelvins]

Thanks guys for the input and I will check on that SSD (thanks @elhaneo!). Do u guys have any recommendation for memory (RAM) brand and type? I was thinking about Corsair or OWC. And yes I'm planning to upgrade everything on my mac to be able to edit videos and raw files on CS5 from my 5D flawlessly since my PC is totally incapable of doing the job for the time being.

Oh, I heard that it's unwise to install a 7200 rpm on a macbook and there's not much difference anyway.

 

[Rogier]

More ram can decrease the power consumption of your laptop since the drive doesn't have to work that hard to store and retrieve temporary files.
Photoshop is a memory hog the the more you have the better. Run "activity monitor" (you can find it in in Applications - Utilities) and observe how much available memory (green slice in pie-chard) is taken by PS while working on your images.
An SSD drive will dramatically increase your user experience and somewhat consume less power.
As for 5200 vs 7200 rpm drives in a Macbook. It doesn't matter other than a bit better read/write speed. What does matter is the drive size. Up to 320 GB will last ok, but I see the 500Gb and up fail much quicker.

OWC (www.macsales.com) has the best SSD drives for the money and also good RAM. An other source is www.crucial.com.

I am using a Mac Mini (server) with a 60GB SSD drive and 8GB RAM from OWC. Its my most responsive machine so far (owned Mac Pro, MB Pro etc etc)

Hope this helps,


Rogier