2009 C2D iMac for Lightroom?

[fivebucksemac]

Hi there,
I want to buy a cheap used mac for Adobe Lightroom (5,6 or CC. I would use it for 10MP RAW files from a Canon 40D) and I found an iMac with these specs:

iMac early 2009 24 inch
2,66 GHz C2D
4GB DDR3 (please tell me if it makes sense to add more RAM)
GeForce 9400 w/ 256MB RAM

I also found this MacBook 6,1 from late 2009 as an alternative:

2,26 GHz C2D
2GB DDR3 (I would upgrade to 4 gigs)
I dunno which GPU

Also please tell me if I can use an even older mac for Lightroom. My budget is 250€ and I would like to have some money left for upgrades.

Greetings from Germany

 

[EugW]

That iMac is not compatible with Sierra or High Sierra. You can use older Macs, but they would not have official support for High Sierra. Some specific models can be upgraded using a patched installer though.

If you upgrade, I would recommend upgrading to 8 GB RAM + SSD. 8 GB RAM is about 70-100€.

 

[kschendel]

The early 2009 iMac is workable, but only if you add RAM to 8 Gb, and replace the hard disk with SSD. With those changes I think it would be OK, if not especially fast. I'm not sure it's worth the effort unless you are getting it almost for free.

The "unsupported Macs" wiki post in the Sierra forum indicates that Sierra will in fact run on an early 2009.