2020 iMac Teardown Reveals Internal Changes and Similarities

[hagjohn]

When Apple Silicon comes to iMac, people will love the thinness, but will complain when the RAM is not upgradeable

I would rather have a machine that could bring out its full power, then have a thin machine that sits on a desk that is weak.

 

[ambientdaw]

I have a 2015 iMac 27", and never heard the fan come on once in the entire time I've owned it, and that's using Handbrake, Blender, and most Adobe apps.

What are your specs? I have a top of the line 4GHz i7 with Radeon R9 M395 2 GB and 24 GB ram. Fan would run loud when rendering some audio, but during its 3rd and now 4th year of life the fan is on A LOT even though I have had it cleaned twice (and very recently) 🙁.

 

[Westside guy]

Wait... you can upgrade the RAM on this machine?

Some engineer's head is gonna roll for that egregious oversight...

 

[Unregistered 4U]

the logic board must still be PCIe 3.0!

Intel doesn’t yet support PCIe 3, so yes.

When Apple Silicon comes to iMac, people will love the thinness, but will complain when the RAM is not upgradeable

I think people... like the general public that you see walking into and out of Apple Stores with new systems... will love the systems as they have for years, with half of the people buying Macs having never bought a Mac before. Folks that AREN’T buying Macs will complain when the RAM is not upgradable 🙂

 

[dwaltwhit]

I didn’t realize how easy ram upgrades were theses days! I have an ’09 27” at work and a ‘11 21” at home. SSDs and ram bumps have kept them running pretty smooth.

 

[amartinez1660]

Kind of a shame about the fan. These are high priced units regardless of config, and the idea that the better cooling fan was too expensive to be included is curious.

But is it all the same even with spec out versions? Like with the 16GB 5700XT, also no fan?

 

[DeepIn2U]

Clean tear down. very nicely done. Looks like more room for expanded memory on the mobo. I can imagine how much more space will be freed up with Apple Silicon (ASi) in the future of an iMac where the majority of the motherboard space will be taken up by RAM, SSD, necessary controllers and mostly by IO ports.

 

[ilikewhey]

Yes because Apple likely overlooked this when engineering the new iMacs 🤦‍♂️

not the first time, every mbp with i9 or 8 core has heat issues. apple been setting trends of form over function. the mac pro is the only one in the lineup that has a proper cooling.

 

[Cape Dave]

One word: Cooling. One more word: Noise. We'll see. Sure looks like a small CPU heat sink to me!

 

[Abazigal]

not the first time, every mbp with i9 or 8 core has heat issues. apple been setting trends of form over function. the mac pro is the only one in the lineup that has a proper cooling.

Which probably explains why Apple is switching to ARM. Intel processors don’t allow them to make laptops as thin and light as they want, and I can imagine how frustrating it gets.

 

[yurc]

Bummer. At this point they should adopt iMac Pro twin large fans configuration, how Apple can think those tiny blower able to cool down 10th gen Intel hot chips.

 

[haddy]

But is it all the same even with spec out versions? Like with the 16GB 5700XT, also no fan?

Yes I, also, would like to see if the cooling system is different in those machines with the 5700XT.

 

[iBluetooth]

I’m still using my 27 inch retina 5K iMac that I bought in 2014 and it still is pretty fast

It’s nice that Apple made one last Intel iMac but I am going to hold out for the redesigned iMac with Apple Silicon that will probably come out next year

I think we will see another iMac27. Why is everyone assuming otherwise as apple said the transition will take some time and that they will support Intel Macs. The transition for iMac27 isn't expected until after a year so the Intel mac will be sold for next 3 years.

 

[Woochoo]

...BUT, this 2020 iMac 27" is completely obsolete as from the SSD read write test results I have seen online (around the 2K mark only) the logic board must still be PCIe 3.0!

...

When it was announced that they would all have SSDs, I rejoiced, but with a 2014 motherboard like that, what guys, IS the point?

They just want to offer a last Intel refresh before Apple Silicon to offer another option to users, not a top notch long lasting computer. The PCIe 4.0, better thermals (due to a much lower TDP SoC), a new design with thinner bezels, etc. will be put on their new Apple Silicon iMac. Putting all the good new stuff for their last Intel computer would be like shooting their feet.

 

[HiVolt]

I have a 2015 iMac 27", and never heard the fan come on once in the entire time I've owned it, and that's using Handbrake, Blender, and most Adobe apps.

Yeah, because your CPU is cooking at its max TDP. Apple always prioritizes low noise over better cooling.

 

[Westside guy]

Why is everyone assuming otherwise as apple said the transition will take some time and that they will support Intel Macs.

Apple will say whatever it needs to in order to keep selling their current machines - I wouldn't read too much into their marketing statements.

 

[Marli]

I have a 2015 iMac 27", and never heard the fan come on once in the entire time I've owned it, and that's using Handbrake, Blender, and most Adobe apps.

Maybe its not working, but more likely the system is just throttling down to not create the heat in the first place. On mine I can get the fan to come on pretty quick when rendering out video, and Im no using the internal drive at all, so no heat from that.

 

[ilikewhey]

Which probably explains why Apple is switching to ARM. Intel processors don’t allow them to make laptops as thin and light as they want, and I can imagine how frustrating it gets.

probably yeah, intel's hot processor is getting in apple's vision of thin and light computer, i welcome it since it brings longer battery and probably cheaper laptops.

 

[RossH51]

Intel doesn’t yet support PCIe 3, so yes.

I think people... like the general public that you see walking into and out of Apple Stores with new systems... will love the systems as they have for years, with half of the people buying Macs having never bought a Mac before. Folks that AREN’T buying Macs will complain when the RAM is not upgradable 🙂

According to this site ( https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-pro-5500-xt.c3664 ) this and all the new cards are PCIe 4.

 

[mackme1]

I’m still using my 27 inch retina 5K iMac that I bought in 2014 and it still is pretty fast

It’s nice that Apple made one last Intel iMac but I am going to hold out for the redesigned iMac with Apple Silicon that will probably come out next year

I am using the same 2014 5K iMac with 4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 and 32GB RAM. It was starting to get a little slow along with some really long boot times so I bought an external Thunderbolt 3 drive and a 2.0TB Samsung 970 EVO and I now boot from that.
Read/Write speeds are typically 1250/1280MBs (the 2014 iMac is actually Thunderbolt 2) and it absolutely rocks along for what I use it for.
It handles Final Cut Pro easily and I couldn't be happier. I have no intentions of upgrading until the screen or something else non repairable inside dies.
I use the old 3TB fusion drive as internal storage and also have the portability option of taking the Thunderbolt drive and booting it from another Mac elsewhere.

I did it awhile ago (and correct me if I am wrong) but I am pretty sure the Read/Write speeds using Thunderbolt 2 are far greater than the Read/Write speeds of an upgraded internal SSD.
That being said you get a cost effective upgrade without having to pull your computer to bits and should it get stolen, odds are the drive may get left behind.
Highly recommend you do this upgrade to any older iMac and it will breath new life into the computer.

 

[Wanted797]

it seems pretty silly that they didn’t use that’s extra space for more cooling

Makes sense to me. This was a spec bump probably only done so their last intel iMac has the latest technology for a few years to come for those customers who need intel (Universities using boot camp?).

They’re not going to invest anymore money in this old design than they need to when they likely have a nice new design ready for their own silicon machines.

 

[nicho]

This is pathetic

As is taking conjecture by a third party as fact... not to mention getting worked up over it.

 

[jasonefmonk]

If increased cooling was necessary, Apple would have implemented it.

I have a 2015 iMac 27", and never heard the fan come on once in the entire time I've owned it, and that's using Handbrake, Blender, and most Adobe apps.

Not to be rude but that is truly absurd. Take any 1080p video file, like a tv show or movie, and re-encode it using an Apple preset, you’ll get an H.264 file and a bunch of fan noise. I have a top of the line Late-2015 5K iMac and it has been flawless, but the quad core runs between 3.6-3.9GHz doing those encodes instead of the 4.0GHz the chip is specc’d at, and it certainly makes a lot of noise doing it. I’ve ran it for 15 days uninterrupted running Handbrake, it can handle it, just not as gracefully as an iMac Pro.

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

Yay, soldered on SSDs. Just what every user asked for. Sure there is an area for expansion, but when your primary SSD dies, its a juicy entire new motherboard for you you. Cha CHING $$$$

 

[dogslobber]

The complaint about its case styling is so dumb, as its appearance with that great screen is WHY people buy them, and I know, as I have two older models still going strong, BUT, this 2020 iMac 27" is completely obsolete as from the SSD read write test results I have seen online (around the 2K mark only) the logic board must still be PCIe 3.0!, and ANY recent AMD board at PCIe 4.0 is going to be (and they are!) more than double the read-write speed of this machine. SSDs in AMD machines run over 4200Mb/s write speeds WITHOUT being fitted as raid in a sonnet or something PCIE card. And the benefits of PCIe4.0 extend throughout the motherboards, such that only the Thunderbolt 3 missing from them makes you wish you had a Mac.
My chief reason to upgrade from my old Trashcan 12 core Mac Pro 6,1 is therefore gone, as, if I upgrade my 1Tb SSD (still at a lowly 800Mb/s) I can get to go at 2K as well. And yes, I have checked with OWC, so I may do just that.

Do we know what CPU microarchitecture these 10th gen actually are? From what I see, the 10th gen are all currently PCIE v3 but the Tiger Lake chips being announced next week by Intel are PCIE v4.0. It's not clear to me that Apple would get access to the newer chips given they're moving to their shipping their own ARM chip based systems from November.