256gb SSD or 1TB fusion drive in new iMac?

macmee

macmee

Suspended
Assuming I buy the new 5k iMac, is there a big difference between a 256GB SSD or a fusion drive in performance?

I have a 2010 iMac now with a HDD. Whilst the 2010 iMac is crazy fast, the HDD makes it painfully slow.

This turns me off of getting a fusion drive. Would the 256gb SSD be much faster? I could just get an external HD if I need storage.
 
macmee said:
Assuming I buy the new 5k iMac, is there a big difference between a 256GB SSD or a fusion drive in performance?

I have a 2010 iMac now with a HDD. Whilst the 2010 iMac is crazy fast, the HDD makes it painfully slow.

This turns me off of getting a fusion drive. Would the 256gb SSD be much faster? I could just get an external HD if I need storage.
Click to expand...

Unless you do heavy I/O operations (video editing, rendering, etc), I don't think you'd see much of a difference.

In raw performance, the 256GB SSD is much faster (especially the Samsung variant).

Fusion:
300-400MB/s write, 700MB/s read.

Samsung SM0256F SSD:
650-680MB/s write, 720MB/s read.

SanDisk SD0256F SSD:
550MB/s write, 700MB/s read.

It's a lottery between the SD and SM variants if you go for a 256GB SSD. I got lucky on my 21.5" iMac and got a Samsung. IRL, I doubt you'd be able to see much of a performance difference.

512GB and 1TB are Samsung-only.
 
OurDarkness said:
Is this a fact for riMacs too?

Also, are the Samsung 512GB and 1024GB SSDs connected with 4 pins instead of 2? (I am not sure they are actually *pins*)
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Yes, it's true for all PCIe SSDs across the entire Mac range, except for the Mac Pro, where it's all Samsung XP941-based ones.

Only 1TBs have a 4-lane channel (in the rMBPs, at least). The nMPs have 4-lanes regardless of capacity.
 
yjchua95 said:
Yes, it's true for all PCIe SSDs across the entire Mac range, except for the Mac Pro, where it's all Samsung XP941-based ones.

Only 1TBs have a 4-lane channel (in the rMBPs, at least). The nMPs have 4-lanes regardless of capacity.
Click to expand...

Thank you!
 
Never ever ever never ever put a spinning disk in an iMac.
It´s right infront of your face spinning at the same height as your ears.
Horrible, just horrible spinning noise.
And it will die. :)
 
Wahlstrm said:
Never ever ever never ever put a spinning disk in an iMac.
It´s right infront of your face spinning at the same height as your ears.
Horrible, just horrible spinning noise.
And it will die. :)
Click to expand...

Really? I have an HDD in my MBP (granted, not at ear-level), and I've never heard it. The fans are far louder.

Speaking of which, is an iMac quieter than an MBP?
 
This is very interesting. Do you have read/write speeds for the 1TB SSD. Any reason other than cost not to go for the 1TB option?

yjchua95 said:
Yes, it's true for all PCIe SSDs across the entire Mac range, except for the Mac Pro, where it's all Samsung XP941-based ones.

Only 1TBs have a 4-lane channel (in the rMBPs, at least). The nMPs have 4-lanes regardless of capacity.
Click to expand...
 
Melodeath said:
Really? I have an HDD in my MBP (granted, not at ear-level), and I've never heard it. The fans are far louder.

Speaking of which, is an iMac quieter than an MBP?
Click to expand...

MBP usually has 5400rpm 2,5" drives that are small, slow and silent.
iMacs usually has 7200rpm 3,5" drives that are big, faster and a lot more noisy.

And the placement, high up and in front of you, just makes it worse.

If you never had a computer with all flash storage then you might not notice it that much but once you go all flash you can never go back.

I have two Macs right now (Air and Mini) and for 90% of the time they don´t make more noise than my iPad does = zero :)

I had an 2009 27" iMac for a while and the HDD was horrible, spinning up and down, up and down.. Even in sleep mode it would start spinning every now and then. And when they die, its a real pain to open up he imac and change it.. :)
 
Wahlstrm said:
MBP usually has 5400rpm 2,5" drives that are small, slow and silent.
iMacs usually has 7200rpm 3,5" drives that are big, faster and a lot more noisy.

And the placement, high up and in front of you, just makes it worse.

If you never had a computer with all flash storage then you might not notice it that much but once you go all flash you can never go back.

I have two Macs right now (Air and Mini) and for 90% of the time they don´t make more noise than my iPad does = zero :)

I had an 2009 27" iMac for a while and the HDD was horrible, spinning up and down, up and down.. Even in sleep mode it would start spinning every now and then. And when they die, its a real pain to open up he imac and change it.. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. The HDD in my MBP is actually 7200 RPM, but yes it's 2.5". I didn't realize 3.5" desktop drives were louder. A practically silent computer sounds amazing (pun intended). I do audio recording, and have had more than my fair share of audio takes maimed by my MBP fans lol
 
Melodeath said:
Thanks for the info. The HDD in my MBP is actually 7200 RPM, but yes it's 2.5". I didn't realize 3.5" desktop drives were louder. A practically silent computer sounds amazing (pun intended). I do audio recording, and have had more than my fair share of audio takes maimed by my MBP fans lol
Click to expand...

The iMac hard drives are so quiet anyway, you'd have to really strain to hear them. And if you have any ambient sound, they're for all intents and purposes silent. An external disk (e.g. my 3TB Thunderbolt Seagate drive) is much, much louder.
 
Antipode2012 said:
This is very interesting. Do you have read/write speeds for the 1TB SSD. Any reason other than cost not to go for the 1TB option?
Click to expand...

On my 15" rMBP, the 1TB SSD goes around 1000 MB/s in both reads and writes.

On my 13" rMBP and both my 27" iMacs (non-retina and retina), the 512GB SSD goes around 720-750 MB/s in both reads and writes.

However, I don't notice any difference between them when doing work.
 
WilliamG said:
The iMac hard drives are so quiet anyway, you'd have to really strain to hear them. And if you have any ambient sound, they're for all intents and purposes silent. An external disk (e.g. my 3TB Thunderbolt Seagate drive) is much, much louder.
Click to expand...

So you are disagreeing with Wahlstrm, right? You feel the iMac is pretty much silent, even with an HDD.
 
Melodeath said:
So you are disagreeing with Wahlstrm, right? You feel the iMac is pretty much silent, even with an HDD.
Click to expand...

Yes, absolutely. When the hard drive spins up, it's occasionally audible, and then after it spins up its tone blends in with the fan in the system. I've had the best of both worlds, since I have a the 1TB Fusion disk, and my OS installed on an external Thunderbolt SSD. So the fusion disk hard disk portion is not spinning most of the time. I do notice when it spins up if it's deathly quiet in the room, but otherwise not.
 
I got the Retina iMac today and went with the fusion drive, debated between fusion or ssd, after spending hours trying to restore backup from time machine, started having some partition issues with fusion and in the end just returned it by evening as found the iMac to be slow copying files and at the same time there was sound from the drives running, just went ahead and put an order in for 1tb ssd. My worry was that after spending so much on an iMac would have always doubted speed, specially when paying so much for the iMac, I think going the ssd way is better.
 
Effusion01 said:
I got the Retina iMac today and went with the fusion drive, debated between fusion or ssd, after spending hours trying to restore backup from time machine, started having some partition issues with fusion and in the end just returned it by evening as found the iMac to be slow copying files and at the same time there was sound from the drives running, just went ahead and put an order in for 1tb ssd. My worry was that after spending so much on an iMac would have always doubted speed, specially when paying so much for the iMac, I think going the ssd way is better.
Click to expand...

Precisely. SSD's all the way, hybrid is/was a cheap marketing thing to save $$$. Fusion drives suck.

Next week, I will try to express myself more concisely :)
 
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