This behaviour led me to upgrade my 2014 5K iMac to an M1 Mac mini. Turns out it wasn’t quite enough for me and I knew why: using iStat Menu I could see that 16GB RAM was insufficient (I had 32GB RAM in my iMac). Using two displays was sub-par as well. So now I have an M1Max MBPro, which is more than I need: CPU load never exceeds 50% (except when ripping BluRay discs), GPU load is similar (outside gaming, but that’s to be expected), and RAM use shows me that 24GB would be a sweet spot. In other words, an M2Pro Mac mini would do me a treat. Except there’s no reason to get one yet. I will at some point switch over; the laptop is a compromise for me and one that I hate. But when I bought the MBPro the Studio didn’t exist and the mini only offered the base M1 chip… (I’m waiting on Thunderbolt “next” or 5 or whatever Intel will call it… that bandwidth will drive any display I can conceive of wanting/existing for the next decade or so)
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
27" iMac 2017 to Mac Mini M2 Pro - any benefit?
- Thread starter Sal Collaziano
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I was in a similar boat and just moved to SSD external drive for booting. The performance jumped dramatically and I've postponed upgrading for at least another 12 months. Do love that screen estate and sticking with it as long as I can
Fishrrman
macrumors Nehalem
OP:
Do you really, really need 4tb of SSD storage?
Reason I asked: price (which is high).
Think about what you keep on the internal drive, and how often you access it.
If there's a lot of stuff that "just sits there", seldom-accessed, why not "move it off" to an external drive?
Do you really, really need 4tb of SSD storage?
Reason I asked: price (which is high).
Think about what you keep on the internal drive, and how often you access it.
If there's a lot of stuff that "just sits there", seldom-accessed, why not "move it off" to an external drive?
I'd just upgrade to the Studio setup now and deal with the wait to receive it, but I'm assuming the M2 chip will be available too quickly after it's delivered. I'll either wait for the new Studio or perhaps go with the 16" MBP fully loaded... I just wish there were a new 27" or larger iMac.
Not sure if I could off-load my iPhoto stuff to save to an external drive INSTEAD of the hard drive. If that's possible, than I really don't need 4TB. I do like the idea of just having everything I need in one package without having more connections to external items than I need. I need three monitors so that's already a lot of connections, plus two external backup drives.
I would consider sticking a SSD inside the iMac. Its still a great machine. The fusion drive its what's wrong with it.
Mini Pro is great, im also using a Bto one as my main machine now but I think that its a shame to change the iMac just because the storage is slow.
Mini Pro is great, im also using a Bto one as my main machine now but I think that its a shame to change the iMac just because the storage is slow.
I'd love to do that but I have little doubt I'd find a way to destroy everything by opening it up and messing around inside.
Just find someone skilful or a repair shop to do it for you. You can put a 2tb or 4 tb SATA SSD inside. The problem is glueing it together after the upgrade. I'm sure you can find sb to do it for you.
Maybe I'll give this a shot. Worst case scenario and something goes wrong, everything is always backed up and I can just use my 2021 MBP M1 while I wait for a new computer to arrive.
So I'd follow these instructions:
And while I'm at it, I might as well upgrade RAM:
I figure this will be like having a new computer... And I imagine I would just restore from my most recent backup to get back where I was before doing the upgrade, minus the slow speed...
Last edited:
ovbacon
Suspended
Yes you can put all your iPhoto or any other photo library on an external drive. I have my photos library and my Lightroom library on an external ssd.
JacquesleMac
macrumors regular
I did this a few days ago with a spare 27-inch late 2015 iMac, whose 3TB fusion drive was slowly dying. A local independent fixer removed the screen (trickier with later models) and replaced the Fusion HD with a 4TB SATA SSD. He then cloned the backup of the HD I'd made via Carbon Copy Cloner to the new SSD. Solved all the spinning beachball problems and increased speed. Cost: £210 for SSD drive, £20 for screen tape £150 for the work = £380 (approx $460). A lot cheaper than a new Mac Mini + Studio Display. Should give me a couple of years life out of the Mac, and if/when it dies I still have the 4TB SSD to play with...
For the record, my local Apple Store told me this could not be done. It can.
ovbacon
Suspended
Your local Apple store told you that it wasn't possible to swap out the HDD for an SSD? Or did they say that Apple can't/won't do it?
TallManNY
macrumors 601
You got 32gb of RAM already. I seriously doubt lack of RAM is causing any issue. But you can pop open activity monitor or take a look at the memory pressure. Look at the bar, if it is green, then you have absolutely no memory issue. Do not pay attention the the RAM being "used up". RAM is supposed to be filled up. Though with 32gb of RAM, you might not even see that part as being used up.
Yes the M2 Pro will be faster. But honestly it will be the SSD drive that will drive a lot of the speed improvement. That will blow away the Fusion Drive.
It will cost a bundle though to get the Apple Studio display at the same time. But you might have to do that if you are used to the iMac display. I note though that you are speccing out a ton of upgrades in both CPU, RAM at 32gb, and the 4TB drive. Almost all of that is somewhat wasted money versus the base model unless you have specific use cases that can benefit from each of those items. But maybe the total cost doesn't phase you.
I bought a kit and will attempt this tomorrow or next Sunday. I need to make sure I have a whole day to take my time and get it right, so hopefully one of these Sundays. Assuming I'm just going to replace the drive, boot up, install the operating system and then import everything from my latest backup (CCC as well).
Well, I have 96gb arriving on Monday, so... I might as well just use it. My "bar" IS green, though. So it'll probably be way overkill. But, I don't know. I don't like returning things. 😛 Maybe I should just see how things go with only replacing the drive...
So I went ahead with the SSD upgrade and it made a big difference. I'll probably stick with my 36gb of ram and just leave things as is. The only thing I'm a little stuck at is with every reboot, I need to hold the OPTION key down to select the drive I want to boot with. It still shows my old hard drive as an option. Any advice on how to get around that and/or have my computer forget that drive?
Also, I have Carbon Copy Cloner (which is what I used to clone my original hard drive to the new SSD) and I'm assuming it'll just pick up where I left off with nightly backups. I have reassigned a backup from the new SSD drive so I guess I'll see if that goes well when I get to my computer in the morning. Wondering if maybe I'll need to delete the backup drive and start over. It would be nice if it just worked with the new drive since it has all the same files and folders...
Anyway, if anyone has input on how to get the computer to boot normally with the new drive, please let me know. Thank you for all the great advice thus far...
Also, I have Carbon Copy Cloner (which is what I used to clone my original hard drive to the new SSD) and I'm assuming it'll just pick up where I left off with nightly backups. I have reassigned a backup from the new SSD drive so I guess I'll see if that goes well when I get to my computer in the morning. Wondering if maybe I'll need to delete the backup drive and start over. It would be nice if it just worked with the new drive since it has all the same files and folders...
Anyway, if anyone has input on how to get the computer to boot normally with the new drive, please let me know. Thank you for all the great advice thus far...
The following link includes a section for setting default boot drive https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlp1034/mac
Fishrrman
macrumors Nehalem
OP:
Go to the startup disk preference pane, and set the startup drive there.
Go to the startup disk preference pane, and set the startup drive there.
TallManNY
macrumors 601
Ha. Will the machine even support 96gb?!?! Well RAM doesn’t cost much and I hear you about returning stuff. I barely bother myself. It just goes in a junk box just in case I need it later. And I’ve got a feeling the journey here is about as important as the destination and that you are looking to tinker around in the machine, which I also appreciate. Good luck!
Thank you!
Thank you as well!
Not sure but I really didn't need it. The hard drive was my issue. If I had known it would have made such a big difference I'd have just purchased the SSD to begin with. What a game changer. 😛
I have a 2017 iMac i5 with 24GB and unlike the OP I need an additional machine to hand this onto a coworker, but am struggling to figure out how much memory i need in a Mac Mini M2 Pro, Apple's is seriously expensive and as its on the board can't add any later, so don't want to under spec, but also don't want to buy a higher spec if it remains unused.. While my memory is green, Activity Monitor tells me I use 20GB with 14GB for app memory. The biggest consumer is Mail, and my usage is similar to the OP, lots of email with multiple accounts and many browser windows using both Safari and Chrome, plus excel, a bit of word and some Photoshop, across multiple displays.. Was holding out for a new 27" iMac, like everyone else!, but as thats not on the horizon I'm reluctantly jumping to Mac Mini but as the M2 Pro is either 16GB or 32GB opts only, I'm not sure I can get away with the 16GB, but would also be nice to avoid the increased costs for the 32GB. 🤷🏻♂️ Your thoughts on this would be appreciated..
TallManNY
macrumors 601
This is a common confusion. MacOS (and any OS) is going to view RAM as a free resource and basically "use it up". So you will often (almost always) see nearly all your RAM used. That just means something got loaded into RAM and the reason is "it is there, RAM is fast, so let's use it". But this doesn't mean the OS is struggling to get access to RAM that it needs.
The pressure graph is what you want to look at. Try stressing your Mac out and see if you can get it into yellow or even red (Google apps and YouTube are great ways to do this because they are RAM hogs). If you can't get it to red (not yellow, that is really just a warning), then you can't get it into a RAM constrained scenario.
On my base M2 Pro I see 13 out of 16gb of RAM used right now. I'm still green and I'm always green in regular use. I may have a lot of Apps and browsers tabs open, but I just don't work with multi-GB files that need to get saved in RAM for me to work with them. I can get it yellow if I launch three YouTube tabs and start three videos at once. But obviously that is not something I would do except in a test. Note the Mac still works fine. And it still shows 13 out of 16gb being used, but the pressure is now yellow.
JacquesleMac
macrumors regular
Apologies for late response.
Apple said it was theoretically possible to swap drives, but that the removal of the monitor that would be necessitated to access the drive would almost certainly destroy said monitor (earlier models were easier apparently). Hence their claim that Apple would not do it (the machine being obsolete): and that an independent could not do it.
bici
macrumors newbie
My late 2012 iMac has just had a HD failure and is no longer booting up. I was about to purchase a MacMini M2 to replace it and look for a used thunderbolt monitor as i am on a budget. But today i came across a 27" iMac 5k (late 2017), 4.2 GHz i7, 1TB SSD, 24GB RAM (Radeon Pro 575 4 GB GPU) for 800$. Which sounds great after reading all your opinions herein. Another friend mentioned that he was not a fan of a M2 Mac Mini, and was mentioning that i should get a used Cylindrical Mac Pro which can run Monterey. I am not convinced on that choice. I would be interested in your comments and views. Thank-you.
So far I'm very happy with my 2017 27" iMac with the new SSD drive...