Advice on buying new iMac please

[ElCap]

Hi all, just joined the forum hoping to get some advice.

I am looking to buy a new iMac, the 21.5" model. My use will be pretty light, web browsing, emails, photo editing with lightroom, playing poker and listening to music.

I have an LG monitor I would like to use as a second monitor with it.

I am thinking of buying either the model with the lesser graphics card and updating the memory to 16gb and also updating to a fusion drive or buying the model with the better graphics card(not sure if needed, might be the better option for running 2 monitors?) and just updating the memory to 16gb leaving the storage as a serial ATA drive.

I think i5 will be fine for what I need so no need to update to i7

Any advice would be very much appreciated, thanks

 

[bsdbee]

Hi all, just joined the forum hoping to get some advice.

I am looking to buy a new iMac, the 21.5" model. My use will be pretty light, web browsing, emails, photo editing with lightroom, playing poker and listening to music.

I have an LG monitor I would like to use as a second monitor with it.

I am thinking of buying either the model with the lesser graphics card and updating the memory to 16gb and also updating to a fusion drive or buying the model with the better graphics card(not sure if needed, might be the better option for running 2 monitors?) and just updating the memory to 16gb leaving the storage as a serial ATA drive.

I think i5 will be fine for what I need so no need to update to i7

Any advice would be very much appreciated, thanks

I think you are spot on. 21.5" would be ideal. I would recommend that you go with a Fusion Drive version. The entry level model graphics card should be more then sufficient for your needs. You do know that the 21.5 inch model dont have a straight forward way to upgrade the RAM. I think 8gb should be just fine. RAM's are comparatively more expensive these days and i dont see any value in spending more to add some RAM, which you would probably never use.

 

[ElCap]

Thank you for the reply

I forgot to ask about the RAM, would it be overkill and a bit of a waste of cash if I did upgrade to 16gb. All the better if I can save some £'s if 8gb should be plenty for me.

So basically the lowest level iMac upgraded with a fusion drive should be fine for me.

 

[LostSoul80]

Thank you for the reply

I forgot to ask about the RAM, would it be overkill and a bit of a waste of cash if I did upgrade to 16gb. All the better if I can save some £'s if 8gb should be plenty for me.

So basically the lowest level iMac upgraded with a fusion drive should be fine for me.

It surely does sound like 16 GB would be overkill for your use.
Unless you run multiple virtual machines at the same time or do some heavy photo and video editing, 8 GB will be more than you'll ever need.

 

[ElCap]

Thank you, that settled that then and makes up my mind to go 8gb.

Is there much difference between i5 and i7 and when would you start to notice the difference ?

 

[TjeuV]

Thank you, that settled that then and makes up my mind to go 8gb.

Is there much difference between i5 and i7 and when would you start to notice the difference ?

i7 only comes in when you're multithreading so no, you won't notice any difference. i5 processor will be plenty good.

 

[Xer]

Thank you, that settled that then and makes up my mind to go 8gb.

Is there much difference between i5 and i7 and when would you start to notice the difference ?

I would actually recommend getting 16GB of ram, you never know when you'll need more ram.
[Edited, forgot the the 21.5" requires tearing apart the whole computer to upgrade ram].

As far as the fusion drive, it would be an overkill and too overpriced.
I am a very big multi-tasker (I develop for Web and iOS) and use the i5 processor, couldn't be happier, no need for i7 for your uses.

 

[ElectronGuru]

SSDs are so good now, avoid/replace HDDs if at all possible.

 

[biggiet4jets]

I know the benchmarks are significantly better with the higher end 21.5" model than the base with iris pro graphics. I do everything the OP author does. Would those graphics be enough to support me thru 4 years of use? I also am buying a new iMac soon and don't exactly know what model to get and options.