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Awesome wife bought me a new 2019 iMac with Fusion Drive. Should I go with SSD instead?

C

cannondale1974

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 4, 2011
37
8
Lexington, Ky.
Can't fault my wife, she did GOOD. Surprised me with a 27' iMac, best of the 3 choices and has a 2T Fusion drive. I'm a little concerned about the Fusion drive, mainly if it will be as fast and reliable given my needs. Don't do anything too intensive, mainly Lightroom editing and iMovie, will be doing more video editing in Premier Pro soon. I can return it and upgrade to the 1T SSD for $300 more or 2T SSD for $700 more. Your thoughts? Is it worth the extra $$?

FWIW: I have a 2010 27" iMac and it's still working pretty well (knock on wood) although it is showing it's age and pretty laggy at times.
 
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nice one, congrats.

you could do the ssd upgrade yourself, ive done a few older ones and more recently a 2011 one. You cna buy kits on ebay for $20 plus the cost of the ssd.

im picking up another 2017 tomorrow with a fusion drive and will be upgrading that to ssd at a later stage
 
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Would the 1T SSD be sufficient? I do pretty good dumping most everything to external hard drives.
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The Samurai said:
nice one, congrats.

you could do the ssd upgrade yourself, ive done a few older ones and more recently a 2011 one. You cna buy kits on ebay for $20 plus the cost of the ssd.

im picking up another 2017 tomorrow with a fusion drive and will be upgrading that to ssd at a later stage
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What's a 1 or 2T SSD on eBay cost? Is there a particular brand of SSD you recommend? You would go this route instead of simply ordering one with an original Apple SSD?
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The Hammer said:
Is it worth the extra? in a word:Yes.
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Would the 1T SSD be sufficient? I do pretty good dumping most everything to external hard drives.
 
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I just moved to a 1 TB external SSD because I couldn't stand the performance hit associated with having a nearly full fusion drive. Also-- if you plan to use bootcamp, a (large) built in SSD may make things easier, as you can't easily use an external SSD.
 
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cannondale1974 said:
Would the 1T SSD be sufficient? I do pretty good dumping most everything to external hard drives.
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What's a 1 or 2T SSD on eBay cost? Is there a particular brand of SSD you recommend? You would go this route instead of simply ordering one with an original Apple SSD?
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Would the 1T SSD be sufficient? I do pretty good dumping most everything to external hard drives.
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Trying to install an internal SSD on a new iMac isn't a practical solution. They are difficult to open and you'll hose your warranty.

Go with an external Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD. If you want to save some money. Plus the hassle of returning the iMac.

You can get something like the Samsung X5 or a DIY enclosure. There are even enclosures which support multiple NVMe SSD. Just be wary. When searching you may turn up USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosures in your search results.

As for space. Only you know how much you need. You want to keep at least 20% unoccupied.
 
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Thanks Velocity, good points. Yeah, I wouldn't want to open up a brand new iMac. I looked at athe external SSD's and they are quite pricey, like $500 for a 1T. Looks like I may go with either the 1 or 2T SSD, can't decide at the moment.
 
cannondale1974 said:
Thanks Velocity, good points. Yeah, I wouldn't want to open up a brand new iMac. I looked at athe external SSD's and they are quite pricey, like $500 for a 1T. Looks like I may go with either the 1 or 2T SSD, can't decide at the moment.
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Not sure which you looked at. You can get an NVMe Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for about $100. A high end 1TB NVMe runs about $170 and $450 for 2TB. Budget models run about $100 to $225 respectively. Very few uses will show much if any difference between a high an low end NVMe outside of benchmarks.

Also you have other options. Unless you are regularly working with humongous files and databases. You could get a more modest 500GB model. Then get a huge SATA USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSD for tasks that need accelerating from an SSD but show no appreciable benefit by going NVMe.

I didn't notice how absurdly overpriced the X5 is. The OWC Envoy Pro EX is more reasonable.
eshop.macsales.com

OWC Envoy Pro FX - The Fastest, Most Compatible Drive Ever Made

Works with yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s Thunderbolt and USB computers and devices, and supports the max performance of any interface up to 2800MB/s.
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Lucky you ! @cannondale1974 - here I am opted for :apple: iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2019) with traditional HDD. got a super slow machine compared to my existing 2014 MacMini with fusion drive.

SS 2019-12-29 at 9.23.06 AM.png



:oops:
 
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Watching this thread.

santa brought the family an iMac but it was the 256 SSD rather than Fusion Drive. I was hoping to get 500 or 1TB SSD but that bumped the price a bit too much. So now wondering the best options for external storage.
 
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You could buy a 512gb Samsung X5 (thunderbolt3) drive. Or even 256gb.
Use that to boot the iMac, keep applications on it, and basic accounts.

Use the internal fusion drive for storing your large libraries (movies, music, pictures).

This will be an excellent "compromise setup" that should give you speeds as fast as you'd see from an internally-installed SSD, but will be quite affordable.
 
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_Skyfire_ said:
@cannondale1974 I believe going SSD is the best bet here. Especially since you got 9+ years of good use out of your previous iMac. The upgrade cost will seem minimal when spread over the next 10 years. And I feel the overall experience will be much better for you


:rolleyes: Wow
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Thanks, yeah I'm really leaning towards the 2T SSD. It's $700 extra (yikes) but spread over hopefully another 10 year lifespan that's only $70/year. I've been super happy with my original 2010 iMac, absolutely love that computer.
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jerwin said:
Unless she purchased it at a discount. imacs with SSDs rarely go on sale.
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She didn't purchase it on sale. Was $2300 IIRC. I checked the refurbished section as they offer some fantastic buys but no iMac's with SSD's were available.
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Fishrrman said:
You could buy a 512gb Samsung X5 (thunderbolt3) drive. Or even 256gb.
Use that to boot the iMac, keep applications on it, and basic accounts.

Use the internal fusion drive for storing your large libraries (movies, music, pictures).

This will be an excellent "compromise setup" that should give you speeds as fast as you'd see from an internally-installed SSD, but will be quite affordable.
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I like your thoughts on this. Is it difficult to set up so your computer uses the external SSD to boot, run programs etc?
 
Check out the lively "defense of 2tb fusion drive" thread for various opinions.

Also, have you tried out the fusion drive? You might be OK with it--for now (upgrade later).

I get your reservations though. I couldn't resist a 30% off deal on an open box 2019 iMac a couple months ago--but really wrestled with the "catch"--it had the wimpy 1TB fusion. My expectations were super low, but I'll admit it has surprised me. I've made it work by using thunderbolt NVME drives (not the X5 but some lower-priced slower-but-still-fast drives). You can do a thunderbolt enclosure with a fast 1TB NVME from $250 max. I also booted the OS from thunderbolt NVME and tried it out for a few days. While it was absolutely faster, the fusion is also no slouch once your applications are promoted to the SSD portion. Now I just use the fusion for the OS and have my Logic libraries and audio on NVME for fast read/writes. Outside of the occasional "click" of the HDD it's hard to notice it's there.
 
As 3SQ Machine says, the best thing is to try it out for a while and see how you get on. A lot of people on here seem eager to spend your money, but my guess is that if you've only just started to outgrow your last computer, this one will see you right for a few years and then you can think about upgrading.
 
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The Hammer said:
Is it worth the extra? in a word:Yes.
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Surely that depends on your personal needs. There’s no way I would ditch my FD, what’s not to like. It’s plenty fast enough for most.
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Fishrrman said:
You could buy a 512gb Samsung X5 (thunderbolt3) drive. Or even 256gb.
Use that to boot the iMac, keep applications on it, and basic accounts.

Use the internal fusion drive for storing your large libraries (movies, music, pictures).

This will be an excellent "compromise setup" that should give you speeds as fast as you'd see from an internally-installed SSD, but will be quite affordable.
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Defeats the reason for buying an AIO. If going to connect external drives then the user should have purchased a Mac Mini.
 
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Lankyman said:
Defeats the reason for buying an AIO. If going to connect external drives then the user should have purchased a Mac Mini.
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Not if you need a 5K display and dedicated GPU.
Besides, the external SSD drive is one small device that can be easily tucked behind the iMac.
And whether a Mac mini or an iMac, both will require some kind of cable coming out of it.
 
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