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Fusion worth the extra?

B

Barnso

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 20, 2013
14
0
Hi there,
I know there are a lot of threads about the Fusion drive... But here goes another one.
I have found a good 27iMac in the refurb store. The only thing is that it is missing a Fusion drive. It only has the normal 1 GB HDD. I originally planned on buying one with Fusion.
Compared to the BTO version including Fusion I would save about 400 to 700€ depending on what else I put in there...

Is that worth it?

I could live with the i5 I think! RAM is upgradable and the 1gb graphic should do it as well...
I play my games on the console and will mainly do photo editing, standard office stuff and once in a while a little video but nothing fancy.
Your advice is very welcome :D
 
Barnso said:
Hi there,
I know there are a lot of threads about the Fusion drive... But here goes another one.
I have found a good 27iMac in the refurb store. The only thing is that it is missing a Fusion drive. It only has the normal 1 GB HDD. I originally planned on buying one with Fusion.
Compared to the BTO version including Fusion I would save about 400 to 700€ depending on what else I put in there...

Is that worth it?

I could live with the i5 I think! RAM is upgradable and the 1gb graphic should do it as well...
I play my games on the console and will mainly do photo editing, standard office stuff and once in a while a little video but nothing fancy.
Your advice is very welcome :D
Click to expand...

I think it's worth it. A significant performance increase over a standard hard drive with plenty of storage for media and games. The performance was so noticeable I upgraded my 2009 iMac and Mac mini to Fusion drives.
 
marzer said:
I think it's worth it. A significant performance increase over a standard hard drive with plenty of storage for media and games. The performance was so noticeable I upgraded my 2009 iMac and Mac mini to Fusion drives.
Click to expand...

If you look at the price difference between refurbished non-fusion and brand new (not refurbished) fusion I'd say it is debatable whether it is worth it. To the OP: I would expect to see refurbished with Fusion drive as well from time to time; if you can find refurbished with Fusion I'd recommend going for it.
 
gnasher729 said:
If you look at the price difference between refurbished non-fusion and brand new (not refurbished) fusion I'd say it is debatable whether it is worth it. To the OP: I would expect to see refurbished with Fusion drive as well from time to time; if you can find refurbished with Fusion I'd recommend going for it.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree. I got focused on Fusion over standard standard HDD. But it's not worth 400-700 euros. I'd buy the refurb with standard HDD and put an inexpensive SSD in it to create a aftermarket Fusion drive.
 
Thanks.
But if I don't want to open up that beauty in warranty time?
Any alternatives externally?
I already read the anandtech article about fusion. It is in between pure ssd and HDD.
I will watch the refurb store for a few more days and see if I can get lucky with an affordable ssd or fusion iMac 27. Otherwise I will use the saved money to buy the wife something bling to sidetrack her a bit from the new beauty in the house...:eek:
 
I'm a little hesitant about the fusion drives, because what's 'new' scares me.. however i just purchased the 27" 3.5 i7 iMac from the US refurb store... i was aiming for the processor speed and the 4gb of video ram, but it also happens to have a 3 tb fusion drive...

it was a bit spendy, but we'll see how it goes, when it shows up... heard good things...

check out http://www.refurb.me
i used it to get an email alert when the model i was looking for showed up, but it was also handy to see what different combinations of models they sell that may not be available on the refurb site at the time.

it looks like they have several different variations of the late 2013 iMacs with fusion drives.
 
Barnso said:
Hi there,
I know there are a lot of threads about the Fusion drive... But here goes another one.
I have found a good 27iMac in the refurb store. The only thing is that it is missing a Fusion drive. It only has the normal 1 GB HDD. I originally planned on buying one with Fusion.
Compared to the BTO version including Fusion I would save about 400 to 700€ depending on what else I put in there...
...
Click to expand...
Look for a model with Fusion on the refurbished list. You will probably wind up getting a better system overall but you will pay less than you would for a CTO system with exactly what you want.
 
Bear said:
Look for a model with Fusion on the refurbished list. You will probably wind up getting a better system overall but you will pay less than you would for a CTO system with exactly what you want.
Click to expand...

The savings is what I was looking at in the first place. I will check the refurb store a little more and then check if I want to save or my dream machine...
Thanks for the help.
 
Same topic, different question.
I am still on the hunt for my refurb iMac. Finally after 2 weeks of nothing in the shop and my thinking about buying new one over my company (same discount as in the Edu section) some 27” showed up in the refurb store again.
But here is the thing: I read an article here that in the US refurb store there are late 2013 imacs since beginning of December.
Here in Germany we still only have the 2012 machines.
Is there a huge performace gap? I can remember reading that Haswell has maily pushed battery life – which I don’t really care about in an iMac…
Any more reasons to wait for a 2013 model over a 2012? How about the yellow display issues? Worse in 2012 or 2013 model?

Go for the refurb 2012? Wait for a refurb 2013? Or go for the about 8% discount and buy new one?
Due to the yellow display thing I somehow hope thet in a refurb I have a higher chance for a good display due to the double checking…

And last not least is the price ok:

I7 3.4
8GB ram
1TB Fusion
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX

1999€

I might add that if I buy a new 2013 iMac I would choose thie one

I5 3.5
8GB Ram
1TB Fusion
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2 GB

With Discount 2067€
 
Last edited:
2012 or 2013

Anybody an idea or opinion what do do? Refurb 2012 with i7 or discounted 2013 with i5? Enough power? Chance of yellow screen higher on any model?
I will -despite holiday videos maybe- not do any video just photos and typical office stuff...
 
It's hard to say which is best for you just on stats. If you do CPU intensive tasks a lot, then faster CPU is very very important. And if you do video the graphics matter. But if you do word processing, doesn't matter much. I would guess the Haswell is better at video due to multithreading, and better use of graphics. But maybe not in other stuff; see the review here:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/08/apple-imac-review-2013/

You may also get upgraded wifi, which might be worth it with the new machine right there. A USB dongle might cost you almost as much.
 
I'm in the dark here. At least in MBPs both HDD and RAM are user-replaceable in regards to warranty coverage (though you have to put the originals back in if ever you need your machine replaced). I think the ODD may be user-replaceable, too.
 
We went with the Fusion drive in our 27", and so far it has been very impressive. Boot times are great and applications all launch nice and quick. Of course we are coming from a 2009 duo-core machine, so everything seems faster. As for the question of user to replace an internal drive, I certainly wouldn't want to attempt it.
 
I got the 2012 iMac on release with the 3TB fusion drive, my opinion is that it works quite well, i have SSD only machines to compare it to and it fares very well. In this day and age i think its crazy to run your OS off a platter based drive. I have an SSD in all my computers and will never go back to a platter HDD except for storage.

The best way i can explain it is my 2011 MBA was much faster in everyday tasks then our Mac Pros at work before we upgraded them to SSD's.
 
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