iM 4,1-14,4 I am planning to upgrade a late 2013 iMac (27")

[pkw]

I know next to nothing about Macs. Someone was giving away a late 2013 iMac (27 inch) and I picked it up to get some familiarity with Mac and see what I can make of it. Now my idea is to revive it to a usable condition speed-wise and see if it can be my daily driver for a while, to learn and perhaps do some light coding on it. I always use older tech, and my main driver atm is a mini Dell i7 PC with Windows 11.

I've read and watched videos about upgrading storage, and I want to ask for opinion here on what's best to do. My goal can be described as wanting to make it as fast as possible but with lowest cost and least spare parts lying around, and I'm planning to possibly sell it at low cost down the line. So I thought the neatest option would be to go for a fusion drive with a small capacity NVMe blade to put the OS on and utilise the existing 1TB HDD. Or, I can go for replacing the HDD with SATA SSD. Ideally I would like to see the speed comparisons of different configurations.

I already have a 500G NVMe blade and a 120GB SATA SSD, but these are taken from my desktop PC and I will need them. But I could perhaps use them to test different options. Or should I not bother, and just purchase say a Samsung EVO 500G SATA and replace the hard drive?

I'm also going to expand RAM to 24GB. Currently I'm running OCLP Sonoma off the SSD connected to USB port, it's usable but a bit slow. Thanks for any suggestions!

(oh and btw, in terms of quick sale later, should I get a second hand magic keyb/mouse combo or go for wired (my preference) as 2x cheaper?)

 

[rampancy]

My daily driver desktop is a Late-2013 21.5" iMac, which specs and upgrade options not that dissimilar from yours.

AFAIK, if the iMac you got was originally configured with only a hard drive (as opposed to being SSD-only or with a Fusion Drive), then your iMac will not have the necessary connector to mount a blade SSD - so your only option will be to replace the hard drive. Regardless, I wouldn't bother with Fusion Drive - from what I've seen, it's more trouble than it's worth, for questionable gain compared to a full SSD setup. What I'd do is replace the hard drive with an SSD, and use the hard drive for extra storage (if it's still in good condition).

I'd also just go with a wired keyboard/mouse, since you say you're going to be using it for your own purposes anyway. I don't think adding a second-hand Magic Mouse/Magic Keyboard would do much for the resale value.

 

[pkw]

Thanks. From what I've read, the 27" version does have the NVMe connector, but as you say general opinion seems to be that fusion drive setup is not really worth it. I will try to find out more info about speed differences, but it seems like just SSD replacing the hard drive is the best course of action (besides being easier to do).

 

[marius_3d]

with imac 2013 27inch the fastest speed you cand get even with nvme is around 700MBps red and write because it only has PCIe 2.0
in imac 2015 and forward apple has put PCIe 3.0

there are also problems with sleep and hibernations on nvme.

if I were you I would stick with SATA SSD and upgrade the proccesor to 3.5 GHz Core i7 (I7-4771).
the most dramatic speed improvement will be from the SSD tough.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thanks. From what I've read, the 27" version does have the NVMe connector, but as you say general opinion seems to be that fusion drive setup is not really worth it. I will try to find out more info about speed differences, but it seems like just SSD replacing the hard drive is the best course of action (besides being easier to do).

The best course of action is doing nothing, as you have already run Mac OS from a USB 3.0 external disk (supposed).
Check again whether it does run at USB 3.0 protocol.
Replacing the internal nVME SSD won't give you significant speed-ups of data access, giving the limitation of chipset in that era. (PCIe 2.0 x4 vs SATA 3.0 vs USB 3.0)

 

[pkw]

I've decided to go down the route of replacing the 1TB HDD with a 500GB Samsung SSD. There just seem to be too many problems with the NVMe option - harder to find a cheap one for the iMac that is PCIe 2, fusion drive apparently doesn't work for BootCamp so I'd be stuck with HDD, the HDD may fail at some point etc.

One last question. When Installing MacOS on the new SSD, is it enough to just boot into recovery then install the OS on the SSD connected externally, then I can just swap them, right? I don't have any data to take backups of so brand new install would be fine.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I've decided to go down the route of replacing the 1TB HDD with a 500GB Samsung SSD. There just seem to be too many problems with the NVMe option - harder to find a cheap one for the iMac that is PCIe 2, fusion drive apparently doesn't work for BootCamp so I'd be stuck with HDD, the HDD may fail at some point etc.

One last question. When Installing MacOS on the new SSD, is it enough to just boot into recovery then install the OS on the SSD connected externally, then I can just swap them, right? I don't have any data to take backups of so brand new install would be fine.

Booting into Recovery mode can only get you the officially supported Mac OS, which is Catalina.
A simpler approach is cloning the Sequoia disk (with OCLP EFI) to the 500GB SSD.