If someone is scared to open the iMac to change HDD to SSD just plug it in!

[the-bigwig]

Hello there,
I thought I should say that I'm in love with my 2012 27" iMac just like it's new in fact. I used some cheap USB 3.0 enclosure with UASP support and threw Goodram IRDM 240GB in it. I've got 380mb/s write and 380mb/s read so it's MUCH better than I expected (both speeds were about 100mb/s each in hdd). So I'll stick with it for sure.
It's just like a brand new iMac now. The only downside is a lack of trim but with built-in garbage collection it shouldn't be a problem though.
So if you're scared to tear open your Mac, just plug some SSD with TB or USB 3.0 enclosure and you're good to go.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Yep, works great with 2012 models onwards - most of the SSD performance benefits without any hassle of tearing the iMac apart.

Not so much the case with the 2011s or earlier as they have USB 2, which really is a slow experience.

 

[Juicy Box]

Hello there,
I thought I should say that I'm in love with my 2012 27" iMac just like it's new in fact. I used some cheap USB 3.0 enclosure with UASP support and threw Goodram IRDM 240GB in it. I've got 380mb/s write and 380mb/s read so it's MUCH better than I expected (both speeds were about 100mb/s each in hdd). So I'll stick with it for sure.
It's just like a brand new iMac now. The only downside is a lack of trim but with built-in garbage collection it shouldn't be a problem though.
So if you're scared to tear open your Mac, just plug some SSD with TB or USB 3.0 enclosure and you're good to go.

I am not scared to open my Late 2012 iMac, I just haven’t felt the need since I don’t save too much on the internal Fusion Drive.

But, I have used a few external drives with that Mac, one being a HW RAID0 USB3 drive with two 3GB HDD striped. I get better Read/Write speeds with it than the Fusion. I think I get close to 500 MBps on that one.

I Also got a used Rugged Thunderbolt LaCie drive that I swapped an evo 860 SSD in.

That gets about the same as the Fusion.
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Yep, works great with 2012 models onwards - most of the SSD performance benefits without any hassle of tearing the iMac apart.

Not so much the case with the 2011s or earlier as they have USB 2, which really is a slow experience.

They have Thunderbolt.

 

[Fishrrman]

With a 2017 iMac (which has USB-c and thunderbolt3, is that correct?), one can now buy a "bare" nvme blade drive and a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure (about $60+/-), put it together, and see read speeds up around 700-800mbps.

That's not as fast as tbolt3, but it's still a nice "jump up" from USB3, for just a little more $$$...

 

[danwells]

We're beginning to see TB3 blade drives (assembled only) as well, and I suspect the bare drive enclosures aren't far off. A little more money (sometimes a lot more money), but you can get all the performance you want... Any non-T2 Mac with TB3 will boot from one (and, at least so far, all T2 Macs have blazing-fast internal SSDs).

What I hope we never see is a Mac with both a T2 and a Fusion Drive. That machine would be stuck with a slow boot drive forever, at least in its default security configuration