iMac 21.5" - 5400rpm concerns. Should I cancel my order?

[appeardk]

Hi guys


Yesterday I placed an order for an 21.5" iMac w. the 3.1GHZ CPU option and 16GB of RAM. However I did not choose to upgrade the internal hard drive to Fusion as my budget was maxed out. The main reason I didn't go for the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, was due to the fact that I store all my iMovie video files and iPhotos on an external USB3 drive, so I assumed the 5400 RPM drive wouldn't hurt performance that much.

Now I'm having some doubts over that decision. What do you guys think? Is the CPU upgrade pointless as long as the internal drive is a slow 5400rpm drive? Would you cancel the order and choose the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, or keep the current configuration and store write-intense files on an external drive?

I hope you can offer some advise here.

Thanks!

 

[IGregory]

Hi guys


Yesterday I placed an order for an 21.5" iMac w. the 3.1GHZ CPU option and 16GB of RAM. However I did not choose to upgrade the internal hard drive to Fusion as my budget was maxed out. The main reason I didn't go for the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, was due to the fact that I store all my iMovie video files and iPhotos on an external USB3 drive, so I assumed the 5400 RPM drive wouldn't hurt performance that much.

Now I'm having some doubts over that decision. What do you guys think? Is the CPU upgrade pointless as long as the internal drive is a slow 5400rpm drive? Would you cancel the order and choose the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, or keep the current configuration and store write-intense files on an external drive?

I hope you can offer some advise here.

Thanks!

Read forum discussion here - same topic. Here's a youtube video with a good explanation of how the Fusion Drive works and performance.

 

[AppleMooseMan]

Hi guys


Yesterday I placed an order for an 21.5" iMac w. the 3.1GHZ CPU option and 16GB of RAM. However I did not choose to upgrade the internal hard drive to Fusion as my budget was maxed out. The main reason I didn't go for the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, was due to the fact that I store all my iMovie video files and iPhotos on an external USB3 drive, so I assumed the 5400 RPM drive wouldn't hurt performance that much.

Now I'm having some doubts over that decision. What do you guys think? Is the CPU upgrade pointless as long as the internal drive is a slow 5400rpm drive? Would you cancel the order and choose the fusion drive instead of the CPU upgrade, or keep the current configuration and store write-intense files on an external drive?

I hope you can offer some advise here.

Thanks!

I would certainly choose the fusion drive over the processor; the i5 is still very respectful and will do a respectable job.

The 5400 RPM will be painfully slow and you will definitely appreciate the noticeable bump in speed by choosing the fusion drive.

That's my advice.

 

[flopticalcube]

You could always add a TBolt or USB3 external SSD.

 

[appeardk]

Thanks a lot for the fast response. I just watched the YouTube video... I really should have researched better before I placed the order - what a bonehead move by me.

So I just tried to cancel the order but the store says "Your item may not be eligible for cancellation online" so I guess I will have to wait until monday to phone them.

What are the chances of phoning apple on monday and having them change the configuration of my current order instead of cancel and re-order?

 

[Ademordna]

Painfully slow?

 

[Apple Corps]

Thanks a lot for the fast response. I just watched the YouTube video... I really should have researched better before I placed the order - what a bonehead move by me.

So I just tried to cancel the order but the store says "Your item may not be eligible for cancellation online" so I guess I will have to wait until monday to phone them.

What are the chances of phoning apple on monday and having them change the configuration of my current order instead of cancel and re-order?

I believe you will have to cancel and reorder based on a similar issue I had.

Given the headache of a consumer upgrade, my plan is to go into disk utility, eject the 5400 rpm snail drive, hook up a usb 3.0 or thunderbolt ssd for boot and apps and use a hdd array for larger storage needs.

 

[rnb2]

Wish I could give you good news, but unless you are doing a lot of video editing in Final Cut Pro or doing 3D rendering, I think you'd get more real-world performance benefit from the Fusion Drive than the processor upgrade.

SSD, even for just the operating system and apps, makes a huge difference in how responsive the system feels - applications just open as fast as you can click them, data loads and saves almost instantaneously. I can't tell you how many people have said that their 11" MacBook Air (even the old Core 2 Duo models) *felt* faster than their i7 iMac because of the flash storage, and Fusion Drive gives you similar performance without the storage limitations. I've been booting my 2009 i7 iMac from various FW800 SSDs since I got almost three years ago, and even with the performance penalty of the FW800 connection, the system is much more responsive than when booting from the internal 7200rpm drive.

Unless you are using software that benefits greatly from hyperthreading (able to use 8 threads vs 4), the performance benefit of the i7 processor is going to be incremental over the base i5.

 

[philipma1957]

Thanks a lot for the fast response. I just watched the YouTube video... I really should have researched better before I placed the order - what a bonehead move by me.

So I just tried to cancel the order but the store says "Your item may not be eligible for cancellation online" so I guess I will have to wait until monday to phone them.

What are the chances of phoning apple on monday and having them change the configuration of my current order instead of cancel and re-order?

try using the phone vs the net to cancel.