iMac 5K Spec advise (HDD particularly)

[Chummers]

Hello,

I'd be very grateful for the benefit of people's experience. I am about to buy an iMac 5K and have a couple of questions:

1. Storage - I need >1TB. I'm attracted to the 3TB Fusion as it's all built in and includes SSD for the OS. Is this best, or is a 256GB SSD better with external storage? If the latter, what's the fastest (affordable) external option?

2. Is the processor upgrade worth it?

3. I am looking at 16GB RAM and will be doing some Photo editing in CS6 - is that a good option?

Thanks in advance for help!

B

 

[Alesc]

Hello,

I'd be very grateful for the benefit of people's experience. I am about to buy an iMac 5K and have a couple of questions:

1. Storage - I need >1TB. I'm attracted to the 3TB Fusion as it's all built in and includes SSD for the OS. Is this best, or is a 256GB SSD better with external storage? If the latter, what's the fastest (affordable) external option?

Hi
Both have pros and cons... You can read these 2 topics to make your own opinion:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1846485/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1822626/
My 2 cents: if you have budget issue, take the Fusion Drive: it is a very good compromise and is for me a better solution than a small SSD with a cheap external storage (loud and slow...).
If you can afford fast external storage, go for the SSD.

2. Is the processor upgrade worth it?

It depends on your needs: the i7 will be helpfull for video encoding or scientific calculations for example. Not very usefull for image processing or gaming...

Hello,

3. I am looking at 16GB RAM and will be doing some Photo editing in CS6 - is that a good option?

Thanks in advance for help!

B

16GB of RAM is an excellent choice, but don't buy Apple RAM: for less than the price of the 16GB Apple option, you can have the 8GB Apple RAM + 16GB third party RAM (Crucial for example).

 

[AppleFan360]

Agree with above. If you are going to use external storage, the SSD option is best but the Fusion drive is also a good option if you don't want to deal with externals.

Definitely don't have Apple upgrade to 16GB. Get the 8GB machine and do it yourself.

Personally I would go ahead and get the i7. Doesn't hurt and might come in handy in the future if you decide to dive into video editing and other intensive tasks.

 

[Chummers]

Thanks

Thanks both. Alesc - that's really helpful, thank you.

Makes total sense to have 24GB RAM for less money!

Alesc - I notice you have 4GB graphics too - do you think that's a good option or given you have so much RAM anyway do you really need it?

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Alesc]

Thanks both. Alesc - that's really helpful, thank you.

Makes total sense to have 24GB RAM for less money!

And it is really the same standard RAM, the one Apple sells is not made from dragon's scales... And it takes 2mn to install the modules, you'll see

Alesc - I notice you have 4GB graphics too - do you think that's a good option or given you have so much RAM anyway do you really need it?

Cheers,
Ben

I've taken the option not only for the 4GB of vRAM (which has not the same purpose than the system RAM by the way: the vRAM stocks 3D frames, textures etc.), but mostly for the more powerful GPU: I'm playing FPS games under Windows occasionaly. And to play recent 3D games is 2560x1440 is very demanding on the GPU