iMac Pro iMac Pro of fully loaded 2017 iMac

[jakeyboyne]

Hi All,

Pretty sure this may have been answered before so apologies if I'm asking something that's already been answered

I'm in the market for a new iMac, used at home as main machine by myself and family members. I'm looking at the 2 options below, but I'm genuinely stuck on the fence in terms of which one would be the best buy.

In terms of use it's used as main office / work from home machine. Internet, email, web browsing, occasional Photoshop CC use (photo files are about 50MB) and some occasional gaming on Battlefield 1.

I'm basically wanting to get the most bang for my buck but without going crazy and getting something which I may never get the full use out of. 2 Config options I'm looking at below would be :

Would be really interested to see what other peoples thoughts would be. The difference is £1,000 between them, and although the price is not so much an issue I'd rather not frop the extra £1,000 if it's gonna be a waste. Just cant really figure out if I'll get the benefit of having the iMac Pro or not .....

Fully loaded iMac £3,806.40

• 4.2GHz quad-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
• 64GB 2400MHz DDR4
• 1TB SSD
• Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB video memory

OR

iMac Pro - £4,894.80

• 3.2GHz 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
• 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
• 1TB SSD
• Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory

 

[sputnikBA]

Based on the usage you've described, you aren't in the target market for the iMac pro. None of what you do would be enhanced by the iMac Pro's specs aside from the better GPU.

This isn't a knock on you in any way - its just that the iMac Pro's strengths are in stuff like heavy video editing, CAD & 3D rendering, scientific/financial simulations, heavy development, and audio production. A higher spec regular iMac would adequately serve your needs.

 

[maflynn]

n terms of use it's used as main office / work from home machine. Internet, email, web browsing, occasional Photoshop CC use (photo files are about 50MB) and some occasional gaming on Battlefield 1.

Why do you think you need 64GB of ram? Given your usage 8GB of ram would be enough. Heck, I have 8GB of ram and my usage is fairly close to yours (outside of using photo management apps like Lightroom).

I'd also ask the same of the 1TB of storage, if you're not using a lot doing a lot of PS, how much space do you thnk you need for the next few years?

 

[jakeyboyne]

Why do you think you need 64GB of ram? Given your usage 8GB of ram would be enough. Heck, I have 8GB of ram and my usage is fairly close to yours (outside of using photo management apps like Lightroom).

I'd also ask the same of the 1TB of storage, if you're not using a lot doing a lot of PS, how much space do you thnk you need for the next few years?

Thanks for the replies

I have alot of files (work and personal) so would need the 1TB.

In terms of 64GB RAM - very very occasionally I'll run multiple VM's in Mac OS for testing etc (work related)

 

[keysofanxiety]

In terms of 64GB RAM - very very occasionally I'll run multiple VM's in Mac OS for testing etc (work related)

VMs even work smoothly with 8GB RAM as the Flash storage is so quick and macOS's memory management is great. More RAM won't hurt, sure, but 64GB RAM is definitely overkill for occasional VM work - even if you're running 3 or 4 VMs at the same time.

 

[casperes1996]

In terms of 64GB RAM - very very occasionally I'll run multiple VM's in Mac OS for testing etc (work related)

Even then 64 may be overkill.

My recommendation isn't even a fully loaded 2017.

Start with the highest end base config, upgrade the storage to the SSD you want and manually upgrade the RAM to 32 gigs. Then you have plenty of RAM for your VMs, and the money you save, you put aside, so that four-five years from now you'll already have money ready for the next iMac you want at that point in time. The money spent in extra performance now, will give you so little extra performance compared to spending that money later on. And you really don't sound like you'd benefit from the multi-threaded performance of a Xeon or an i7, as much as you would just higher single-threaded performance that comes with future CPU generations

 

[mpe]

Based on what you do, you probably don't even need a fully loaded configuration of iMac.

For your workflow the non-Pro iMac could be actually faster, much lower power consumption and price.

 

[haruhiko]

16GB of RAM in the non-Pro iMac should be already enough for your workflow. You can always add RAM by yourself if you find it not enough later.
[doublepost=1516631206][/doublepost]The sweet spot should be the iMac you choose with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, the best bang of buck since 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM is much more expensive. For storage of documents a USB 3 external hard disk is very cheap now.

 

[XhnbX]

Follow up question. Would an Imac Pro over the Imac make sense if I plan on keeping the computer for 8-10 years? Same use as the OP. I've owned my current PC for 9 years and I'm looking to buy a new computer. I want the new computer to have high end performance for the sole reason that I plan on keeping it for another 10 years and want it to perform smoothly 10 years from now.

 

[Falhófnir]

Follow up question. Would an Imac Pro over the Imac make sense if I plan on keeping the computer for 8-10 years? Same use as the OP. I've owned my current PC for 9 years and I'm looking to buy a new computer. I want the new computer to have high end performance for the sole reason that I plan on keeping it for another 10 years and want it to perform smoothly 10 years from now.

Possibly yes just due to the grade of components used in the pro being less susceptible to wearing out over time, though it only takes one weak link to make the whole thing break down. Realistically you'd probably be better looking into 2x cheaper machines over the same period than really trying to make one last out though - a 2023 regular iMac could probably end up outperforming a current pro in the same way a 2017 iMac can handily outperform the 2013 mac pro.

 

[dazzer21-2]

My workload is way heavier than yours but in the initial, an iMac Pro would be overkill. These machines are designed for heavy duty, high horsepower, Multi-core duties. The closest you have to anything like that is 'occasional Photoshop CC'. I have a 2015 i5 3.3GHz iMac 5K with 16GB RAM. That's good enough for me at the moment. If I start hitting bump stops, I can at least user-upgrade my RAM to 32GB (and beyond, if necessary, but it won't be). You don't need to spec huge amounts of SSD, either - store all the files you don't use on external hardware, ensure that you have backups of everything and then you won't be screwed if the machine does decide to have a bit of a wobble. Your machine will no doubt still be capable of doing what it was designed to do out of the box in 10 years time. I'm typing this on a 2008 24" iMac with a Core 2 Duo processor. As a backup machine, it runs Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign quite nicely and has suffered no slowdowns since it was initially opened all that time ago.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

As the others the 27 inch Imac is more than enough for your needs. Upgrade the ram yourself if and when you need to, an extra 16gb to give you 24gb total would be way more than enough for your stated needs.

 

[Luis Ortega]

Hi All,


Fully loaded iMac £3,806.40

• 4.2GHz quad-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
• 64GB 2400MHz DDR4
• 1TB SSD
• Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB video memory

OR

iMac Pro - £4,894.80

• 3.2GHz 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
• 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
• 1TB SSD
• Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory

Why buy overpriced ram from apple?
The iMac will be a boat-load cheaper if you buy some ram and put it in yourself.
The price for it without the extortionate apple ram price would only be £2970. and you could get the ram from crucial or owc for a whole lot less money.

 

[casperes1996]

Follow up question. Would an Imac Pro over the Imac make sense if I plan on keeping the computer for 8-10 years? Same use as the OP. I've owned my current PC for 9 years and I'm looking to buy a new computer. I want the new computer to have high end performance for the sole reason that I plan on keeping it for another 10 years and want it to perform smoothly 10 years from now.

An absolutely terrible idea to be honest.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that computer speed is just "faster or slower". But it's really not. How fast certain parts are is really workload dependant, and if you just tried surfing the web on the world's fastest super computer, it'd be slower than the MacBook.
Over the span of ten year we'll most likely see a good increase in single-threaded performance, IO and memory structures, and for "normal" use that'll be immensely more important than multi-threaded workloads, which is what the iMac Pro excels at. In fact even as of right now the iMac Pro is slower than the standard iMac with an i7 at single-threaded tasks like web surfing and whatnot.

Take the money you save from not getting a Pro and instead of keeping it for ten years, keep it for five and buy another one after five years. Much better solution.

 

[pier]

Internet, email, web browsing, occasional Photoshop CC use (photo files are about 50MB) and some occasional gaming on Battlefield 1.

Get the regular iMac.

Also, get the i5 model. The i7 gets very hot and noisy.