iMac Purchase Advice

[ggibson913]

Hey guys, I need a little help with deciding on the best 27 inch 5K iMac to purchase. Part of me wants to get the current model with the 2TB Fusion Drive and the Magic track pad and call it a day. I am still awaiting them to hit the refurb store but once they do I was going to pull the trigger.

The other part of me wants to buy a refurb of last year's model with the 512 SSD, for less money. I can still store everything on the internal drive but don't mind using an external. What do you guys think? I do some light photo editing and light video stuff (iPhone vids). I would like this computer to be as future proof as possible and to get 5 - 7 years out of it. Of course I could just go the extra $200 and get the 512 K current model but that would stretch the budget a bit.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Hey guys, I need a little help with deciding on the best 27 inch 5K iMac to purchase. Part of me wants to get the current model with the 2TB Fusion Drive and the Magic track pad and call it a day. I am still awaiting them to hit the refurb store but once they do I was going to pull the trigger.

The other part of me wants to buy a refurb of last year's model with the 512 SSD, for less money. I can still store everything on the internal drive but don't mind using an external. What do you guys think? I do some light photo editing and light video stuff (iPhone vids). I would like this computer to be as future proof as possible and to get 5 - 7 years out of it. Of course I could just go the extra $200 and get the 512 K current model but that would stretch the budget a bit.

Well performance wise they are very similar but the screen on the new ones is a quite significant uprade in colour gamut etc and the thermal profile is a lot more friendly for longevity.

To be honest with your proposed usage 2TB fusion may well be your best bet it will be fast and give you a fair amount of capacity.

Yeah I would wait and see how much they are refurb you might get the 512Gb SSD cheaper than you think.

 

[Sirmausalot]

Hey guys, I need a little help with deciding on the best 27 inch 5K iMac to purchase. Part of me wants to get the current model with the 2TB Fusion Drive and the Magic track pad and call it a day. I am still awaiting them to hit the refurb store but once they do I was going to pull the trigger.

The other part of me wants to buy a refurb of last year's model with the 512 SSD, for less money. I can still store everything on the internal drive but don't mind using an external. What do you guys think? I do some light photo editing and light video stuff (iPhone vids). I would like this computer to be as future proof as possible and to get 5 - 7 years out of it. Of course I could just go the extra $200 and get the 512 K current model but that would stretch the budget a bit.

Current model with Skylake and better graphics. 2TB fusion is fine for your needs and you can always add an external SSD later.

 

[ggibson913]

I am actually surprised that the responses so far are recommending the Fusion Drive. I guess as long as the OS is on the SSD portion it should be fine. Ugh! this would be so much easier if I had won the Powerball last night.

 

[Ludatyk]

I am actually surprised that the responses so far are recommending the Fusion Drive. I guess as long as the OS is on the SSD portion it should be fine. Ugh! this would be so much easier if I had won the Powerball last night.

I'm planning on getting the iMac... I have external drives. I read about the Fusion Drives and how it is part SSD, but I'm kind of skeptical of the speed. So, I'm getting the 256 SSD instead since I've grown accustomed to SSD. I wish Apple made it easier to replace storage similar to how it is with RAM. Only thing I'm struggling with is getting the i7 over the i5.

 

[Algus]

Well fusion drives are pretty good. It loads the OS onto the SSD so the biggest advantage of having one - the speedy boot time of the system is there. It allocates frequently used software to the SSD to help with speed as well. For me though, I use Bootcamp (which always loads to the hard drive) and in general would just prefer to control what is and is not on the SSD in my system. They are cheaper for considerably more space though so if you want a lot of onboard storage they are the way to go.

 

[Fishrrman]

Get the 2tb fusion drive version (NOT the 1tb) and you should be fine.

The 2tb model has 120gb of SSD storage.
Question: Is not the just-released version of PCIe on the new iMacs faster, speed-wise?

Couple this with 2tb of internal HDD storage, and it should be plenty of space for the near future.

 

[ggibson913]

Thanks guys, went to the Apple Store this evening and picked up a new 27" 2 TB Fusion Retina iMac. Tired as hell so will set it up tomorrow lol. See my new thread. FYI, if you want to get the Trackpad instead of the Mouse, they will swap it out for you in store.

 

[maflynn]

Congrats, that's what I have, and I love it.

 

[ggibson913]

Congrats, that's what I have, and I love it.

Port data over or set up as new?

 

[maflynn]

Port data over or set up as new?

I usually go with a new setup, that way I know, I'm not pulling stuff over I probably don't want, i.e., all sorts of cruft that ends up in the ~/Library.

It takes time, but I don't mind, it gives more time to play with the new computer

I do restore the data from my TM backup, I just install the apps manually and make any configuration changes manually.

Thanks to the cloud, getting the apps and even settings is a lot easier in 2016 then back in the day. What I mean by that , any MAS apps can be easily re-downloaded. Creative Cloud, and MS Office are fairly easy to get back on my computer, etc.