iMac Redesign for 2018?

[Lammers]

[doublepost=1527023152][/doublepost]

Be careful what you wish for. It would make for a quieter experience at the lower end of the market, but you lose the RAM access door.
[doublepost=1527023334][/doublepost]

A different colour anodised version might be interesting (Product RED anyone?) or Gold for the far east markets might play out there.

The big thing would be FaceID in a Mac. If not this year it has to be coming soon. It's also a reason for assuming that Apple could rethink the Mac Mini as a keyboard computer with TouchID on it - but that's fairly far fetched, especially with Apple's recent record with keyboards

We don’t have any evidence to indicate that the cooling system for the iMac Pro necessitates losing the RAM access door. I believe that losing the RAM access door is a business decision and has nothing to do with the cooling system.

I don’t believe Apple would go to the trouble of tooling-up their manufacturing line to produce a gold iMac just for one market. And again the taste piece comes into play - I think Apple would dismiss the idea as garish.

Face ID presumably wouldn’t necessitate a chassis redesign.
[doublepost=1527144116][/doublepost]

My prediction is none of the non-Pro iMacs will get Vega this time around, so that’s a pretty big differentiator already, i7 or not.

BTW, if they got rid of 8700K due to TDP concerns, they’d probably have to get rid of 8600K as well.
[doublepost=1527024793][/doublepost]
It’s a completely different machine internally. I suspect Apple won’t bother changing the i7 internals. And if they did, we could lose memory upgradability.

Again, we don’t have any evidence to indicate that the cooling system for the iMac Pro necessitates losing the RAM access door. I believe that losing the RAM access door is a business decision and has nothing to do with the cooling system.

But I agree that Apple won’t change the cooling system for the non-Pro iMac unless they have to - the question is whether the thermal characteristics of newer CPUs will necessitate that or not. My point was that it doesn’t make sense to say that Apple has to redesign the iMac because of newer CPUs, when it’s already clear that Apple can accommodate hotter components in the current chassis if it needs to - as evidenced by the iMac Pro.

 

[Freida]

But I agree that Apple won’t change the cooling system for the non-Pro iMac unless they have to - the question is whether the thermal characteristics of newer CPUs will necessitate that or not. My point was that it doesn’t make sense to say that Apple has to redesign the iMac because of newer CPUs, when it’s already clear that Apple can accommodate hotter components in the current chassis if it needs to - as evidenced by the iMac Pro.

I don't think its about hotter components in current chassis. I think its about the fact that the i7 runs hot and the machine gets very loud (along with GPU) so seeing better designed cooling system (iMac Pro) and implementing it into a consumer product would improve its functions. The fans kicking in at high speed can get very noisy so that should be the first thing to change in the upcoming iMacs in my opinion.
I guess we will find out soon but noise for me (and I guess for some) is a concern.
Lets find out soon ;-)

 

[craigrusse11]

I say all of this as someone who used to be a huge Apple fan. I was a Mac guy for a long time. I've been to Macworld just to see Steve Jobs deliver the keynote in person. I've had everything Apple makes -- laptops, desktops, monitors, phones. I used to be a very passionate Apple fan and watched every keynote, salivating over the latest specs that I just had to have. So it actually feels very frustrating to me that Apple hasn't released anything new and exciting on the desktop Mac front for many years.

I hear you.. it's really sad that Apple who were once a brilliant computer company and innovated with the Macintosh and the iMac, have focused on mobiles phone in a effort to chase the money... it's all rather depressing when they spend 20 mins during their last big conference speaking about animated emoji and why you should drop $1000 to get the only phone that does them.. even though nobody gave a crap about any of that.

 

[bigtomato]

Sick of the iPhone, really is there that much difference with each generation???

Prediction for iMac 2018
i8700 6 core
16 gig
512 flash
AMD 580 8 GIG

only difference is the CPU since GPU will be the same, Vega won't come to the iMac otherwise they won't sell iMac pro's.

Do yourself a favour and get hackintoshing !! 75% less cost for same configs

 

[MandiMac]

Do yourself a favour and get hackintoshing !! 75% less cost for same configs

Please provide me with a list of hardware including 5K screen and back up that „75 % less cost“ quote from yours.

 

[xgman]

then yes you would have some mighty upset iMac Pro owners.

I keep seeing this notion but it doens't seem to be a "thing" for Apple or any company really to worry about. Every item you buy stands to be replaced with a newer cheaper better faster as soon as you get it home.

 

[Lammers]

I keep seeing this notion but it doens't seem to be a "thing" for Apple or any company really to worry about. Every item you buy stands to be replaced with a newer cheaper better faster as soon as you get it home.

“Pro” users are disenfranchised with Apple, and Apple knows it - so much so that they’ve been doing something they never do, which is talk about forthcoming products, in order to buy time to help prevent these influential people from abandoning the platform. So the argument is that Apple would not risk further angering/alienating these people or fueling the “Apple doesn’t care about pros” narrative by releasing a new (and very expensive) iMac Pro and then a few months later give the standard non-Pro iMac a newer, more modern design.

 

[Mr. 123]

What are the odds of the new 27 inch iMacs not having upgradable RAM (like the 21.5 inch and the iMac Pro)?

 

[EugW]

What are the odds of the new 27 inch iMacs not having upgradable RAM (like the 21.5 inch and the iMac Pro)?

You posted this question already.

Odds are exactly 1.646743 : 1.

 

[sublunar]

We don’t have any evidence to indicate that the cooling system for the iMac Pro necessitates losing the RAM access door. I believe that losing the RAM access door is a business decision and has nothing to do with the cooling system.

I don’t believe Apple would go to the trouble of tooling-up their manufacturing line to produce a gold iMac just for one market. And again the taste piece comes into play - I think Apple would dismiss the idea as garish.

Face ID presumably wouldn’t necessitate a chassis redesign.
[doublepost=1527144116][/doublepost]

Again, we don’t have any evidence to indicate that the cooling system for the iMac Pro necessitates losing the RAM access door. I believe that losing the RAM access door is a business decision and has nothing to do with the cooling system.

But I agree that Apple won’t change the cooling system for the non-Pro iMac unless they have to - the question is whether the thermal characteristics of newer CPUs will necessitate that or not. My point was that it doesn’t make sense to say that Apple has to redesign the iMac because of newer CPUs, when it’s already clear that Apple can accommodate hotter components in the current chassis if it needs to - as evidenced by the iMac Pro.

While FaceID does need some sort of change to the system I think it should have been done for the first generation iMac Pro - maybe the technology wasn't perfected in time.

The cooling system for the iMac Pro moves the RAM away from the central position with the access door obscured by a bigger heatsink which also crucially dispenses with hard drives - it's a technical reason but obviously doing away with the RAM access door makes upgrades more expensive for the end user.

It's an obvious move for Apple to clone the iMac Pro innards for a future iMac and spells the end for RAM upgradability in my opinion if they decide to do that. The engineering has already been done and wouldn't cost Apple any extra to implement in a regular iMac apart from material costs (in terms of the extra heatsink and losing ability to have hard drives).

In marketing terms, Apple could be about to move to 6 core CPUs courtesy of Coffee Lake in the 5k iMac and maximum clock speeds will therefore come down. They would previously use the K series i5 and i7 CPU to hit the high clock speeds in the top SKU but doing means they have to use 95w TDP parts from the Intel parts bin (other parts are 65w) and these are the models that typically get paired with more powerful GPU which is where the stories about the higher heat and noise come from.

The 8 core/16 thread Xeon CPU in the base iMac Pro runs at 3.2GHz base (4.2GHz turbo, 19Mb cache) so the benchmarking folks will be looking very closely at the following Coffee Lake options that Apple could put into the next iMac:

Core i7-8700K - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.7GHz base (4.7GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i7-8700B - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.2GHz base (4.6GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - probably not an Apple option
Core i5-8600K - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.6GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i5-8600 - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP
Core i5-8500B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.0GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered
Core i5-8400B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 2.8GHz base (4GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered

The i7-8700B option is an interesting one - Apple don't use the 7th generation equivalent but it's significantly cheaper than the K series variant and only offers the hyper threading that's missing over the i5-8600 which would be the middle SKU. In marketing terms, there's going to be a clock speed drop across the board which is made up by an increase in cores.

With the new Coffee Lake processors Apple could equalise CPU TDP across the board on 65w and use the 30w (and money) saving to:

1. Offer more powerful GPUs (eg Radeon Pro 575X, 580X and then perhaps Vega 56)
2. Offer more RAM as standard (although at Apple prices I doubt it)
3. Cool the Mac more effectively using the existing hardware
Both of these methods use the existing iMac 5k cooling system which retains the RAM access door.

Or:
3. Use the iMac Pro cooling system, killing off 3rd party RAM upgrades, but allowing for quieter top end iMacs.

To be fair, Apple's current iMac pricing system allows for users to spec 1Tb SSD and 32Gb RAM and get into the same relative ball park as the iMac Pro but most sane users would buy their own RAM at a fraction of that cost.


As a side note, the 21.5" iMac could go with variations of the above but it's feasible they could use the Intel + Vega platform which I think is destined for the MacBook Pro but for the hyper-threading which is expected on the MacBook Pro platform but not on the 21.5" iMac.

Core i7-8709G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 8Mb cache), 100w TDP including Vega GPU
Core i7-8705G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 8Mb cache), 65w TDP including Vega GPU
Core i5-8305G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 2.8GHz base (3.8GHz turbo, 6Mb cache), 65w TDP including Vega GPU

On the basis that Apple want to even up things with the iMac Pro in mind, how about an iMac 21.5" setup that includes these aforementioned CPUs?

Could Apple offer the top 27" 5k SKU options with the non-K i7 and use the cost and TDP saving to throw in an even better GPU which isn't as restricted as some of the earlier options? It doesn't have to be the Vega 56 but would make an obvious buying decision for many who would otherwise be stuck with an AMD Pro 580X.

 

[Appleaker]

new imacs usually come late in the year if at all.

‘If at all’
Apple has updated the iMac every year other than 2016 because it was already using up to date components. Since then, there’s suddenly this notion that iMac refreshes this year are a question of if not when. It’s complete nonsense, although you’re right about the ‘late in the year’ comment.

 

[mreg376]

‘If at all’
Apple has updated the iMac every year other than 2016 because it was already using up to date components. Since then, there’s suddenly this notion that iMac refreshes this year are a question of if not when. It’s complete nonsense, although you’re right about the ‘late in the year’ comment.

And how many of those iMac refreshes came six months after an iMac Pro was released?

 

[sublunar]

‘If at all’
Apple has updated the iMac every year other than 2016 because it was already using up to date components. Since then, there’s suddenly this notion that iMac refreshes this year are a question of if not when. It’s complete nonsense, although you’re right about the ‘late in the year’ comment.

Last year's Kaby Lake update came 'early' in June 2017 - much earlier than the 'traditional' October slot - Kaby Lake was ready since the beginning of that year. October 2016's was late for Skylake which had already been available for most of that year.

This year's Coffee Lake desktop CPU lineup is already out, and Apple won't want to lose sales on this relatively large update unless they are waiting on GPUs which AMD haven't released although it's reasonably well known that they are sticking an X suffix on last year's stuff and calling it a day.

 

[EugW]

In marketing terms, Apple could be about to move to 6 core CPUs courtesy of Coffee Lake in the 5k iMac and maximum clock speeds will therefore come down. They would previously use the K series i5 and i7 CPU to hit the high clock speeds in the top SKU but doing means they have to use 95w TDP parts from the Intel parts bin (other parts are 65w) and these are the models that typically get paired with more powerful GPU which is where the stories about the higher heat and noise come from.

The 8 core/16 thread Xeon CPU in the base iMac Pro runs at 3.2GHz base (4.2GHz turbo, 19Mb cache) so the benchmarking folks will be looking very closely at the following Coffee Lake options that Apple could put into the next iMac:

Core i7-8700K - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.7GHz base (4.7GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i7-8700B - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.2GHz base (4.6GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - probably not an Apple option
Core i5-8600K - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.6GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i5-8600 - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP
Core i5-8500B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.0GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered
Core i5-8400B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 2.8GHz base (4GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered

The i7-8700B option is an interesting one - Apple don't use the 7th generation equivalent but it's significantly cheaper than the K series variant and only offers the hyper threading that's missing over the i5-8600 which would be the middle SKU. In marketing terms, there's going to be a clock speed drop across the board which is made up by an increase in cores.

With the new Coffee Lake processors Apple could equalise CPU TDP across the board on 65w and use the 30w (and money) saving to:

1. Offer more powerful GPUs (eg Radeon Pro 575X, 580X and then perhaps Vega 56)
2. Offer more RAM as standard (although at Apple prices I doubt it)
3. Cool the Mac more effectively using the existing hardware
Both of these methods use the existing iMac 5k cooling system which retains the RAM access door.

Or:
3. Use the iMac Pro cooling system, killing off 3rd party RAM upgrades, but allowing for quieter top end iMacs.

To be fair, Apple's current iMac pricing system allows for users to spec 1Tb SSD and 32Gb RAM and get into the same relative ball park as the iMac Pro but most sane users would buy their own RAM at a fraction of that cost.

The B parts are nothing special. They are basically the same thing as the non-B parts, in a different package, for quasi-mobile machines or small form factor desktop machines. In other words, the 8700B is the 8700 repackaged. In terms of the 2017 models, Apple does in fat use use the 7700, but in the 21.5" iMac.

It doesn't make sense to use the B parts unless they are going to use the B parts across the line. Why? If you're going to design a socketed motherboard for the 27" iMac, you may as well use the chips that fit that socket. If you're going to mix B and non-B parts, then you need at least one extra motherboard design. Waste of money.

As for pricing, listed Intel retail pricing is of course meaningless as a gauge for pricing for a massive buyer like Apple. But FWIW, the 8600K is actually quite a bit cheaper than the 8700B.

IMO, the most obvious 27" models for Apple would be:

Entry: i5-8400 or i5-8500 (65 Watt)
Mid: i5-8600 (65 Watt)
Top: i5-8600K (95 Watt)
CTO: i7-8700K (95 Watt)

GPUs would all be Polaris, all Radeon Pro 500X series, likely with no Vega options at all.

The i5-8600 or even the i5-8500 would be a perfect machine for me. But alas, I thought for budget year reasons I had to buy last year, so I already have the i5-7600. Truthfully it's fine though for my needs, and it has the Kaby Lake GPU upgrades that I wanted, namely hardware 4K 8-bit and 10-bit HEVC decode acceleration, along with 4K DRM support, so I'm good for many years to come.

 

[sublunar]

The B parts are nothing special. They are basically the same thing as the non-B parts, in a different package, for quasi-mobile machines or small form factor desktop machines. In other words, the 8700B is the 8700 repackaged. In terms of the 2017 models, Apple does in fat use use the 7700, but in the 21.5" iMac.

It doesn't make sense to use the B parts unless they are going to use the B parts across the line. Why? If you're going to design a socketed motherboard for the 27" iMac, you may as well use the chips that fit that socket. If you're going to mix B and non-B parts, then you need at least one extra motherboard design. Waste of money.

As for pricing, listed Intel retail pricing is of course meaningless as a gauge for pricing for a massive buyer like Apple. But FWIW, the 8600K is actually quite a bit cheaper than the 8700B.

IMO, the most obvious 27" models for Apple would be:

Entry: i5-8400 or i5-8500
Mid: i5-8600
Top: i5-8600K
CTO: i7-8700K

GPUs would all be Polaris, all Radeon Pro 500X series, likely with no Vega options at all.

B parts would prevent extreme upgraders from adding better CPUs to an iMac after taking it to bits. Not that anyone is about to attempt that but there is now the shadow of the iMac Pro on the horizon. That internal cooling design could be used on the 5k iMac at any time down the line and the biggest most obvious takeaway from that is the loss of the RAM access door. Imagine being able to spec up a 1Tb SSD top end 2018 iMac, and add 32Gb of your own RAM for a fraction of cost of an iMac Pro. 2 x 16Gb kits are available from crucial.com for under $385 and you'll have 8Gb to eBay. Apple would charge $600 and keep the 8Gb.

The 21.5" iMac is a bit of an oddball, with the i7 non K exclusive, already locked in RAM, and the non retina SKU that uses a motherboard type not used anywhere else (even in a Mac Mini). It must sell enough to make it worthwhile which, being the cheapest iMac, is probably correct as far as desktops are concerned.

It doesn't say much for the Mac Mini though, that a top end niche spec iMac 21.5" or a bottom end non retina iMac 2.15" can be catered for but they haven't found it worthwhile doing anything for the Mini since 2014.

The 2018 revision is when the entire iMac range should go fully retina - I can imagine Phil Schiller talking about a journey that started in 2014 etc.

The traditional thinking would lead you to assume the 27" iMac would follow the thinking that you illustrated above. I've no information to suggest otherwise but in terms of lining things up against the iMac Pro I'd be thinking of the inevitable benchmarks of the i7-8700K vs the 8 core special Xeon that is used in the base iMac.

 

[EugW]

B parts would prevent extreme upgraders from adding better CPUs to an iMac after taking it to bits. Not that anyone is about to attempt that but there is now the shadow of the iMac Pro on the horizon. That internal cooling design could be used on the 5k iMac at any time down the line and the biggest most obvious takeaway from that is the loss of the RAM access door. Imagine being able to spec up a 1Tb SSD top end 2018 iMac, and add 32Gb of your own RAM for a fraction of cost of an iMac Pro. 2 x 16Gb kits are available from crucial.com for under $385 and you'll have 8Gb to eBay. Apple would charge $600 and keep the 8Gb.

I'd say extreme iMac modding happens in about 0.000001% of iMacs, and most of the time long after they've gone out of warranty. And Apple won't touch these anyway after they've been modded, even if you pay them, so no skin off their back.

The traditional thinking would lead you to assume the 27" iMac would follow the thinking that you illustrated above. I've no information to suggest otherwise but in terms of lining things up against the iMac Pro I'd be thinking of the inevitable benchmarks of the i7-8700K vs the 8 core special Xeon that is used in the base iMac.

The i7-7700K iMac configured like the Mac Pro is already $3700, and that doesn't include 10 GigE networking, ECC, Vega, or the advanced cooling system.

Yes, the i7-8700K will be close in CPU performance to the Xeon W-2140B 8-core, but it's still often slower, and it's not even in the same league for GPU speed if it just has a slightly clock boosted Radeon Pro 580X. Furthermore, the iMac Pro will simply get its CPU updated later this year to make it even faster.

And perhaps most importantly, the i7-8700K stands to provide much, much, more profit to Apple than the iMac Pro does, because the unit sales will be a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the iMac Pro. Delete the i7-8700K option and the risk is the customer buys nothing at all, or else just gets a cheaper iMac.

 

[geromi912]

Great. New iMac with mid range GPUs from 2 years ago (RX 400 series). True innovation next to Volta and Ampere.

 

[Glmnet1]

Great. New iMac with mid range GPUs from 2 years ago (RX 400 series). True innovation next to Volta and Ampere.

Great. A negative comment on a product that's not been announced yet.

 

[geromi912]

Great. A negative comment on a product that's not been announced yet.

Well, not my fault the rumours aren’t exactly positive.

 

[mreg376]

Well, not my fault the rumours aren’t exactly positive.

Umm, these aren't even rumors. They're guesses/suggestions.

 

[Lammers]

While FaceID does need some sort of change to the system I think it should have been done for the first generation iMac Pro - maybe the technology wasn't perfected in time.

The cooling system for the iMac Pro moves the RAM away from the central position with the access door obscured by a bigger heatsink which also crucially dispenses with hard drives - it's a technical reason but obviously doing away with the RAM access door makes upgrades more expensive for the end user.

It's an obvious move for Apple to clone the iMac Pro innards for a future iMac and spells the end for RAM upgradability in my opinion if they decide to do that. The engineering has already been done and wouldn't cost Apple any extra to implement in a regular iMac apart from material costs (in terms of the extra heatsink and losing ability to have hard drives).

In marketing terms, Apple could be about to move to 6 core CPUs courtesy of Coffee Lake in the 5k iMac and maximum clock speeds will therefore come down. They would previously use the K series i5 and i7 CPU to hit the high clock speeds in the top SKU but doing means they have to use 95w TDP parts from the Intel parts bin (other parts are 65w) and these are the models that typically get paired with more powerful GPU which is where the stories about the higher heat and noise come from.

The 8 core/16 thread Xeon CPU in the base iMac Pro runs at 3.2GHz base (4.2GHz turbo, 19Mb cache) so the benchmarking folks will be looking very closely at the following Coffee Lake options that Apple could put into the next iMac:

Core i7-8700K - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.7GHz base (4.7GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i7-8700B - 6 Cores, 12 Threads 3.2GHz base (4.6GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - probably not an Apple option
Core i5-8600K - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.6GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 95w TDP
Core i5-8600 - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.3GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP
Core i5-8500B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 3.0GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered
Core i5-8400B - 6 Cores, 6 Threads 2.8GHz base (4GHz turbo, 9Mb cache), 65w TDP - designed to be soldered

The i7-8700B option is an interesting one - Apple don't use the 7th generation equivalent but it's significantly cheaper than the K series variant and only offers the hyper threading that's missing over the i5-8600 which would be the middle SKU. In marketing terms, there's going to be a clock speed drop across the board which is made up by an increase in cores.

With the new Coffee Lake processors Apple could equalise CPU TDP across the board on 65w and use the 30w (and money) saving to:

1. Offer more powerful GPUs (eg Radeon Pro 575X, 580X and then perhaps Vega 56)
2. Offer more RAM as standard (although at Apple prices I doubt it)
3. Cool the Mac more effectively using the existing hardware
Both of these methods use the existing iMac 5k cooling system which retains the RAM access door.

Or:
3. Use the iMac Pro cooling system, killing off 3rd party RAM upgrades, but allowing for quieter top end iMacs.

To be fair, Apple's current iMac pricing system allows for users to spec 1Tb SSD and 32Gb RAM and get into the same relative ball park as the iMac Pro but most sane users would buy their own RAM at a fraction of that cost.


As a side note, the 21.5" iMac could go with variations of the above but it's feasible they could use the Intel + Vega platform which I think is destined for the MacBook Pro but for the hyper-threading which is expected on the MacBook Pro platform but not on the 21.5" iMac.

Core i7-8709G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 8Mb cache), 100w TDP including Vega GPU
Core i7-8705G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 3.1GHz base (4.1GHz turbo, 8Mb cache), 65w TDP including Vega GPU
Core i5-8305G - 4 Cores, 8 Threads 2.8GHz base (3.8GHz turbo, 6Mb cache), 65w TDP including Vega GPU

On the basis that Apple want to even up things with the iMac Pro in mind, how about an iMac 21.5" setup that includes these aforementioned CPUs?

Could Apple offer the top 27" 5k SKU options with the non-K i7 and use the cost and TDP saving to throw in an even better GPU which isn't as restricted as some of the earlier options? It doesn't have to be the Vega 56 but would make an obvious buying decision for many who would otherwise be stuck with an AMD Pro 580X.

Okay, interesting, thanks. So a solution that improves cooling capacity whilst preserving the RAM access door would require a whole new internals design. Seems unlikely to me.

 

[fathergll]

I keep seeing this notion but it doens't seem to be a "thing" for Apple or any company really to worry about. Every item you buy stands to be replaced with a newer cheaper better faster as soon as you get it home.

I agree it's not going to impact Apple in the grand scheme of things, I'm just stating if someone plunked down 5 grand on a 8 core Xeon iMac Pro and for some reason Apple had some cutting edge multi core i9 or thread ripper come out for a cheaper price guys would be pissed. It won't happen so it doesn't matter.

 

[sublunar]

I agree it's not going to impact Apple in the grand scheme of things, I'm just stating if someone plunked down 5 grand on a 8 core Xeon iMac Pro and for some reason Apple had some cutting edge multi core i9 or thread ripper come out for a cheaper price guys would be pissed. It won't happen so it doesn't matter.

Core i9 is a mobile CPU in this generation. 45w TDP, 6 cores, 12 threads but only under 3GHz base frequency. It's not a threat to the iMac status quo unless Apple are redefining iMacs. There certainly appears to be a game changer for the iMac in the shape of the Intel + Vega CPU but that's 4 cores, 8 threads and up to 100w TDP including the GPU and more likely to go into the 21.5" model in my opinion. That's if Apple aren't thinking of using it only in laptops.

 

[potatis]

Last time they upgraded the minimum HDD/RAM on the (non-edu) base model was in 2012, to 1TB/8GB. That's quite some time. Will it stay like that or change I wonder.

 

[geromi912]

Last time they upgraded the minimum HDD/RAM on the (non-edu) base model was in 2012, to 1TB/8GB. That's quite some time. Will it stay like that or change I wonder.

yeah 16gb should be standard on the 27 inch and increase the ssd size of the fusion drive. And FFS don't remove the ram door