iMac Retina 4K 2017 21.5" - new-to-me.

[DCBassman]

This one is not in Early Intel Macs because it isn't one, but it was bought for Early Intel Macs money. Excellent condition, Magic Mouse/Keyboard included, boxed, with original power cable. £50 - pretty cheap. It's the 3.4GHz i5-7500, 1TB Fusion Drive, 8GB RAM.
The seller had tied it in a knot trying to reset it for sale, then couldn't get it re-installed, so...
I might add that this was the asking price, and I happily drove the length of Devon to get it.

It's all good, now running Sequoia quite happily. When something dies, or I can't resist the temptation any longer, I'll carefully dismantle it and replace all drives and stick 32GB RAM in it. I'll likely geo with a 500GB NVMe plus a 1TB SATA SSD where the spinner was. That should make a nice machine to see out what support is left for Intel Macs.

Because this is my first even remotely modern Mac, I've learned that Thunderbolt 3 ports are bootable. So a couple of 500GB SATA SSDs in enclosures, plugged into those ports, gives me an easy multi-OS capability, and I'm using MX Linux on one, and currently High Sierra on the other. If I can persuade the machine to live with Windows bare-metal, I might try that too.
Happy days!

 

[zgagato]

Thunderbolt enclosers are a bit expensive. Just replace internal sata for sata ssd 2.5" and blade for an fanxiang ap 2000 dedicated mac drive. imacs dont play nicely with nvme drives and adapters like macbooks do. make a bootcamp partition on the sata ssd once you replace it. and yea 32 gb of ram if it is replacable.

 

[DCBassman]

RAM is replaceable, despite Apple saying otherwise. BUT...it is almost a 100% dismantle to do it, or indeed any of it, really, so...only when it breaks!

 

[zgagato]

RAM is replaceable, despite Apple saying otherwise. BUT...it is almost a 100% dismantle to do it, or indeed any of it, really, so...only when it breaks!

Yup, to get to ram slots and blade ssd you have to pull out the motherboard. Those slots are on it’s back side unfortunately.

 

[zgagato]

Those 2017 imacs run nicely once they’re upgraded. Open core legacy patcher also flies with sequoia

 

[DCBassman]

Forgot to add that I'll also up the cpu to an i7-7700 while I'm at it.

 

[zgagato]

Check if the 2017 supports i7 in 21”. Older smaller imacs would not start with i7. I know that 2019 21” supports i9 even. Just check before you get the cpu.

 

[DCBassman]

Check if the 2017 supports i7 in 21”. Older smaller imacs would not start with i7. I know that 2019 21” supports i9 even. Just check before you get the cpu.

The top-spec iMac 18,2 has that CPU as a BTO/CTO option over the one I have. It will fit.

 

[DCBassman]

A little update on where I've gone with this machine. As previously mentioned, I will not be opening it to upgrade unless something dies.
Stock machine has OCLP Sequoia installed, and it runs OK. Fans get a bit noisy now and then, even when not doing a lot. Not greatly impressed with the Fusion Drive. So decided to dig out a USB3 caddy and a spare 240GB Crucial SSD. It's an M500, so not the latest and greatest. Installed Ventura onto that to see if any faster. Even allowing for the heavier Sequoia, it's just generally quicker. So I sticky-padded the caddy to the inside of the foot above the power cable. It's connected by a short USB-C cable to one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports. I may try Sequoia on this external drive setup, but might wait until I have a spare SSD that's a bit more modern and speedy. Or maybe see if can set up an NVMe m.2 TB3 caddy, if I can find one that isn't ruinously expensive.

 

[mreg376]

You don't say what you're doing with the machine, so I'm not sure why OCLP Sequoia has been foisted on the iMac instead of running Ventura, which it can do natively. YMMV of course, but my experience with OCLP has always been an...adventure, so my 2017 i7 64GB 1TB SSD 27" iMac sticks with Ventura. I use the machine to produce income, so I need stability and reliability and cannot afford adventures nor the time for tinkering. It runs very well, I might even say snappy.

 

[DCBassman]

All my computer use is tinkering, so I can afford adventure. Actually, I do have a tiny business which needs a minimal computer, so that's what it has - a Celeron netbook running Windows 10 LTSC, good until 2031.
At the moment, as before, the unmodified iMac runs OCLP Sequoia from the 1TB Fusion drive, but also has Ventura running off an SSD connected to one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports. It runs better on that setup than when it is installed natively.

 

[DCBassman]

but also has Ventura running off an SSD connected to one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports

Hopefully, from tomorrow, the external Ventura will be running off an m.2 NVMe drive into the same Thunderbolt 3 port, so will hopefully gain a little speed.

 

[DCBassman]

Hopefully, from tomorrow, the external Ventura will be running off an m.2 NVMe drive into the same Thunderbolt 3 port, so will hopefully gain a little speed.

Actually, I rehashed it completely. Fusion drive now has the updated Ventura, the new NVMe drive is running Sonoma, running it very well, and currently updating that too.