New imac 27" for a steal

[triple-tap]

I just bought an imac 27" 3.2/8gb/1tb hdd for .......
$1511.xx tonight at best buy. They have them on sale for 1679, and I happened to have a 10% movers coupon with me. I sold my 2011 MacBook Pro tonight, and I'm very excited to get the imac home.

I know a BTO would have been ideal, but I saved so much $$& this way. The ram I plan to upgrade myself even if I bought it BTO. The hard drive is replaceable with an ssd, and I plan to throw a 500 gb Samsung 840 in there.

My fiancé and I aren't power users, so I am not worried about the processor. It's still a quad core i5. We also have a MBA each for work.

 

[AllergyDoc]

Nice find.

 

[Ipadilac]

I have the same iMac I bought last February. Its a very capable computer for the price. I did upgrade the RAM to 24GB as I do stuff in photoshop, iMovie etc.. but yeah you got a great deal on that one!!

 

[Truefan31]

I just bought an imac 27" 3.2/8gb/1tb hdd for .......

$1511.xx tonight at best buy. They have them on sale for 1679, and I happened to have a 10% movers coupon with me. I sold my 2011 MacBook Pro tonight, and I'm very excited to get the imac home.



I know a BTO would have been ideal, but I saved so much $$& this way. The ram I plan to upgrade myself even if I bought it BTO. The hard drive is replaceable with an ssd, and I plan to throw a 500 gb Samsung 840 in there.



My fiancé and I aren't power users, so I am not worried about the processor. It's still a quad core i5. We also have a MBA each for work.

Upgrade the ram. It's easy and relatively cheaper going 3rd party like crucial. I have the regular hd too so I got a 512 gb external ssd for my boot drive. A lot faster.

 

[triple-tap]

I plan to do the fam soon, but I didn't know an external SSD for booting was an option.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
[[ I didn't know an external SSD for booting was an option. ]]

Of course it is.
The iMac will run as fast from "an external booter" as it would from an internally-installed SSD.

Just get the "bare" SSD of your choice, and put it into an enclosure or USB3/SATA docking station.
The enclosure could be USB3 or thunderbolt.
USB3 is -far- cheaper.

 

[triple-tap]

OP wrote:
[[ I didn't know an external SSD for booting was an option. ]]

Of course it is.
The iMac will run as fast from "an external booter" as it would from an internally-installed SSD.

Just get the "bare" SSD of your choice, and put it into an enclosure or USB3/SATA docking station.
The enclosure could be USB3 or thunderbolt.
USB3 is -far- cheaper.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-PC3-1...UTF8&qid=1411915076&sr=8-1&keywords=CT4951624

This is the ram I ordered. I plan to get the SSD after doing some more research on them.

Thanks all for the recommendations

 

[Truefan31]

OP wrote:

[[ I didn't know an external SSD for booting was an option. ]]



Of course it is.

The iMac will run as fast from "an external booter" as it would from an internally-installed SSD.



Just get the "bare" SSD of your choice, and put it into an enclosure or USB3/SATA docking station.

The enclosure could be USB3 or thunderbolt.

USB3 is -far- cheaper.

Usb 3 is cheaper however I use a tb connector for trim. And it frees up a usb port

 

[triple-tap]

What exactly do u mean by trim? I thought I just needed to clone the original hdd onto the SSD then select that as the boot drive?

 

[yjchua95]

What exactly do u mean by trim? I thought I just needed to clone the original hdd onto the SSD then select that as the boot drive?

TRIM is garbage collection at the software level. If TRIM isn't enabled, SSD performance will degrade heavily over the long run.

Only Thunderbolt enclosures support TRIM. USB 3 enclosures (even the ones with UASP) do not.

 

[Fishrrman]

I would like to reply to the post directly above regarding TRIM.

I've been booting and running a late-2012 Mac Mini since January of 2013 from an SSD mounted in a USB3/SATA docking station.

Over this time, I used two different drives (first an Intel 530 series, which got moved to a MacBook Pro, so I currently use a Crucial m500 series).

Since it was a USB-based enclosure, I could not enable TRIM.

But I've never noticed any kind of -perceptible- slowdown from either drive. Both ran -- and run -- fine.

I suspect that the concept of TRIM - particularly regarding some modern drives - doesn't impact drive performance nearly as much as some would "warn us" about.

My opinion only, but my real-world experiences support it...

 

[SaSaSushi]

I suspect that the concept of TRIM - particularly regarding some modern drives - doesn't impact drive performance nearly as much as some would "warn us" about.

My opinion only, but my real-world experiences support it...

Perhaps a more fact-based and objective opinion might be useful here.

Enabling TRIM Is Almost Always Worth It

 

[Truefan31]

I would like to reply to the post directly above regarding TRIM.



I've been booting and running a late-2012 Mac Mini since January of 2013 from an SSD mounted in a USB3/SATA docking station.



Over this time, I used two different drives (first an Intel 530 series, which got moved to a MacBook Pro, so I currently use a Crucial m500 series).



Since it was a USB-based enclosure, I could not enable TRIM.



But I've never noticed any kind of -perceptible- slowdown from either drive. Both ran -- and run -- fine.



I suspect that the concept of TRIM - particularly regarding some modern drives - doesn't impact drive performance nearly as much as some would "warn us" about.



My opinion only, but my real-world experiences support it...

Depending on how you use your computer, but TRIM is pretty important IMO for ssd. And yes it's more expensive going the tb route but it leaves a usb3 free for me.