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New iMac; SSD or Fusion Drive

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picxar

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 22, 2013
30
21
Hey guys,
I want to buy a new imac, but im not sure whether I should buy the imac with a fusion drive or SSD only. Im really desperate, the 256gb SSD is not my number one pick but the 512gb version is far too expensive.... Also I heard the western digital they use is more worse than the seagate they also use. What would you do?
picxar
 
why would the western digital be worse? theres nothing wrong with the seagate or western digital drives in use currently?

I'd highly recommend SSD only and use USB3, Thunderbolt, or FireWire (With thunderbolt to firewire adapter) for additional storage.
Less mechanical parts and if you feel hesitant about what random drive in there, no worry you can get whichever one you want in an external enclosure.
 
I heard theyre noisy, at least some users complained about it....western digital.
I had a similar thought, no mechanical parts, less heat, combined with a external 1TB or more via thunderbolt....Dont get me wrong, the fusion drives are good but Im a bit insecure...
 
Fusion just works fine for me and I appreciate having 1TB at my disposal. If you can't afford 512/768GB SSD's then the Fusion drive is the obvious and best choice.
 
If you have enough money and care about stability and performance, go for internal SSD only all the time. Fusion drive is a nice compromise, but SSD is a much better alternative overall.
 
Mac32 said:
If you have enough money and care about stability and performance, go for internal SSD only all the time. Fusion drive is a nice compromise, but SSD is a much better alternative overall.
Click to expand...

Except that it gives you a lot less storage, or is a lot more expensive, and not noticeably faster.


picxar said:
I heard theyre noisy, at least some users complained about it....western digital.
I had a similar thought, no mechanical parts, less heat, combined with a external 1TB or more via thunderbolt....Dont get me wrong, the fusion drives are good but Im a bit insecure...
Click to expand...

Sometimes drives go wrong, both SSD and hard drives. And when it happens, someone posts on the internet. Whatever drive you look at, there will be people complaining about it. And drives change so quickly, anything that you read about any drive maker a year ago is completely irrelevant today.

You need an external backup drive, no matter what drive you use internally. And Fusion means you have tons of storage without having to worry about organising it (which will haunt you forever with an external drive).
 
I can afford the bigger SSD, but the 512gb and 768gb are extremely overpriced....In 1 year you get a 512gb for 300 and Apple wants 600...
So you think the fusion drive is the better option?
 
picxar said:
So you think the fusion drive is the better option?
Click to expand...

In terms of value for money, yes.

Don't forget that the OS and most often accessed data & apps will sit on the 128GB SSD portion of the drive. The performance of the Fusion drive in my iMac has been flawless. I am very happy with it. If there was anything negative to say I would have mentioned it.
 
gnasher729 said:
except that it gives you a lot less storage, or is a lot more expensive, and not noticeably faster.
Click to expand...

In a lot of cases this is completely WRONG. I'm not gonna give the long, detalied answer here, because I've done so many times already.
 
picxar said:
Hey guys,
I want to buy a new imac, but im not sure whether I should buy the imac with a fusion drive or SSD only. Im really desperate, the 256gb SSD is not my number one pick but the 512gb version is far too expensive.... Also I heard the western digital they use is more worse than the seagate they also use. What would you do?
picxar
Click to expand...
Get a 1TB Fusion drive and if you want something on guarantied fast SSD and not on the fusion drive, get an external SSD. At the current prices for SSDs from various places, if I were to buy a new iMac today, I would get a 1TB fusion drive and a 256GB external SSD. I would actually boot off the fusion drive and use the external drive for a few specific items.
 
Mac32 said:
In a lot of cases this is completely WRONG. I'm not gonna give the long, detalied answer here, because I've done so many times already.
Click to expand...

Try again. Because I haven't seen anyone finding noticeable difference in speed between SSD and Fusion Drive outside of benchmarks specifically created to note differences. In practice, the 4 GB write buffer of the Fusion drive can make write operations faster than on a plain SSD drive.
 
gnasher729 said:
Try again. Because I haven't seen anyone finding noticeable difference in speed between SSD and Fusion Drive outside of benchmarks specifically created to note differences. In practice, the 4 GB write buffer of the Fusion drive can make write operations faster than on a plain SSD drive.
Click to expand...

I am really stuggling to make sense of that sentence. Do you mean the 64MB Cache? i.e. wrong quantity, wrong units and wrong description?

Or something else?
 
Having all but punted the idea of buying a MacPro (price and availability fears), I'm looking hard at a top-end iMac to handle my video editing/photos/Web dev. for my community news site.

I am looking closely at ponying up and buying the 768 GB SSD — I have to think it will be speedier home for my OS/apps. Obviously, I'll pair it with large and quick USB/TB standard drives (for back up and hanging on to video files and such).

With all of the read/write cycles needed with the fusion drive, I can't imagine that it would be even close to as fast as a standard SSD, let alone quicker — especially when working with larger files in FCPX/Motion...

Obviously, I'm open to other's thoughts, but it seems unlikely from here.
 
gnasher729 said:
You need an external backup drive, no matter what drive you use internally. And Fusion means you have tons of storage without having to worry about organising it (which will haunt you forever with an external drive).
Click to expand...

Quoted for redundancy (kinda poetic, eh??). Be backing up to an external, cloud storage, or both.

For the record I've got a Fusion drive in one machine and an SSD in the other, and they're both nice and quick and I don't see a noticeable difference with my everyday apps.
 
i think you must wait for the imac upgrade...i think we will see some fusion drive with 256 ssd and 1 T for the same price. And wifi ac, and better graphic card.
and even if you want ssd you will get the new PCIe
 
I went SSD only, mainly so I don't have to worry about the drive being as likely to die and going through the hassle of getting it replaced since the iMac isn't so user friendly for parts. Granted I could afford the 512GB model, would have been another story if I couldn't.
 
well, i hate waiting especially when it comes to apple, the problem is nobodody knows what apple is up to so the risk of disappointment is always high ...I dont play any computergames or cut videos etc...Over the last 3 years I filled up my external storage with 1.5-2terabyte, so Im not an extreme user or something, therefore I thought about the SSD only configuration....I could go with the 512gb SSD configuration, but when you are going to sell your imac, maybe in 3 years the loss especially of the SSD will be huge. And nobody cares whether you paid 300$ or 1000$ for the SSD..I have the money, but SSDs are not mainstream enough and the prices are very unstable...So either I take the 1TB Fusion Drive or the 256gb SSD, everything else would be dumb, in my opinion.
 
I went SSD-only and that was certainly the best option for me. 256GB is more than enough for the forseeable so long as all you want it for is OS and programs. I have even put Bootcamp on an external SSD so my internal SSD is for OS X only, programs only.

I wanted my storage external to the iMac in case it (or the iMac) dies and then I am not worrying about identity theft or other loss of confidential data.

Also, I want the iMac to be as quiet as possible, and that is not possible with a 7,200 rpm drive 2 feet from your face.

If or when 256GB becomes a restriction, I will happily open the iMac up and fit a larger SSD. But they will be cheaper then, and doubtless I will be less worried about invalidating a warranty in a couple of years time.
 
next iMac will have fusion drive 128or 256 PCIe+1T
next iMac will have the future of wifi ac
next iMac will have 780M -It is based on the 28nm GK104 Kepler architecture similar to the GTX 680M, but features more CUDA cores (1536 vs. 1344), a higher clock rate and GPU Boost 2.0. As of summer 2013, it is the fastest laptop graphics card on the market.
 
Wifi ac= No advantages to ethernet, especially when your router is in the same room like your desktop...
780M nice graphics card, but when you have a ps3/ps4 you dont need a highend graphic card....
PCI-E based SSD, I think the best feature, but there is no performance boost between a 400mb/s read write SSD and a 800mb/s write read SSD, i compared the latest mba of my girlfriend whith mine from 2011 and there was no noticeably difference in performance....Some programs run faster, but thats it...

BTW, I placed my order for the i5, 675mx and FD...I will see how it goes and whether i keep it or not. It was the most reasonable configuration, I think.
Can someone explain the advantages of hyperthreading in the i7 modell, which programs benefit?
 
Last edited:
so you have in the same room your router so no need for signal and speed improvements, you will buy a ps4, so no need for GPU, you will not need PICe...but the rest of us we all need ALL IN ONE-the future iMAC
 
No the development is good, but nobody knows what apple is up to and why I should wait for something which I dont need alternatively where is no big difference to the actual performance...
 
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