Old IMAC - Late 2014 version - is it worth it?

[magpieant28]

Good evening all ... this is my first post, please be gentle!!!

For a long time now, I've been using an old Macbook Pro - Mid 2010, I5 2.53 and the memory cranked up to 8gb. It's been great for all I've wanted to do (mainly photoshop CS6 and Lightroom Classic) and has impressed me with it's speed.

Anyway, it's just died.

I'm looking to 'upgrade' and have seen

iMac 27 inch 5K Core i5 3.5Ghz, 8gb, 1.12TB Fusion Late 2014.​

at a very competitive price (£250).

My questions are, is it worth it? I've heard that the Late 2014 one is slower than it's predecessor, but I'm imagining that it would still be way faster than my Macbook Pro mentioned above? I've also heard about making them faster using OLCP or something ... but I know nothing about that??

Any thoughts/advice on how useful it would actually be? Does the price sound about right? I think it sounds worth it.

Also, can anyone recommend any tips or tricks I could do to 'test' it when I'm looking at it in the shop?

Thank you all so much in advance.

Ant.

PS - as a side note, I also use an early 2015 Macbook Air I5, 1.6, 4gb for work, which again, is very nippy and I like!!

 

[saudor]

The fusion drive is not a performer so it will run slower than what the machine is capable of. That being said, not sure how the late 2015 (with the skylake processors) is priced but i think if you can find that at a comparable price, it's a better idea since they come with extra features like sidecar and universal control if that is important to you. I also vaguely remember that the 5K display struggles in performance and the display itself has issues in the 2014 version (burn in)

However, if you're running a 5400rpm in that 2010, then the 2014 will be an upgrade in every way. i'd be more worried about the issues with the display since that was pretty well documented.

 

[ignatius345]

For £250 it might be a decent bridge for a while.

I had this exact machine, though -- and if it's used I will advise you very strongly to check the wear levels on the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive. DriveDx will help with this, and I'm betting there's a demo mode you could use.

The fusion drive is not a performer so it will run slower than what the machine is capable of.

Their time has passed now that SSDs are more affordable -- but I will say that a properly functioning Fusion Drive is a LOT faster than a plain HDD. It does offer some of the speed advantages of the SSD with the large capacity of the HDD.

Again, for the price this could be a decent Mac to use for a while if it's not worn out.

 

[TwoH]

2014 is a pretty decent machine, but the Fusion Drive would slow it down a lot. The other issue I’d look out for - especially if you’re looking to do photoshop is that these years are pretty prone to LCD defects such as pinking hue around edges and image retention

 

[Juicy Box]

It is worth noting that the 2014 iMacs with any size Fusion Drive came with a 128GB SSD portion, the later 1TB Fusiin Drives came with a tiny 24GB (2015) or 32GB (2017+) SSD, which was almost pointless.

The Fusion Drives with the 128GB SSD were not too bad for speed, especially on HFS.

A problem you will have when talking about these older Macs with HDDs is that you may run into a higher chance of one failing.

If you can do an external SSD, even just a SATA, this would be an improvement over an aging Fusion Drive.

The performance increase from the Intel 3rd gen (Late 2012 iMac) i-processors to even ones from a few years ago isn't that dramatic, so the 2014 i5 Would be a decent and noticeable upgrade from your 1st gen i5 in your MBP, but not too much behind newer Intel Macs.

 

[ignatius345]

2014 is a pretty decent machine, but the Fusion Drive would slow it down a lot. The other issue I’d look out for - especially if you’re looking to do photoshop is that these years are pretty prone to LCD defects such as pinking hue around edges and image retention

Yep. My 2014 5K had some really brutal image retention, which fortunately popped up while it was still under AppleCare. The replacement panel was better and never had the same issue.

 

[EugW]

For 250 UKP that's a decent option if in good condition. If I got that, what I would consider doing would be to defuse the Fusion drive, and run the OS off the 128 GB SSD and put stuff like photos or whatever on the HD (or else an external USB 3 SSD when you get some more cash).

 

[magpieant28]

The fusion drive is not a performer so it will run slower than what the machine is capable of. That being said, not sure how the late 2015 (with the skylake processors) is priced but i think if you can find that at a comparable price, it's a better idea since they come with extra features like sidecar and universal control if that is important to you. I also vaguely remember that the 5K display struggles in performance and the display itself has issues in the 2014 version (burn in)

However, if you're running a 5400rpm in that 2010, then the 2014 will be an upgrade in every way. i'd be more worried about the issues with the display since that was pretty well documented.

Thanks for your reply. That's interesting about the burn in on the display - especially as regards using it for image editing. I'll consider that when looking at the machine.

I was thinking about possibly booting from an external SSD and just using the Fusion drive for storage - to be honest, the majority of my images are already on external disks, with other stuff being cloud based. Lots to think about!!!

I'm not sure what sidecar and universal control are. Don't think I have ever used them. Is this something I should think about?

Many thanks.

 

[magpieant28]

For £250 it might be a decent bridge for a while.

I had this exact machine, though -- and if it's used I will advise you very strongly to check the wear levels on the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive. DriveDx will help with this, and I'm betting there's a demo mode you could use.



Their time has passed now that SSDs are more affordable -- but I will say that a properly functioning Fusion Drive is a LOT faster than a plain HDD. It does offer some of the speed advantages of the SSD with the large capacity of the HDD.

Again, for the price this could be a decent Mac to use for a while if it's not worn out.

Thank you. The machine would come with a warranty of 12months - so hopefully that would cover the drive for the short term. Are the drives easy to upgrade or not worth the effort? I'll see if I can run any tests. Many thanks.

 

[magpieant28]

2014 is a pretty decent machine, but the Fusion Drive would slow it down a lot. The other issue I’d look out for - especially if you’re looking to do photoshop is that these years are pretty prone to LCD defects such as pinking hue around edges and image retention

Thanks for you reply. I feel this may be my biggest concern as it will be used for a lot of image editing . I'll have to have a good look at the screen in relation to this and the burn in mentioned above.

 

[Fishrrman]

I would not buy any used Mac today -- ANY ONE -- that had a fusion drive inside.
These things are going to have high failure rates in the future.

OP wrote:
"For a long time now, I've been using an old Macbook Pro - Mid 2010, I5 2.53 and the memory cranked up to 8gb. It's been great for all I've wanted to do (mainly photoshop CS6 and Lightroom Classic) and has impressed me with it's speed.
Anyway, it's just died."

Can you tell us what died?
If it's just the internal drive, that's EASILY replaced in the 2010 MBP's (I have one).
Same for the battery.

If you want something different, I would recommend that you look for the following:
iMac -- a 27" model (these have upgradeable RAM) with an SSD
or
Mini -- try to find a used 2018 with at least 512gb SSD inside.

 

[ignatius345]

Thank you. The machine would come with a warranty of 12months - so hopefully that would cover the drive for the short term. Are the drives easy to upgrade or not worth the effort? I'll see if I can run any tests. Many thanks.

It's possible but not easy. Depends on what "worth the effort" means to you. I bought a parts and tools kit from iFixit (maybe $100) and bought a 2 TB SATA SSD ($150? 200?) and then proceeded to open the machine up on my kitchen table. Following iFixit's teardown guide it took about 2-3 hours, much of which was spent carefully peeling off all the old adhesive from the display panel before putting on the new adhesive strips the kit came with.

Sourcing and replacing the SATA HDD in the machine is pretty straightforward. Replacing the blade SSD that's in there is a lot tricker because you have to buy exactly the right SSD and I think some kind of adapter. I opted to bypass the blade SSD myself (the part that was on the verge of failing) and instead replaced the still-functional SATA HDD.

All that said, though, the surgery went swimmingly and I was able to get another year or two out of it.

I will note again, though, that in my experience the part of the Fusion Drive that was failing was NOT the HDD, but rather the little 128 GB SSD. They get hammered with read/write cycles because data is constantly being migrated on and off of them, depending on whether it's in active use. I'd strongly advise using DriveDx or similar to gauge the lifetime left in that SSD.

 

[pshufd]

I'm typing on a Late 2014 iMac 27 with i7, 500 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM (when I bought it), 4 GB Video. I paid $500 for it last year and it's a nice system. I added 16 GB of RAM and it's a good machine. It doesn't have a modern CPU but it is fine for office stuff and running a Windows virtual machine.

The weakness of the i5 is that it is significantly slower than the i7 and I'll only buy i7s on old systems. For comparison, there is a 2017 i5 with similar specs in my area for $350: https://boston.craigslist.org/sob/sys/d/dorchester-center-imac-retina-5k-27/7549021271.html

I think that $250 is an okay price (assuming 1-1 for currencies). There's a similar 2013 (no 5k screen) in my area for $180 and it's been for sale for a couple of months. So $250 is in the ballpark. The hard disk should be replaced as it's pretty old or you could attach an external USB3 SSD to run macOS off of.

The best price that I've seen for an M1 Mac mini is clearing at $350 in my area. They are usually asking $450 - $500. If you don't need monitor, speakers, microphone and webcam, it may be a better way to go.

 

[magpieant28]

Hi all - just an update on this ....

I went for the 27" late 2014 imac .... and LOVE it!!! The speed compared to the old macbook pro is immense - and having the huge display means there is a lot of real estate which is great when working with multiple images. I have noticed a tiny bit of image retention - but not enough to bug me or cause issues when editing.

All in all, a lovely introduction to imacs - I'm very happy !!!

 

[magpieant28]

I would not buy any used Mac today -- ANY ONE -- that had a fusion drive inside.
These things are going to have high failure rates in the future.

OP wrote:
"For a long time now, I've been using an old Macbook Pro - Mid 2010, I5 2.53 and the memory cranked up to 8gb. It's been great for all I've wanted to do (mainly photoshop CS6 and Lightroom Classic) and has impressed me with it's speed.
Anyway, it's just died."

Can you tell us what died?
If it's just the internal drive, that's EASILY replaced in the 2010 MBP's (I have one).
Same for the battery.

If you want something different, I would recommend that you look for the following:
iMac -- a 27" model (these have upgradeable RAM) with an SSD
or
Mini -- try to find a used 2018 with at least 512gb SSD inside.

I'm not actually 100% sure what the issue was. For a few months now, it got very temperamental if switched off - sometimes not turning back on first time. It could often take 10-50 attemots at pressing the power button and also the buttons to reset the SMC (or whatever it's called!). At times it felt like it was pot luck as to if it would turn back on at all or not. Hence I was expecting it to die. When I last tried it, there was nothing .... button on side showed battery was charged, tried with and without the mains charger to restart .... nothing. And I've tried LOTS of times!!!