old.

Hi there. First of all, I have to ask, did you include the price of a monitor for the PC prices? As the iMac comes with one of course

I feel that with your price range though, you are better off with the PC if you would be willing to hackintosh it. For you RAM question though, 8GB of RAM will definitely be enough for your needs in 3 years time if its enough for your needs now. RAM compression on OS X allows inactive parts of memory to be compressed before being swapped to disk, and I've seen activity on my 8GB of RAM iMac of over 18GB before it would properly page out to disk (in Windows, because it doesn't have this feature, once you hit the 16GB of RAM you would page).

 

Personally, if you like OS X, go with the iMac.

Hackintoshes are an absolute pain to maintain and quite often break with software updates.

If you buy a PC, stick with running Windows as it's much easier in the long run. The PC does offer better specs - but the Iris Pro can quite comfortably handle games you mentioned on medium settings. The CPU speed for your usage probably wouldn't make much difference.

The only sticking point may be the RAM. I'm occasionally sent Photoshop files with hundreds of layers and I do notice my MBP with 8GB RAM can be a bit slow, but I usually end up breaking them up into Smart Objects and working on them and it's fine.

Personally, I'd go with the iMac, as I much, much prefer OS X. Both computers will offer good performance, so it comes down to what you prefer. Obviously the PC would be faster in benchmarks, but they don't matter to me if I can't scroll a window which isn't currently selected (may've changed in Windows 8, I'm not sure - only used 7 and below), can't use FCP/Motion, have to deal with Windows' endless updates, have to be constantly paranoid about viruses and have to use Office instead of iWork.

 

If 4GB is OK-ish at the moment, then 8GB should be plenty.

If you want to game, I think the dedicated GPU would be a wise investment. Although €250 is a lot, it's one of the cheaper iMac upgrades and will probably provide much improved performance in games.

I don't really play games on my Mac so I don't have a masses of experience with choosing GPUs for gaming, but I know the 750M does generally outperform the Iris Pro. However, there are a few threads which may be of more help:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...er-iris-pro-or-nvidia-geforce-gt-750.1752913/
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iris-pro-vs-750m.1678509/
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iris-pro-vs-gt-750m-in-the-21-5-imac.1647146/

Only the first thread specifically talks about the differences for gaming - the second and third are a bit more general 750M vs Iris Pro.

 

In all honesty, I don't know but wouldn't recommend it. You could perhaps follow a guide like this: http://www.macworld.com/article/2014011/how-to-make-your-own-fusion-drive.html
However, that article is fairly old and may not apply now. I'm not even sure it's possible any more.

Having a homemade Fusion Drive on an external disk is asking for trouble in my opinion. If something goes wrong with the SSD or enclosure it would be impossible to boot, and it won't be very quick if you're using USB - even USB 3 - due to the way USB provides data.

 

Trust me, don't worry about 8GB of RAM with OS X

Intel Iris Pro is fine, its only really in gaming where the PC would jump ahead, but you also have to remember than that PC will draw much more power as well (costing you more in electricity).

I only actually recommended the PC on the basis of value for money (as you are in the price range of the lower end of the spectrum) but you seem fine about that, so I highly recommend it You know what you're getting due to you having a rMBP as well

 

I was looking up GTA V FPS tests, and the 750m (GDDR5 variant such as the one used in the iMac) achieved double the frame rate as Intel Iris Pro (Windows of course, and if you want to find the test, it was done on Notebookcheck)

 

You should be fine with 8GB, though do bear in mind it isn't upgradeable. How long do you intend to keep it?

It's hard to predict when Apple are going to update the 21.5" iMac. They haven't been updated since June last year, so they're probably due an update, but whether it happens at WWDC, end of this year or Q1 2016 is difficult to say. If you need it imminently, hold out until Monday to see if anything happens at WWDC. If not, you're looking at September/October at the earliest.

USB uses a packet structure to transfer data, meaning it requires the sent packets of data to finish transmission before the device can receive more data. (Interfaces like FireWire and Thunderbolt stream data instead.) It's seemingly a minor point, but can impact performance and is why it's preferable not to run the OS off a USB drive.

 

Defo the iMac if you can wait for the new models with the new chip sets the iMac is long overdue an upgrade also this will give you more time to save more cash always go for the model just above and if you build it online you have more choice than just walking in your local Apple store, good luck

 

For your needs, I'd recommend the 2.9GHz i5/8GB RAM/750M and a 1TB Fusion/256GB SSD option. If you want pure speed and reliability, stick with the 256GB SSD. Personally I'd go with the SSD option as well.

 

As long as you don't play games, it should be fine. That said, if it does not have a Fusion Drive or a 256GB SSD, don't even think about it.

 

Where in Germany are you? If I were to get a normal PC it would come from these guys http://www.arlt.com/ and not Media Markt. They're easier to deal with, their warranty is better and you can build it anyway you like. During the build I'd probably pick up one of these since they'll give you a fairly good discount. http://www.arlt.com/Hardware/Monitore-Beamer/61-00cm-24-0-Dell-UltraSharp-U2412M-TFT-Monitor.html

 

It really depends on what you want on the whole SSD vs 750m and faster CPU. I personally would (and did) go for the CPU and GPU upgrade as I game and the difference is too large for me to have justified saving myself 25 seconds when I restart my iMac.

There is always the option to get an external SSD for boot-up at a later date, but there is no safe way to replace the CPU and GPU after on the cheaper model.

 

As for my 5400RPM performance, it performs wonderfully in Mac OS (OS X caches apps you open so they open up in less than a second anyway, Photoshop for example takes around a second to load). In Windows however, the performance is noticeably slower with my HDD, so I ended up buying an external HDD to store my games on (needed the extra space too) so that Windows can use the 110MBps speeds of the internal drive all it wants, and booting up a game can get the full bandwidth of the external HDD.

 

Genuine question, don't take it the wrong way: have you tried an SSD? I used to think a hard drive was perfectly OK and that SSD preachers were just trying to justify why they bought it (cynical, I know, and now I do regret thinking that! ), but when I installed an SSD in my MacBook Pro it was like it was a new machine. It's not just startup times - apps open much quicker, I don't think I've seen it beachball once, files open much quicker, copying files takes hardly any time at all, restarting after software updates is lightning fast; it's overall much more pleasant to use.

I'd heartily recommend one to anyone, especially now that they're somewhat affordable (if your drive is upgradeable).

If the OP can stretch to a 256GB SSD, that would probably provide the most noticeable performance increase vs upgrading the CPU and GPU. Otherwise, do think long and hard about a 5400rpm HDD as who knows what it'll feel like in 2018.

 

Hi I've never tried an iMac with an SSD before, but I commonly use Macbook Pro's with SSD's. For example, my friend has a 15" retina Macbook Pro (Iris Pro model from 2014)and I really don't tell that much of a difference.

Without a doubt, bouts times are insanely better (another price who just bought a 15" Macbook, I was hoping her set it up and we went to restart it, looked away for a second and it was done ) but when it came to normal tasks such as launching apps, it was not really as big a gap. The Disk Speed Test for example, take the exact same time to open on my iMac with a HDD (not cached in RAM, was after a restart) as a 15" retina Macbook Pro. Larger Pro apps are more noticeable, say a second or two, but this is for opening them the fist time after a reboot. Once an app is cached in RAM (opened before), there was absolutely 0 difference between an SSD Macbook Pro 15" (with a slightly faster CPU and slower GPU but with double the RAM) and my iMac.

I feel that the main selling point of an SSD is its silent running, and its lower failure rates with knocks, as the speed different is only really noticeable when booting up (with Mac OS I only ever restart once in a blue moon, and with my Windows partition for gaming, I just hibernate it so that I can boot into Windows in around 7 seconds).

There is only once main place (apart from booting) that it was noticeable though, and that is when doing multiple disk intensive tasks at the same time (for example, copying a large file as well as trying to open a large app, as well as rendering, will shown the difference much more, but I really don't think that is worth several hundred pounds).

How is a 1TB HDD upgrade from Apple?