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Should I try to upgrade my Late-2015 5K iMac?

ScreenSavers

ScreenSavers

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 26, 2016
2,132
1,679
Bloomingdale, GA
So I'm trying to decide if I should totally disassemble and upgrade my 5K late 2015 iMac or replace it. I've started to use it for some mulit-camera 4k editing in FCP X and it just doesn't do well. It currently has a 3.3 GHz quad i5, 24GB RAM, 512 GB Flash SSD, and AMD R9 M395 graphics with 2GB.

Option 1: Disassemble the whole thing, try to locate a 4.0 GHz Core i7 6700K, which seems to be the best processor this board can take. How much of a difference that will make, I don't know. It could also hold more RAM, but I'm not maxing out the 24GB. Obviously, the current bottleneck is that i5.

Option 2: Try to locate a better machine without spending an arm and a leg. I'm not sure what I'd want though. The iMac Pro hasn't been updated in what seems like forever, and I'm not sure the regular 2019 5K iMac is that big of an upgrade from this, especially when a redesign next year might be in the works.

Anybody have any opinions on what to do to get some more editing power?


BTW I can't afford the new Mac Pro :)
 
I also have a late 2015 iMac, but almost all my stuff is 1080P or less. Here's a great video review of the latest 2019 iMac compared to the 2017 iMac (pretty close in specs to your 2015).
[automerge]1573110437[/automerge]
Just checked and you can get a refurbished Apple 27" iMac with the 3.6GHZ 8 core i9 and Vega 48 graphics for "only" $2,759. Not cheap, but a lot of computer for under $2,800.
 
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Someone here on the board had encountered problems when upgrading his 2017 5K iMac from i5 to i7 (it did not turn on) so maybe you should take this into account as well. I think to sell your iMac after 4 years to buy new one is OK.
 
Maybe selling it is a good idea... I read that it will not accept a 7th generation CPU so maybe that’s why someone else had problems? Maybe I should check out the refurbished though.
 
2017 5K was available with i7 7700 although I don't know whether K or non-K version and the user said that he got his hands on exactly the same CPU (although not directly from iMac). If you have option to buy official Apple refurbished iMac, then surely check it out.
 
Mine is a 2015 model. Which takes only the sixth generation. It is also significantly below the 17 performance wise and lacks thunderbolt 3/USB-C.


Might be time for an upgrade.
 
Yeah probably. I guess I should have been more direct:

Would the i7 6700K make a huge difference in editing power or not?

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 12.57.53 PM.png
 
It's hard to say whether it's your CPU or your GPU that might be holding you back. Use Activity Monitor, open up some graphs (Window > CPU History and Window > GPU History), then try to do your editing. See which one seems to be maxing out and which one might be sitting idle while the other is working. That should give you an indication of what components you should look to upgrading, even in a new system.
 
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