Speed Up My Late 2012 iMac

[Phil W]

I have a late 2012 iMac that is doing the rainbow spinning wheel of death..Now its not doing it all the time but it's getting a little agravating...Any thing I can do to speed it up? I will say that it does it mostly when I am on the Web.

 

[mikehalloran]

With the info you've given on your configuration, the only correct answer is, It depends.

If you have an HDD, replace it with an SSD and the correct OWC temp sensor harness. Bracket optional but recommended.

 

[Plan-B]

You'd be surprised at how much memory just being on the web can consume. Particularly if you use Chrome. I've seen Activity Monitor tell me that Chrome & Firefox have gobbled up as much as 20GB combined. Yes, I'm a tab hoarder. 🙂 If you haven't maxed out your RAM, that might be one place to look. It's possible that the beachball is just the system going to the swap files (virtual memory) from your hard disk. So an SSD could also help in that regard since the swap files will be accessible at much higher speeds than from a disk drive. If you do both, it'll feel like a new computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

The important question:
What kind of drive is inside?

If it's a platter-based hard drive, you can upgrade to an SSD which will transform the overall performance.

The 2012 has USB3 ports, is that correct?
In that case you have a choice of two ways to do this:
1. Open it up and install internally
or
2. Add an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD

Choice 1 carries with it all the risks involved in prying open an iMac (unless you've had experience with that before).
Choice 2 is fast 'n' easy, but not -quite- as fast (you'll get about 80-85% of the speed that you would have gotten from an internally installed drive -- hardly noticeable).