Teardown of New 4K 21.5-inch iMac Reveals Removable RAM and Modular CPU

[Gasu E.]

Wow. Apple have withheld the solder and glue!!

Thats good - but in 2017 why is Apple still selling computers with 5400RPM ( despite being fusion ) hard disks..? Not even 7200..

I recently went from a 7200 RPM drive to a Fusion Drive using a 5400 RPM HDD. The improvement in performance was amazing. While a plain old 7200 RPM drive is much faster than a plain old 5400 RPM, you would barely notice a difference between Fusion Drives based on these.

I used to work for a leading company in the storage industry. We invested a lot of R&D in HDD/SSD hybrids, and that's what we found. Only a very small percentage of your code and data is responsible for almost all your performance bottlenecks, and a good optimization algorithm assigns those to the SSD.

A lot of people seem to think it's just a matter of slapping in a bigger drive. It's not. The algorithms need to be tuned specifically for each configuration. It would be one thing if Fusion were the wave of the future. But obviously it's not; it's just a useful legacy tech at this point.

 

[DaveOP]

As an upgrade at retail markup from Apple, yes. A standalone 1TB SATA SSD is under $300 at retail price and certainly less for an OEM like Apple. Granted, it would displace the upgrade option and associated revenue, so there's a balance that Apple has certainly calculated.

The drives they are using are not $300 at retail. Probably the closest competitor, speedwise, is the 960 Pro from Samsung, which costs $620 for a 1TB SSD. (assuming they are NVME across the line)

 

[MellowFuzz]

No matter what your question, here's the answer: Margins.

 

[theLedger]

I upgraded my iMac to an SSD as the 4500 drive was agonizingly slow, especially when switching between accounts. It was like getting a whole new system. However, taking it apart and putting it back together required a lot of breath-holding. Fortunately, I had bought a iMac kit that included die cut adhesive strips and the tools to properly take it apart.

Even though it technically wasn't user serviceable, Apple certainly did the hard work to make it look beautiful inside.

 

[cyberlocke]

This is good news. Too bad it's hard to get in there but OWC and others will likely have a solution. Our 2007 iMac is still alive and kicking thanks to replacing the CPU, HDD and RAM throughout the years. Obviously not the planned obsolescence apple prefers...but if they're on a kick for better sustainability measures allowing for upgradable computers is a good thing.

Awesome! Our 2009 iMac is still our primary computer. RAM, HDD, and SSD upgrades. Unfortunately, the screen died a few weeks ago, and some other projects have prevented me from getting a new screen and/or diagnosing this one. Funny enough, our backup is a 2008 MacBook. Love the old Macs. Ours have held up really well.

 

[CWallace]

Thats good - but in 2017 why is Apple still selling computers with 5400RPM ( despite being fusion ) hard disks..? Not even 7200..

Yes, it is not like 7200RPM drives in a 2.5" form factor are rare and I can't believe the price difference is so much that it would negatively impact Apple's margins at this price point.

Honestly, I would prefer it was just Fusion and either eat the $50 actual cost or just raise the retail price.

Back in the good ol' days, iMacs had removable RAM and socketed CPUs. Soldering everything down was a recent "innovation"!

In Apple's "defense", the LPDDR3 RAM that the Late 2015 iMac 4K used was only available in a soldered package. I believe the i5-5675R processor was available in both soldered and socketed versions. Now since an iMac runs off shore power, it was not like they needed LPDDR3 for battery life so I am guessing they went with it and the soldered CPU to allow the logic board to better fit inside the case.

I don't understand all the hoopla about this being upgradeable. All the work to get into it, the chances of damaging something during the process...it's not really upgradeable. No one will want to void their warranty the first 1-3 years, so no upgrades during that time...I just don't see this as "upgradeable" except for the brave few that don't care about warranties or those with the skills to do it.

A number of folks keep their machines past the AppleCare warranty so being able to upgrade the CPU helps extend the usable life of the machine.

 

[scott911]

A nice step forward, or return really to a methodology that made a lot of sense for many reasons. thanks Apple. Looking for improvements in access next.

 

[MarcoB]

Is it possible to take the back cover plate to a laser cutter specialist and make doors to access parts, so make it easy to change them whenever you need?

 

[ncbill]

The article seems clear that the only reason it was socketed was because Intel didn't yet offer a surface-mount version. Any other CPU slapped in there, say a couple of years down the road, probably won't be supported by the EFI.

I'm afraid that no matter the amount of RAM, a 5400RPM drive will be annoyingly slow even for browsing/office apps. If you're buying one for grandma, plan on buying an external 256GB USB 3 SSD to use as the boot drive.

And the drive will also generate more heat than a SSD, which has been the reason for many iMac failures, especially if they use discrete graphics (is that now the case on this base model?)

 

[Appleaker]

I hope they keep unsoldered RAM and allow upgrade ability in future regenerations. Hopefully recent indications point towards a realization that their desktop computers don't need to be locked down.

 

[oneMadRssn]

People complaining about the spinning hard drive don't understand that people care more about not running out of space than they do about drive speeds. Spinning drives are still significantly less expensive than SSDs when compared at a $/GB. If Apple made the base model a 128GB SSD rather than 1TB HDD -- which is what it would have to be to cost about the same -- people would complain about running out of space way too fast.

 

[jiggad369]

Must be a typo in the article, it says a new computer made in 2017 comes with an ancient slow hard drive.

Why wouldn't they throw in the cheapest spinner they can find since more people have been asking to do their own upgrades anyway?

 

[Mainyehc]

Exactly.

The non-soldered CPU is simply because Kaby Lake (as the article points out) doesn't have a "solderable" mount yet. What iFixit actually need to do is swap the CPU with a socket-compatible chip, and see if the machine even works.

Plus, as the tear-down shows, you have to disassemble the entire computer just to access the RAM, let alone the CPU, so this is not really an upgrade path for 99% of people.

I am willing to bet that yes, it will work. I have an iMac that originally had an i5-750 Quad 2.66 and replaced it with an i7-870 Quad 2.93, which was actually a step up from the processor included in the fastest BTO model, the i7-860 Quad 2.8… And what did I have to do, besides being very careful not to damage any component and to correctly remove and re-apply the thermal compound? Absolutely nothing, I turned the machine back on and voilá!

What did all those processors and i5/i7 iMacs have in common? An LGA1156 socket, a chipset compatible with all of them (because, duh, the board was designed for Intel processors) and, apparently, TDP/cooling requirements that didn't exceed what the iMac could provide. AFAIK, unlike GPUs, which require dedicated drivers (and that limits you, on the iMac at least, to second-hand cards pilfered from better or more recent models), Intel CPU upgrades are just a drop-in replacement affair, as long as the power and cooling are there.

 

[NachoGrande]

You seem to be embarrassed by the oddest things. Do you ever dream you are shopping in an Apple Store in your underwear?

The comedic stylings of gasu everyone.

In all seriousness, you don't comprehend very well do you. It's a pretty basic sentence. I'm not embarrassed Apple should be.

 

[Dydegu]

$100-$200 is the price to upgrade from an HD to a Fusion or an SSD from Apple.

 

[Stella]

That surprises me - but it would depend on what you were doing right? If a lot of data is stored on the hard disk portion and I'm frequently accessing that data ( i.e., Java development for an example ) , surely there would be a noticeable performance difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm? Whats your experience?

Fusion seems a cheap crossover between hard disk -> solid state while large capacity SSDs remain fairly high.

I recently went from a 7200 RPM drive to a Fusion Drive using a 5400 RPM HDD. The improvement in performance was amazing. While a plain old 7200 RPM drive is much faster than a plain old 5400 RPM, you would barely notice a difference between Fusion Drives based on these.

I used to work for a leading company in the storage industry. We invested a lot of R&D in HDD/SSD hybrids, and that's what we found. Only a very small percentage of your code and data is responsible for almost all your performance bottlenecks, and a good optimization algorithm assigns those to the SSD.

A lot of people seem to think it's just a matter of slapping in a bigger drive. It's not. The algorithms need to be tuned specifically for each configuration. It would be one thing if Fusion were the wave of the future. But obviously it's not; it's just a useful legacy tech at this point.

 

[syclone]

Regarding the hard drive - it is a 2.5" drive, not 3.5" as mentioned in the post here (it is correctly identified over at the iFixit page), and there aren't many options for 7,200 rpm drives in that form factor. Apple pretty much backed themselves into a corner here by making the iMac thinner and thinner, because now there is no room for a 3.5" drive like there was in the pre-2012 models. Personally, I wish Apple would stop pushing faster and faster SSD's and just offer cheaper SSD's to kill off the hard drives completely. I am definitely going to buy one of these refreshed iMac's to replace my Late 2007. The Fusion drive is tempting, but I do a lot with big photo libraries that obviously won't be cached. So I think I'm going to go with the 256 GB SSD and store my photos on an external Thunderbolt drive. I realize that for some people having to use an external disk is an issue, but this is a desktop PC, I don't really care if I have a drive permanently attached to it.

 

[ZMacintosh]

griping about a 5400RPM HDD? with a fusion drive never noticed any difference, even without (the ssd and just a 5400rpm)slight if at all. But whats even more archaic is that CMOS battery

 

[MistrSynistr]

I love how Apple hedged their bets on macOS vs. 5400 HD.

Do they have absolutely no clue that a casual/new Mac user is going to get the lower end iMac and have to deal with a 5400 HD and then swear them off for the next purchase? lol.

 

[Glideslope]

Sure enough, the good people at MR will find something to complain about this, too.

LMAO, yea, I guess removing the display from the body to upgrade RAM is no game changer for most.

 

[doelcm82]

I just don't see who the market is for a $1,299 computer that has a 1TB non-fusion, non-SSD drive. Nobody who cares about the $100 savings Apple is passing along would be buying a $1,299 computer.

You may not be able to see the market, but Apple apparently does.

 

[AlexH]

It's a small step in the right direction. If Apple really care about the environment as much as they claim, then they should be eager to extend product life cycles by simplifying upgrades.

Yes and amen. It'd greatly extend the life of my machine if I could access RAM and the HDD/SSD. Plus I've always preferred removing my storage disk and replacing with a fresh drive before selling. I'm paranoid like that.

 

[Glideslope]

Regarding the hard drive - it is a 2.5" drive, not 3.5" as mentioned in the post here (it is correctly identified over at the iFixit page), and there aren't many options for 7,200 rpm drives in that form factor. Apple pretty much backed themselves into a corner here by making the iMac thinner and thinner, because now there is no room for a 3.5" drive like there was in the pre-2012 models. Personally, I wish Apple would stop pushing faster and faster SSD's and just offer cheaper SSD's to kill off the hard drives completely. I am definitely going to buy one of these refreshed iMac's to replace my Late 2007. The Fusion drive is tempting, but I do a lot with big photo libraries that obviously won't be cached. So I think I'm going to go with the 256 GB SSD and store my photos on an external Thunderbolt drive. I realize that for some people having to use an external disk is an issue, but this is a desktop PC, I don't really care if I have a drive permanently attached to it.

Agreed. There will never be a 7200rpm. Eventually an SSD will be the base config. We will all have grey hair by then most likely.

 

[critter13]

so if you get one with a fusion drive will it have a ssd blade slot? or will you need to order the 256ssd option. for example if i wanted to throw a big 1tb blade in it after the fact?

 

[dukeblue219]

The drives they are using are not $300 at retail. Probably the closest competitor, speedwise, is the 960 Pro from Samsung, which costs $620 for a 1TB SSD. (assuming they are NVME across the line)

If the starting point is a 5400-rpm, non-fusion, mechanical hard drive, then I think a cheap 500GB MLC SATA drive is a good comparison. It would still perform better at minimal additional cost.

That pro-grade Samsung 960 with NVMe interface should indeed be an extra $$ upgrade. No argument against that. But I think it should be a 1TB NVMe drive as the $500 upgrade, with a 500GB SATA SSD as standard.

If they sell the low-end iMacs, great, they've clearly done their marketing homework. It just rubs me the wrong way with Apple's attitude of PRO PRO PRO. Nothing about a 5400-rpm mechanical drive, even one that holds 1TB, seems fitting with a $1299 PC in 2017. It feels like buying a low-end Lexus and getting manual windows.