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The best 27 Inch iMac to buy

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CommanderMadi

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 3, 2014
5
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So I finally decided to purchase an iMac after years of using the regular windows PC. I dived heavily the past couple months in programming and photoshop designing and I felt the need to pick an iMac. That doesn't mean I haven't used macs before (I have all apple devices except for the iMac)

I have stumbled across the two mid-range and premium products. One costs 1799 and the other is 1999. My question is, do I really need the SSD drive for programming and photoshop design or will the 2 TB fusion will be convenient? I would of course as well still do heavy surfing and web streaming (youtube and twitch). a 2 TB fusion or 256 GB are the two best options for my budget, can you advise per said about my purpose?
 
Fusion vs. SSD will have no real effect on heavy surfing or web streaming; that's a bandwidth issue, not an internal storage issue. The Fusion drive should be plenty fast and give you plenty of storage; the SSD alone is plenty fast, but you lose a LOT of storage, which you will want for Photoshop.

EDIT: If you have a Mac Pro, why don't you just use that?
 
Tomorrow said:
Fusion vs. SSD will have no real effect on heavy surfing or web streaming; that's a bandwidth issue, not an internal storage issue. The Fusion drive should be plenty fast and give you plenty of storage; the SSD alone is plenty fast, but you lose a LOT of storage, which you will want for Photoshop.

EDIT: If you have a Mac Pro, why don't you just use that?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice.

Actually the macbook pro I have is pretty darn old and it is really getting slow and annoying with multitasking. I need a fixed desktop iMac as it would be more efficient I guess.
 
Hello.

I've just got a late 2015 mid range iMac (a 3.2ghz i5, 16gb RAM, 1tb Fusion Drive). To be truthful, I was going to get a standard spinning drive, but my partner asked me why I wasn't spending an extra few quid and getting the Fusion Drive. In the end I took the advice, and I have been astonished at the difference in boot-up speeds and App-launching times, compared to my 2010 iMac. While I appreciate that the older iMac is going to boot up more slowly etc. The difference is astounding, and I know that this is not all down to the fact that my Fusion Drive iMac is newer.

From standing-still and switched off, my iMac takes just over 16 seconds to boot up. In contrast, my spinning drive iMac took a good minute, sometimes just over that to boot. Likewise, Apps launch incredibly quickly - iTunes and Safari and Logic Pro X boot in under five seconds. I can't say the same for the spinning drive.

I guess in terms of functioning in pure-work terms, these speed advantages might not be incredibly beneficial, but there's something to be said about the amount of time saved over a long period when the computer starts so fast, boots in to Apps in a blink and locates often used documents almost instantaneously.

I did do a fair amount of research before I finally purchased two weeks ago, and almost without exception the reviews I read for all of the iMac range recommended going for either the Fusion Drive or SSD option, rather than a plain spinning drive.
 
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miffytherabbit said:
Hello.

I've just got a late 2015 mid range iMac (a 3.2ghz i5, 16gb RAM, 1tb Fusion Drive). To be truthful, I was going to get a standard spinning drive, but my partner asked me why I wasn't spending an extra few quid and getting the Fusion Drive. In the end I took the advice, and I have been astonished at the difference in boot-up speeds and App-launching times, compared to my 2010 iMac. While I appreciate that the older iMac is going to boot up more slowly etc. The difference is astounding, and I know that this is not all down to the fact that my Fusion Drive iMac is newer.

From standing-still and switched off, my iMac takes just over 16 seconds to boot up. In contrast, my spinning drive iMac took a good minute, sometimes just over that to boot. Likewise, Apps launch incredibly quickly - iTunes and Safari and Logic Pro X boot in under five seconds. I can't say the same for the spinning drive.

I guess in terms of functioning in pure-work terms, these speed advantages might not be incredibly beneficial, but there's something to be said about the amount of time saved over a long period when the computer starts so fast, boots in to Apps in a blink and locates often used documents almost instantaneously.

I did do a fair amount of research before I finally purchased two weeks ago, and almost without exception the reviews I read for all of the iMac range recommended going for either the Fusion Drive or SSD option, rather than a plain spinning drive.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply! A spinning drive is out of my choice range anyway. Its all about SSD or Fusion. Guess I will be leaning to Fusion. 1tb fusion is divided to how much HDD and SSD?
 
CommanderMadi said:
Thank you for your reply! A spinning drive is out of my choice range anyway. Its all about SSD or Fusion. Guess I will be leaning to Fusion. 1tb fusion is divided to how much HDD and SSD?
Click to expand...

The 1tb fusion only has a 24gb SSD it's not a great drive to be honest, the 2tb has a full 128gb SSD as well as a 2tb HDD and should be almost as quick as the pure SSD in most use cases
 
CommanderMadi said:
A spinning drive is out of my choice range anyway. Its all about SSD or Fusion. Guess I will be leaning to Fusion. 1tb fusion is divided to how much HDD and SSD?
Click to expand...

A Fusion drive IS primarily a spinning drive, you know, it's just paired with a small SSD which the OS uses for frequently-used applications and the OS itself.
 
I bought a i5 with the 512GB SSD to replace a 2012 model with a 2TB Fusion and the difference is staggering. I would certainly recommend SSD if you can afford it.
Don't buy anything beyond the standard 8GB memory - you can upgrade it very cheaply later from the likes of Crucial (I now have 32GB in mine)
Apart from the speed, the silence is lovely :)
 
The best 27 Inch iMac to buy? I think it has to be the one I just bought. Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB, 1TB SSD & 32GB Crucial RAM. I came from a mid-2011 model which was great, but this just blows it away. It's silent, and very fast. I think the only improvement I could make would be 64GB OWC RAM, but it seems perfectly OK for photo and video work with 32GB.
 
I wouldn't recommend the 1 TB Fusion Drive too small. What drove me to the base higher end model was by the time I added the fusion drive to the mid-range, I was within $100 of the high end iMac. So I just went ahead and bought the higher end iMac with the better graphics card and processor. I love the machine. I do recommend upgrading the RAM on your own though, it is really simple.
 
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