I see. I was looking to get the 256gb ssd now and add more storage later to spread out the costs, but it seems maybe $600 for a 1tb internal ssd is not as overpriced as I thought.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Top-Tier iMac with 2TB Fusion or mid-tier with 512GB SSD???
- Thread starter iOSGoober
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I see. I was looking to get the 256gb ssd now and add more storage later to spread out the costs, but it seems maybe $600 for a 1tb internal ssd is not as overpriced as I thought.
512 GB seems to be the sweet spot for most. The only problem is you may have to wait a couple of weeks longer since there seems to be somewhat of a shortage of them. I got 1 TB, but that’s a bit pricey.
Yeah sure. Typical Windows user's argument. I often hear it. I suppose the one that I got in 2014 was a fake one because the last real one happened in "2005".
Windows users need to keep up and accept the fact BSoD still exist.
Now that I have had some time with my new iMac I wanted to follow up in case others are searching for the same answer and come across this thread.
I went with the faster CPU and GPU, along with the 2TB Fusion drive instead of the lower spec with the SSD. In a nutshell I am confident I made the right choice. This is the fastest iMac I have used so far and I have not encountered any issue whatsoever with the Fusion drive. The system is very responsive and I have yet to encounter the dreaded spinning beachball for disk access.
And that screen is really what makes it all worthwhile
I went with the faster CPU and GPU, along with the 2TB Fusion drive instead of the lower spec with the SSD. In a nutshell I am confident I made the right choice. This is the fastest iMac I have used so far and I have not encountered any issue whatsoever with the Fusion drive. The system is very responsive and I have yet to encounter the dreaded spinning beachball for disk access.
And that screen is really what makes it all worthwhile
I went with top pre-built tier (fast CPU/GPU + 2TB Fusion) as well, received yesterday. I already have a company-supplied work laptop (Windows), Sandy Bridge-era gaming rig (+ 980ti), and a 12” rMB 2015 as my sole MacOS device.
I picked up an iPad Pro 10.5 a few months back as a compliment to the rather behemoth work laptop. As a complimentary device it works way better for me than the 12” rMB: smaller/lighter, faster for photos and ebooks (iBooks on MacOS still seems to get bogged down very quickly when searching large books), better battery life, personal laptop stand-in (with smart keyboard cover), notepad (with apple pencil), ebook reader (true tone), web browsing, movies when traveling, and casual gaming. Really a good jack-of-all-trades secondary device for both business and personal use.
As a personal desktop, main use cases these days are processing photos, a bit of gaming (though I’ve moved mostly back to console for that, I’m not a competitive gamer), and general programming/scripting. The iMac is far better in that role, planning on selling both the 12” rMB and possibly the gaming rig. For very large storage and media I already have a dedicated DIY NAS server, however I wanted a large enough internal drive to pull full versions of Photos and all iCloud Drive files for local backup and 3rd party cloud backup... for that use case the 2TB Fusion drive is ideal: relatively small fast working set on the 128GB ssd and rarely touched large file storage, that is stored local for backup purposes.
I picked up an iPad Pro 10.5 a few months back as a compliment to the rather behemoth work laptop. As a complimentary device it works way better for me than the 12” rMB: smaller/lighter, faster for photos and ebooks (iBooks on MacOS still seems to get bogged down very quickly when searching large books), better battery life, personal laptop stand-in (with smart keyboard cover), notepad (with apple pencil), ebook reader (true tone), web browsing, movies when traveling, and casual gaming. Really a good jack-of-all-trades secondary device for both business and personal use.
As a personal desktop, main use cases these days are processing photos, a bit of gaming (though I’ve moved mostly back to console for that, I’m not a competitive gamer), and general programming/scripting. The iMac is far better in that role, planning on selling both the 12” rMB and possibly the gaming rig. For very large storage and media I already have a dedicated DIY NAS server, however I wanted a large enough internal drive to pull full versions of Photos and all iCloud Drive files for local backup and 3rd party cloud backup... for that use case the 2TB Fusion drive is ideal: relatively small fast working set on the 128GB ssd and rarely touched large file storage, that is stored local for backup purposes.
Dude, are we the same person?
Well - not quite but... I have an iPad Pro 10.5, a 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro, and an Ivy-Bridge era gaming PC.
The iPad Pro is my portable device. Even with Smart Keyboard and a leather sleeve, it's 600g lighter than my laptop. Everything you said I agree with - it's fast, the display is amazing, it does more things than a MacBook pretty much better than a MacBook.
I have also reduced my gaming and the games I like to play are petty old now, like Counterstrike: Source, which will run really well on the iMac 5K.
I also have a DIY NAS server.
However, I have ordered the base iMac 5K with 512GB SSD upgrade. Just wanted to live that all-flash life, and I don't have much that media. But yeah, I'm selling the MacBook Pro and gaming PC. Just won't need them any more.
The RAM on this new 2017 iMac is user replaceable?? The last few years, the iMac RAM were difficult to replace, even the Best Buy Techs would not dare install RAM because they said it would involve removing the glass panel of the LCD display, which they were afraid to do. So they told me only Apple could do anything with the memory.
Yep agreed. It was hard debating between 512GB SSD vs. 2TB fusion... eventually decided that once the machine is out of warranty SSD prices will likely have dropped further so I have the option of DIY upgrading then if I feel the need to... or trade up to a newer iMac eventually, especially when there is a good chance that Face ID and some of the other recent deep learning / augmented technologies will transition to the Mac side within a couple years.
On the gaming side, looking forward there is also Nvidia Geforce NOW For Mac Beta, currently free to use. Games are rendered and streamed from a server farm with low latency. Eventually they will charge hourly but it does use your existing Steam (and in the future GOG) libraries to play games, so essentially you are renting a Geforce machine by the minute. My plan is to use that for the occasional super demanding games down the line (or Windows-only games instead of Boot Camp). eGPU is another option as a partial upgrade in the future.
Keep in mind that as of now Apple isn't supporting Fusion drives with the new APFS drive format in High Sierra. You can still use the Fusion drive but it'll be the old original Mac drive format.
And this from someone who does a LOT of audio recording Fusion drives are bad news and lead to all kinds of errors that don't happen with ssd's or spinners. Want proof? Take a gander over on the ProTools forum aka The DUC.
And this from someone who does a LOT of audio recording Fusion drives are bad news and lead to all kinds of errors that don't happen with ssd's or spinners. Want proof? Take a gander over on the ProTools forum aka The DUC.