Upgrade Advice for Imac

[iheartmacs]

I have a 2019 Retina 5K mac with 24 gb RAM and a RAdeon Pro 570x graphics processor. Should I upgrade - my system is slow, have run mostly all cleaning programs out there, or can I replace the HDD with something faster? Mostly just do remote work mail and browsing on here.

If I upgrade should i do a mac mini with an external monitor? I really want the 27 inch screen real estate.

TY in advance for all your help. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving to all.

 

[Fishrrman]

You didn't tell us WHAT KIND OF DRIVE is inside.

If it's a fusion drive, that's likely "the bottleneck", and NOT RAM or GPU.

If it's a fusion drive, your options are:
Open it, and replace either the SSD portion or the HDD portion of the fusion drive.
or
Get an external USB3.1 gen2 drive, plug that into the USBc port on the the back, and set it up to become the new EXTERNAL boot drive.

The second option is far easier and also less troublesome. Many folks who think they can do the job open up the iMac and then... break something inside...

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Fishrrman is right on. For the tasks you do, 2019 is NOT old and should NOT be slow. An SSD taking over for the internal should make a huge difference.

You also don't share if the iMac drive is pretty close to full, which can also cause slow-downs. Be sure to buy PLENTY of space so you can have a good chunk of the new drive empty. I forget the general recommendation but I'm pretty confident it is north of 10% and possibly 20%.

If me, I'd ride the 2019 until you HAVE to upgrade... which will probably be when there are M6 Macs available... not because the tech guts have had it by then but because Apple will decide to bail on ongoing support of macOS updates. And even then, you could perhaps trust the OCLP hack to basically prove Apple wrong... that, in fact, an old Mac can still run newer macOS versions just fine.

Else, for your stated uses, the base new Mac Mini should be plenty. If me and I actually wanted to do this, I'd buy myself a few more months with the 2019 and pick up the new Mini after it hits the refurb store... unless some third party retailer offers it new at a refurb-like 15% discount.

And if you go this way, no need limiting yourself to only a 27" screen. There are plenty of great monitors to pair with a Mac that give you more screen R.E. For example, when I went separates from long-term use of iMac 27", I chose the Dell 5K2K 40" ultra-wide... which has about the same vertical height screen as that iMac but much more horizontal screen space. I could never go back to the near squarish shape of ASD/iMac 27". It costs about the same as ASD with stand option but offers all that extra work space and a robust, built-in hub with a good mix of "the future" and "the present" ports...

I use it every day and am completely happy to let this Dell present the visual interface for macOS. Since I needed full Windows too, I also picked up a Mac Mini-like PC and plugged it into one of 3 additional video inputs, basically becoming "old fashioned bootcamp." This monitor can even split screen, offering macOS on half and PC on the other half when I have any want/need to see both at the same time.