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What Ports Do You Want On an iMac 2020?

G

G.McGilli

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 19, 2015
615
516
At least:

On the back:

3x Thunderbolt Type C
3x USB 3.1 Type A
Gigabit ethernet
Audio out
Audio in

On the right edge of the computer:

SD Card Reader - so you don't need to reach around the back.


What about you? What would like like to see? What would you need?
 
I hope there will be any ports...

The SD-Card reader on the back always annoyed me a lot, so havin it on the side again would be nice. I also would like to have at least one easily accessible USB A port, currently I am using the ports in my wired keyboard for that.

Three A and C ports each would be the minimum, four each would be better. But this also depends on the internal configuration. At least on some iMacs two USB ports where „paird“, so that booth switched to USB 2 if an USB 2 device was plugged in one of them.

Ethernet should be 10 GB nowadays. A simple status LED to indicate, if the iMac is switched on in standby would be great to.

Personally I do not use the audio ports, but I see why people want them.
 
Lets make 2 situations

At minimum i want
2x Thunderbolt3 ports
2x usbA
1x headphone jack
1xGibabit ethernet

Ideal
4x of TB3and 4x USBA
10Gb Ethernet
Headphone jack
SD card
 
USB 3.1 Gen 2 x 4
TB3 x 2 (I'd prefer 4 though)
2.5Gb Ethernet (10Gb optional upgrade)
SDXC Card
Headphone jack (I'm seeing less need of this but anyway)

Basically the same as what there is now but upped to today's spec. And also…

WiFi-6
RAM slots - user accessible
NVMe slot - user accessible (for a 2nd internal storage device)

… and…

No Fusion!
 
-4x thunderbolt 3/ USB-C
-2x USB-A
-10 gigabit Ethernet
-SD on the side (I’ll prob never use it but that’s where it belongs)
-audio input jack
-audio output jack

*wishful thinking: make ram easily user accessible so I don’t need to buy 32gb now in order to make it last 10 years.
 
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Since 10 Gbit Ethernet is an option ($100) even on the Mac mini, I can't see it not being an option on the iMac.

4 Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, 2 x USB 3.1 Type A's; standard audio port(s); and if I had to chose between a memory card port and an M.2 slot, I'd chose the latter, though since a T2 chip is a virtual certainty, I doubt Apple would put a non T2-encrypted storage device internally on the PCIe bus.
 
4x Thunderbolt 3. 10gbit ethernet. no SD card reader. No USB Type A (no need for it anymore) - don't need an audio port myself either - would rather use an audio interface.

Almost certainly the ram will be soldered and not user accessible anymore.
 
Honestly... Five USB-C T3 ports and headphone/mic combo 1/8’’ port. And have the option to add a thunderbolt 3 dock with dual 10Gb Ethernet, 4 USB3.1 type A, 2 USBC, SD/flash card reader, FireWire 800, optical 1/8’’ audio in out ports, front usb3.1 type A, front usbc T3, Card readers on front. There’s one on the market that has all of these. oh and HDMI 2.1, and DisplayPort out. Use a external power supply like the Mac books.

It’s much better having all this attached to a dock you can put somewhere beside or under desk instead of having 10 wires coming out of the back that have to move with the screen. And you can have a small fan in it removing that heat from the iMacs internals. Heck you could even make a external power supply / Dock and have a slimmer system that ran cooler. Have the iMac be powered by a supply like the MacBooks use when you just want the system with no IO. $400 add on.

And having apple design and test this would insure it works properly with the chipset on the iMac. Oh and have a locking usbC T3 port on it and the back of the iMac

Bonus would be a dock with a PCIe slot and bigger power supply (say 600 watt) large enough for a egpu or video capture card, or apples pro res accelerator card thing. And a slot for a m.2 SSD. Wouldn’t be that much bigger and the chipsets are already there. Have it be a $600

Even bigger bonus have a optical T3 port designed to connect to the dock. So you could put it somewhere more than 6ft away if needed.
 
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When buying an iMac I do not want all these cables on my desk, so I do not like the idea of having to use a dock or an external power supply. Beside that at leadt Apple would have to provide its own dock. Every time I read a test of those docks, there are some problems with them, I do not want to have.

But I would like to have, and this seems in some ways similar: A good and big screen, similar to the Pro Display with an attachable „computing unit“. This unit would connect with one short cable to the Monitor, all other interfaces are on the monitor. It could be changed by the user when needed.

With such a construction I would not have to throw away a perfectly good monito, just because I want a new computer, but I still would not have all those cables on the desk.

Mounting a Mac Mini to a monitor could provide some of this experience, beside needing two power cords. But I am not sure, if a Mini could provide the same computing power as a maxed out iMac. And there is no good looking monitor on the market...
 
I think you guys are going to be disappointed re thunderbolt ports.

On another thread (which I can't find) @sublunar explained that we shouldn't expect more than 2 on a new iMac.
Something to do with the number of "lanes" attached to the cpu. The iMac Pro, having XEONs, can have 4 but the iMac class processors can only supply 2.

At the time I read this I didn't understand why the mini can have 4 and I still don't. I guess it might be something to do with the 5k screen but I could well be wrong.

Maybe @sublunar will come along and explain.

EDIT: Found it https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/no-more-imac-pro.2219400/?post=28172036#post-28172036
 
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canyelles said:
I think you guys are going to be disappointed re thunderbolt ports.

On another thread (which I can't find) @sublunar explained that we shouldn't expect more than 2 on a new iMac.
Something to do with the number of "lanes" attached to the cpu. The iMac Pro, having XEONs, can have 4 but the iMac class processors can only supply 2.

At the time I read this I didn't understand why the mini can have 4 and I still don't. I guess it might be something to do with the 5k screen but I could well be wrong.

Maybe @sublunar will come along and explain.

EDIT: Found it https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/no-more-imac-pro.2219400/?post=28172036#post-28172036
Click to expand...

The Mini doesn't have a dGPU like the iMac and can apparently afford to have (presumably) 4 Thunderbolt Ports.

The question then arises, how come the 15" and 16" MacBook Pro have 4 ports and a dGPU?

I think it'll be to do with the fact that in both cases there's 2 ports hanging off 1 controller capable of switching information along just 4 PCIe lanes if it's set up that way.

And there's 2 controllers on the Mini and MBP15/16, whereas the iMac has just one controller dealing with 2 ports.

Apple generally tend to connect their fastest I/O directly through the CPU which generally has 16 PCIe lanes (up to Coffee Lake). They have the option of using motherboard PCIe lanes but I don't think I've recently seen any block diagrams that show how later iMacs are done.

In the simplest of terms, as far as I know if Apple have 16 PCIe lanes on a Coffee Lake iMac, they will generally devote 4 to the SSD, 8 for a dGPU and the remaining 4 to Thunderbolt which is switched through a single Titan Ridge controller which handles 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports. The remaining I/O (USB ports, Wifi, Ethernet, must come through the DMI on the motherboard.

You can see a link to the 2017 iMac Pro block diagram here - where Apple don't apparently use all 48 PCIe lanes available.
 
It doesn't matter what ports "you want" on the 2020 iMac.
What matters more are the ports that Apple will give you on the 2020 iMac... ;)
 
<"It doesn't matter what ports "you want" on the 2020 iMac.">

What matters is how many PCIe lanes that Intel will build into any new chip architecture
to allow Apple to have any extended choice, thereby giving some leeway to extend the current port options....
And since A series ARM chips have had a zero PCIe lanes history so far, any switch of CPU architecture seems firmly in the (near or distant) future.
So:
<"What matters more are the ports that Apple CAN give you on the 2020 iMac... ;)">
 
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