What to buy?

[TexasCake]

I’m hoping someone more knowledgeable might be able to give me some advice please?

I have a 2017 iMac 21.5” 4K Retina 3GHz Quad core i5. 8MB 2400 MHz DDR4.

It regularly cannot cope with what I’m asking it to do.

I work in Google docs and have multiple pages/tabs in safari open at a time. I’m not doing graphics processing/anything alongside, just have documents open, some are web pages, some are PDF. At 6-10 tabs- the mac shows the colour wheel of death frequently. I’m flicking between these as part of my work. I use other information to inform my reports/work, so need to keep them open as they may be referenced several times.

I might have word/excel open in the background, but these aren’t necessarily
Showing in activity monitor.

Activity Monitor shows Memory pressure at red- frequently.

So, my questions are:
Is this normal- my 2009 Mac was better- but perhaps it’s the spec on this one- it’s still in warranty if that makes a difference. (Under 3 years since purchase)

Am I asking too much of my Mac- do I consider upgrade of RAM/HDD? Will that improve things? I asked a MAC shop nearby, they said I’d need to do both to see improvement. I don’t know enough to be confident this is the right answer.

Should I consider buying a new Mac? Realistically I would be looking at a MacBook. It’s for work and is used all day- what should I look for in terms of spec?
Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

 

[velocityg4]

Depends on how much you're willing to spend on the old iMac. As memory pressure is in the red. Maxing out the RAM makes a lot of sense.

An SSD upgrade also makes sense. The OWC Aura Pro X2 is the best designed for an iMac. You may do a regular M.2 NVMe with an adapter. It's a bit cheaper but I've read issues about it being buggy. So, the Aura is better suited to avoid issues.

There's also SATA SSD. They are cheaper but not as fast. Given what a pain it is to have these opened. I'd probably go with the Aura.

If you do all of that. You'll have a decent upgrade to get you a few more years out of it. Couldn't say if it's worth it. It won't be as fast as a new iMac. Still better than it currently is for a whole lot less money. I'm guessing about $550 (32GB/1TB) with labor versus $2100 (16GB/1TB) for a new iMac with BTO upgrades.

You could also have them put an i7-7700 (not 7700K) in it while it is open. To get everything you can out of it. But it's not as useful as the RAM and SSD upgrades.

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[TexasCake]

Thank you. That’s really helpful.

 

[hobowankenobi]

A contributing factor is that Apple has focused on performance and features with its new file system. Every Mac booting to APFS (required for 10.14 and newer) really needs an SSD. APFS is painfully slow on a hard drive. Apple should have stopped offering HDs in any Mac years ago.

An SSD and RAM upgraded to 16GB will make a noticeable impact on general performance. More is better....but for general purpose use, 16GB is adequate. If you can live with about 500GB of space, then the SSD isn't too pricey either.

The good news is, with a fast SSD and adequate RAM, a 2017 Mac should still have a few good years in it.

 

[TexasCake]

Thank you. Now I think about it, the person I spoke to in the Mac shop did say something similar.

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't think that RAM is "upgrade-able" in a 2017 21" iMac.
In order to do so, I believe one has to COMPLETELY disassemble the computer to access it. You almost certainly do not want to attempt this on your own.

If it has a platter-based hard drive in it, well, that's going to be SLOW.
There is no way possible to "speed up" this drive. CANNOT BE DONE.
Your only option is to REPLACE it, either with an internal SSD, or an EXTERNAL one.

8gb of RAM is adequate. I'd leave it alone.

I would suggest you buy an EXTERNAL SSD, plug that in, and set it up to become your "new external boot drive".

There are 3 ways to go here:
FIRST WAY:
Get an external USB3 SATA-based SSD such as a Samsung t5.
Or get a "bare" 2.5" SSD and a USB3 enclosure, and create your own.
This will give you read speeds around 430MBps.

SECOND WAY:
Get an external USB3.1 gen2 SSD such as a Samsung t7
Or get a "bare" nvme "blade SSD" and a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure (many available) and again, create your own.
This will give you read speeds around 800MBps.
(these do run warmer than a SATA SSD)

THIRD WAY:
Get an external thunderbolt3 drive, such as a Samsung X5.
There are a few tbolt3 enclosures out there, but they are pricey and performance is spotty.
These will yield read speeds of 2,000+MBps, but they often run very hot and when they get too hot they will "throttle back" and reduce speed.

If it was me, I'd choose the middle option.

It's very easy to set the drive up:
Just format it to APFS using disk utility.
Then use CarbonCopyCloner (FREE to download and use for 30 days) to "clone over" the contents of the internal drive to the external SSD.
Then... set it to be the boot drive using the startup disk preference pane.

Good luck...