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Which of these iMacs

K

KG29

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2019
4
4
I’m in the market for a new 27” iMac. I have a late 2013, 3.4 GHz, i5, 3 TB GeoForce GTX 780M - 32GB Ram (from Crucial).

Mixed use, Pro Logic, editing videos for YouTube (nothing heavier), some basic coding html/java/sql for work, heavy use of word/excel/pages/keynote etc for work + day to day browsing, email etc... I usually have about 4 to 6 apps + multiple web pages on the go at once, plus Music, News.

I know any of the 2019 line up will be better - not too concerned about SSD over Fusion (I’m using almost 2TB of my 3 TB now - will be less when I do some housekeeping). Personally not had an issue with Fusion- I accept it’s slower and has spinning parts.

I will be keeping the new Mac for a good 6 to 7 years - so I accept resale value won’t be too great.

Here is where I’m at.

Budget is £2,700 - employers budget (and they are happy for me to max out on more than is needed to future proof as much as possible).

What ever option I go with, I will upgrade the Ram.

Which one would you choose?

Option 1
@ £2,699
* i9
* Radeon Pro 580X
* 512GB SSD


Option 2
@ £2,519
* i5
* Radeon Pro 580X
* 1TB SSD

Option 3
@ £2,609
* i9
* Radeon Pro 580X
* 2TB Fusion

Option 4
@ £2,654
* i5
* Vega 48
* 2TB Fusion
 
Last edited:
With my own use-case I'd choose Option 4. With your described use-case I'd pick option 3. If you plan on getting external storage, Option 1.

Doesn't sound like much of what you do is very GPU accelerated, really.

Though if it were your own money and not from your employer, I'd actually advice a much cheaper model, and instead of keeping it up to 6 years, putting the extra money towards a replacement maybe in 3 years instead.
 
Do NOT get the Fusion drives. You do not want spinning rust in your rig in 2019 let alone 2025.

The i5 will suit your needs fine.

You can always plug in external drives, or have NAS.
 
I have an almost identical late 2013 iMac, and it's starting to feel old. It gets VERY slow and spinning-beachball-y more and more often in routine work (mostly InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator, occasional video). I'm about to order your Option 2 (with the 3.7GHz 9th-gen i5), which seems like a reasonably future-proof choice for a graphic designer.
 
Thanks for the replies - so 3 votes for Option 2 here.

The view on Fusion surprises me - I accept personal opinion, what surprises me that iMac is the only computer on offer from Apple that includes Fusion as standard. Even the Mac Mini has SSD as standard.

Might have to see if I can put the extra £200 in and get the i9 with 1TB SSD (although I do prefer more internal storage - struggle to keep up with data management).

It’s a shame Apple charges extortionate amounts for SSD storage - £580 for 2TB when you can pick up an external for £180.
 
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KG29 said:
Might have to see if I can put the extra £200 in and get the i9 with 1TB SSD (although I do prefer more internal storage - struggle to keep up with data management).

It’s a shame Apple charges extortionate amounts for SSD storage - £580 for 2TB when you can pick up an external for £180.
Click to expand...

To be honest I really think the reactions against Fusion Drives are hyperbolic and extremely over the top.
Phrases like "spinning rust" are also a bit outlandish to me. We've had hard drives in computers for decades! And I can actually say I've had more SSDs die than hard drives at this stage. Plus SSDs are more prone to losing data if left in cold storage.

The tiny and stupid Fusion Drive aside, I really do feel that in most cases you get the best of both worlds with a Fusion Drive. - Should Apple offer more SSD as part of the base model; Absolutely. But I'm still a fan of Fusion Drives. They should have larger SSD portions by now, but the concept and execution of the idea is brilliant. And with the 128GB SSD in the larger Fusion Drives I really find it to work extremely well. - And I don't think the idea of Fusion will die out either. For now it's HDD+SSD, but the same principle could work for a fast and a slow SSD or Octane and regular NAND and so on. Tiered storage makes a lot of sense. We have like 4+ tiers of cache, so why not tier storage too?
 
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casperes1996 said:
To be honest I really think the reactions against Fusion Drives are hyperbolic and extremely over the top.
Click to expand...

I mean, that's your opinion.

Facts:
- HDD portion is way too slow for OS and day to day programs in 2019.
- HDD was slow in 2010 for macOS in particular
- modern OS r/w a lot of data
- macOS in particular is stupid about how it does things, and you don't have control over it.
- HDD speed WILL be your bottleneck
- Fusion drives vary. Some of the smaller ones have only 8GB flash. Some of the bigger can have up to 128GB or so. You need to check.
- You can't typically choose what goes where, the drive will decide for you.
- External HDD storage is at an all time low, and Macs provide plenty of ports to connect these.
- HDD is hotter. iMac doesn't have great thermals to start with.
- an SSD upgrade is the single biggest leap in performance boost you can get in day to day average computing. Even an i3 CPU these days is okay, but if you lack SSD you WILL have performance issues.

With SSD you're guaranteed speed. With HDD you're guaranteed cheap storage. If you're shelling out 3 G's why would you possibly want to live with a crippled monstrosity that does neither job great.



Opinion: based on technical factual reasons, if you get an iMac with Fusion in 2019 you WILL regret it.
 
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casperes1996 said:
To be honest I really think the reactions against Fusion Drives are hyperbolic and extremely over the top.
Phrases like "spinning rust" are also a bit outlandish to me. We've had hard drives in computers for decades!
Click to expand...

I believe the phrase is very old. At least it's been a long time since HDDs actually stored data using iron oxide.
 
Zandros said:
I believe the phrase is very old. At least it's been a long time since HDDs actually stored data using iron oxide.
Click to expand...
An 80s or 90s era British TV show called "The Secret Life of Machines" once demonstrated how audio tape works by coating a length of adhesive tape with actual rust and recording a few words.
 
Personally, I would recommend going for the i9 with the SSD. Anything larger can be placed on an external drive you are using for backups.
 
casperes1996 said:
We've had hard drives in computers for decades!
Click to expand...
but they don't last for decades. But that isn't the real reason to avoid Fusion drives here. Let's look at the need and see why the FD is a bad idea.

Option 1 or an iMac Pro. If employer is paying for it, then Your time = their money. Beware of false economy.

Editing video — lots of effects, you want the best GPU you can have. Few effects, not so important but CPU is. If you can't have the iMac Pro, get the i9. If using lots of effects, Option 1 with the Vega 48 (or better, the base iMac Pro).

Audio or video. Enough room on the boot drive your your active project makes everything faster. Ok to offload projects to an external when you aren't working the file. 512GB is probably large enough but consider the housekeeping (time to offload and bring files onboard). Rendering or bouncing files sitting on external drives (unless an X5) doesn't take forever—it just feels like it.

The only external that is as fast is the Samsung X5. They're more expensive than upgrading to a larger SSD. Again, beware of false economy.

Audio. 150 VIs in Logic Pro with convo reverb + another plugin on each track will choke a 12 core Mac Pro 6.1. 300 of those same tracks runs easily on a 10 core iMac Pro (for a thousand, you want the 28 core Mac Pro — I know...). Get the i9 — the first time you bounce to disk onto the internal SSD, you'll wonder if it worked, it will be that fast.

Yep, back to Time=$ equation.
 
CPU/GPU wasn't a factor in the decision making for me, but I recently picked up a #2 (1TB) and have no regrets.

My original intention was to get a 512GB config, but after comparing the cost differential ($200) between the two configs, with that of an external TB3 SSD (Samsung X5 500GB = $220+tax), it was an easy choice. And when the internal drive fills up, the X5 still remains an option.

I had all manners of external drives hanging off my previous iMac. Now, I can get that clutter off my desk as well.
 
Thanks for the input, I’m edging towards i9, 1 TB SSD (appreciate it costs a little more).

Most have said get the i5 so i’m now weighing up that before handing over my cash!
 
mikehalloran said:
Audio. 150 VIs in Logic Pro with convo reverb + another plugin on each track will choke a 12 core Mac Pro 6.1. 300 of those same tracks runs easily on a 10 core iMac Pro (for a thousand, you want the 28 core Mac Pro — I know...). Get the i9 — the first time you bounce to disk onto the internal SSD, you'll wonder if it worked, it will be that fast.
Click to expand...

Hello mikehalloran, do you have experience how much tracks can the i9 of the thread opener (i9, 1TB SSD and Vega 48) will handle. Thanks
 
The only reason to order the smallest fusion is you know you will open the case, voiding the warranty, to replace the SSD with a proper 2TB one and replace the HDD with a Samsung 4TB unit for data storage. And you will add a 32GB memory set to the basic lot. BTW, unless you will edit video the Radeon 580X will be just fine. Naturally get the i9, 8 core CPU.
 
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casperes1996 said:
To be honest I really think the reactions against Fusion Drives are hyperbolic and extremely over the top.
Phrases like "spinning rust" are also a bit outlandish to me. We've had hard drives in computers for decades! And I can actually say I've had more SSDs die than hard drives at this stage. Plus SSDs are more prone to losing data if left in cold storage.

The tiny and stupid Fusion Drive aside, I really do feel that in most cases you get the best of both worlds with a Fusion Drive. - Should Apple offer more SSD as part of the base model; Absolutely. But I'm still a fan of Fusion Drives. They should have larger SSD portions by now, but the concept and execution of the idea is brilliant. And with the 128GB SSD in the larger Fusion Drives I really find it to work extremely well. - And I don't think the idea of Fusion will die out either. For now it's HDD+SSD, but the same principle could work for a fast and a slow SSD or Octane and regular NAND and so on. Tiered storage makes a lot of sense. We have like 4+ tiers of cache, so why not tier storage too?
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. Obviously an SSD of the size you need is better than a Fusion Drive if you can afford it. But with Apple charging what they do, those prices get out of hand very, very quickly. If budget is a concern or you'd rather spend you money on RAM or a better graphics card or whatever -- or you want to prioritize having a large internal drive -- a Fusion Drive a usable option and MASSIVELY better than a plain HDD. Maybe those bashing Fusion Drives so hard don't understand that the files you are actively working with are migrated to -- you guessed it -- an SS inside your Mac.

I honestly wish Apple offered bigger Fusion Drives. Like, 512GB of SSD paired with a 2TB hard drive. Let the whole MacOS system live on the SSD, plus all the files I'm actively working with or have recently worked with. The stuff I'm just storing and not working on doesn't need to be on the fastest and most expensive possible storage medium at every moment -- especially at the prices Apple charges right now.

Who knows, maybe in a few years flash memory prices will come down to the point where this conversation isn't needed, but we sure aren't there yet.
 
You Are making a fatal error by choosing the fusion drive.


You can offload old projects onto an external drive. The productivity you preserve by having an ssd will be worth far more over time than what immediate convenience you gain by having 2tb
 
ignatius345 said:
Couldn't agree more. Obviously an SSD of the size you need is better than a Fusion Drive if you can afford it. But with Apple charging what they do, those prices get out of hand very, very quickly. If budget is a concern or you'd rather spend you money on RAM or a better graphics card or whatever -- or you want to prioritize having a large internal drive -- a Fusion Drive a usable option and MASSIVELY better than a plain HDD. Maybe those bashing Fusion Drives so hard don't understand that the files you are actively working with are migrated to -- you guessed it -- an SS inside your Mac.

I honestly wish Apple offered bigger Fusion Drives. Like, 512GB of SSD paired with a 2TB hard drive. Let the whole MacOS system live on the SSD, plus all the files I'm actively working with or have recently worked with. The stuff I'm just storing and not working on doesn't need to be on the fastest and most expensive possible storage medium at every moment -- especially at the prices Apple charges right now.

Who knows, maybe in a few years flash memory prices will come down to the point where this conversation isn't needed, but we sure aren't there yet.
Click to expand...


Exactly, mate.

Fusion Drives with larger SSD portions would be good. On the first Fusion Drives, the ratio was greater SSD to HDD than it is now too. My now dead iMac was 1TB FD with 128GB SSD. Now 128GB is reserved for 2TB+.
And it'd be really easy for Apple to do, cause it is just a matter of hardware. You can make your own Fusion Drives, and they work great no matter what config you give them.

Tiered storage is a good solution. Whether it be SSD/HDD or Optane/NAND or whatever. Maybe a form of NVRAM even
 
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