2017 iMac
Oct 24, 2019 01:33:27 #
I need my UHH friends opinion. I have a 2011 27" iMac that I have upgraded to an 500G SSD drive and maxed out the RAM to 32 gig. Now, I am considering purchasing a refurbished 2017 27" iMac 2TB fusion from a friend for $1400. My reasoning is that I'm getting a much newer and faster machine for my LR photo editing. I use an 8TB RAID 1 drive system for storage and Backblaze for cloud backup. My current iMac is working quite well but it's an 8yr. old machine with the exception of the new SSD. Thoughts from anyone....
Oct 24, 2019 02:31:25 #
Oct 24, 2019 03:14:29 #
Well, my thoughts were that the new iMac has a faster processor, better graphics and just newer technology. It was never a situation of need or that my current iMac wasn't doing the job. There are still things that I really love about my 8yr. old iMac that the new machine doesn't have.
Oct 24, 2019 05:24:34 #
jayluber
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
My suggestion is to spend a bit more and get a brand new Mac. Otherwise you’ll be back in same situation 2 years from now.
Oct 24, 2019 05:32:26 #
Resqu2
Loc: SW Va
Can you take the 2017’s apart? I don’t think you will like the fusion near as well as an SSD. My 2019 21” model is basically glued together and not very easy to get apart like our older stuff was.
Oct 24, 2019 06:06:03 #
Oct 24, 2019 09:51:33 #
A. T. wrote:
I need my UHH friends opinion. I have a 2011 27&q... (show quote)
The fusion drive, while fast, is slower then an SSD.
I use a late 2015 iMac that came with a 2tb fusion drive. I ended up adding a 1TB SSD, external using a thunderbolt dock and made it my startup disk. Saw quite an improvement in speed over the internal fusion.
Check this post: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-613446-1.html
Oct 24, 2019 21:09:07 #
Bought a 2017 27 inch a few months ago. It was a revelation: the Retina display is awesome. Kind of reminds me of a microwave oven - couldn’t figure out why I would want one now I can’t live without it. It has the 2TB fusion drive which I find more than adequate and avoids the hassle of external data drives. Runs LR & PS just fine, although at 16GB memory, it’s marginal- I need to add some more - nice thing about the 27 inch model.
Oct 24, 2019 21:17:57 #
AndoverBob wrote:
Bought a 2017 27 inch a few months ago. It was a revelation: the Retina display is awesome. Kind of reminds me of a microwave oven - couldn’t figure out why I would want one now I can’t live without it. It has the 2TB fusion drive which I find more than adequate and avoids the hassle of external data drives. Runs LR & PS just fine, although at 16GB memory, it’s marginal- I need to add some more - nice thing about the 27 inch model.
Hassle? Externals are not a hassle - can keep your data off the internal and makes it easy to access should you need to move to a different computer for any reason.
The internal fusion is pretty quick, but no match for an SSD, even an external.
Agree that 16 is marginal, you can still get some swapping that slows things down, going to 32 or more makes sense.
Oct 24, 2019 21:29:19 #
One word of caution. I would definitely get some type of backup or external storage because when the 2TB drive fails, and it will sooner or later, you won't be crying your eyes out due to lost photos. I say this because I have been there and it only takes that happening once and you will have redundant backups.
Oct 24, 2019 21:40:00 #
I agree with Don Gallagher, the fusion drives are not as great as promised. The 1 tb fusion drive has such a small ssd portion it bottlenecks all the time. The 2 tb one is better but I wish I had paid the extra and had an ssd installed when I bought it. I have two 27 inch iMacs so have experience with both fusion drives. I am going to try, as per Don’s suggestion, an external ssd and see if that does make a difference in speed
Oct 24, 2019 21:46:59 #
I'm having a 500Gig SSD replace the fusion drive in my 2017 iMac at a cost of $380.00 and maxing out the RAM to 64Gig. I purchased my RAM at B&H and will install it my self, which is baby basic simple.
Oct 24, 2019 22:31:23 #
A. T. wrote:
I'm having a 500Gig SSD replace the fusion drive in my 2017 iMac at a cost of $380.00 and maxing out the RAM to 64Gig. I purchased my RAM at B&H and will install it my self, which is baby basic simple.
Good deal! You might want to go with a 1 TB drive though, to house your OS and all your apps, plus leave free space for operating. I was going to go with a 500 to try, but when I started looking, a 500 would have been almost 3/4 full right from the start. If you end up moving your user folder off to an external that would help of course.
64 GB would be great!
Oct 25, 2019 05:25:58 #
Resqu2
Loc: SW Va
Dngallagher wrote:
Good deal! You might want to go with a 1 TB drive though, to house your OS and all your apps, plus leave free space for operating. I was going to go with a 500 to try, but when I started looking, a 500 would have been almost 3/4 full right from the start. If you end up moving your user folder off to an external that would help of course.
64 GB would be great!
64 GB would be great!
I was worried about the 500gb drive but had to go with it due to cost, at the moment I have over 350gb left and I have the following installed.
Both LR’s
Photoshop
MS Office 2016
iCloud Photos is enabled and took up a few GB for some reason.
Plus all the stuff Apple puts on it.
I will get an external SSD at some point but I’m ok for now but if I wanted/needed to store lots of photos long term I’d be out of room.
Oct 25, 2019 06:32:59 #
Have a late 2015 27" iMac, running Catalina with no problems and 2Tb fusion - added RAM so 32GB. Fusion is only 30% full and have time machine and processed picture backup on external partitioned 4TB. Have a 3TB back up where I store all the RAW files. Also have 1TB Samsung T5 SSD for field use. Thinking of adding 1TB Tunderbolt as boot drive. Running Office 365, Lightroom & Photoshop CC.
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