markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Great suggestion!! Likely to be very improved performance. I did a similar installation using Acronis and a Samsung 1 TB SSD for my operating system in Win 10 PC. The motherboard and processor are 8 yrs. old and it still provides fast performance. Most times I have LR, PSCC 2019, FastStone and a variety of other programs opened and it hums!!
Mark

jweeks Loc: Phoenix

I'm on a Windows platform. My system is 4 years old, with a 500 gig SSD. I have lots of applications installed, and after 4 years it is less than half full (218 G). Nothing wrong with a 1T SSD, and it probably costs less than what I paid.

johnst1001a Loc: West Chester, Ohio

Of course you can always add more ram later, but it will cost you more and that ram if it goes bad is not covered under the apple care protection. it might have its own warranty, but then you have to go after another company. Anyway, everyone has their ideas. I will get 32mb ram next. ill save on the SSD. i don't need 1tb for my main drive, i store only applications on it, zero files. All my files are on external SSD'S or regular drives. So , yes, personal choices, none are wrong, just different

pappleg

Did exactly this 5 most ago. Had a 21" iMac wi 8gb RAM from 2011. Last fall I traded my Nikon D810 for the new Z7 and the change from 36mp to 45mp files was equivalent to putting molasses in my system. Using lightroom my slowest process was doing HDRs with three raw files with a base exposure plus two stops over and two stops under. It took 4-5 minutes with the D810 files and moved to 30-40 minutes with the Z7 files. In December I pulled the trigger on a new 27" iMac (the 3.1 Ghz model as I could add up to 64gb memory) . I stuck with the Fusion drive as I never had an issue with any previous Mac (had five over the years) and I did recently add a 2Tb SSD drive used exclusively for my photos. I configured the Mac with only 8Gb memory because I found that I could buy 32Gb of memory online from OWC(Other World Computing) for $325 less than Apple. It comes as 2 16Gb chips and is a piece of cake to install. If you do not already have one I would highly recommend the Apple Time Machine. It is a 2 or 3 TB hard drive with built in WiFi and automatic connection to iCloud. When installed it will automatically back up you entire system, including external hard drives, every ten minutes while operating your system. This item is no longer in production but the rep when I got my new system said Apple still had plenty of stock and still selling new units. Before I installed my new iMac I purged my full system of duplicates and unwanted files and did a final backup. When I set up the new Mac all I had to do was initiate a "Restore" from my Time Machine and in 40 minutes I was up and running. It screams- HDRs that took 30 minutes are now done in 30 seconds! Best move I made in years. Pat

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

That thought may bite you in the backside... not many of Apples systems allow for RAM expansion - they solder it to the motherboard, you buy they system with the amount of RAM you will ever want because there is no changing it out. To my knowledge the only models that let you change the RAM are the Mini and the 27" iMac - the monster Mac cylinder let you change RAM but I'm not sure you can even buy that one at this time - they apologized for creating it about a year or 2 ago.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

I also come back from vacations with at least 4,000 exposures. I upgraded last fall from a mid-2010 27" iMac to a 2017 I-7 27" iMac that is similar to the one that TriX described. Mine has a 1TB SSD internal drive and I bought it with the basic DRAM and then upgraded it to 16GB with aftermarket DRAM. The 16GB seams to be more than enough for editing still photographs. Rather than a single 7,200 RPM external drive for my photos, I use two external drives and a Drobo system to allow storage and backup. One 4TB Western Digital MyBook drive is used for my primary photo storage and a second 5TB MyBook is used for backup of the iMac's internal SSD. Time Machine is used to backup the SSD and all photograph backups are done by cut and paste of the uncompressed files to my Drobo that contains up tp to five mirror image Western Digital Red Drives. One of the drives is periodically swapped out with another that is kept in my bank safe deposit box for off site storage. I do not use cloud storage. The system has proven to be very reliable.

To increase editing speed, I initially create a Lightroom file on the internal SSD drive for sorting and editing. I back up that file to the external "Photo Editing Drive" on a daily basis and to the Drobo. Once all editing is complete, the file is permanently kept on the Photo Editing Drive and on the Drobo backup system. The file is then erased from the internal SSD on which I only keep active photo files, programs and non-photo data files. The SSD is backed up to the 5TB external drive using Time Machine once every hour.

In addition, I kept my mid-2010 iMac and bought a cable that allows me to use it as an external monitor using the iMac's Target Display Mode (Extended Display Mode) feature. That allows me to display Lightroom on one display and Photoshop on the other using one keyboard and trackpad along with my Wacom tablet. It has proven to be a very efficient system for editing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Good advice!

If the OP wants to keep the old iMac, check out SSD and memory upgrade options at http://www.macsales.com, along with all sorts of external drive options.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, two mirrored external drives (RAID 1) is even better and sounds like you have a good backup and DR strategy.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

WOW! That's only 25% more than a similarly equipped Windows based laptop!!! Great to only be a little bit ripped off!!!

JohnR Loc: The Gates of Hell

A complete MacMan for many years (we have 5!) I can tell you that it matters little which model you get as long as it has + 16GB RAM and an SSD. The screen in all 27" models is the same Retina with 5K resolution. I have a Thunderbolt 2K display as a 2nd monitor on my 5K iMac and can see little difference between the two. If anything I like the 2K Thunderbolt slightly more than the iMac 5K but I don't know why.

Cheers JohnR

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

It’s actually $3799 with I9, 32GB and 1TB SSD and $3399 with 512GB SSD.

A Dell I7 with 32 GB, 512GB MVMe SSD, 2TB HD and Nvidia graphics is $1599. Spend $500 for a first rate display and you’re at $2,099. I could have looked for an I-9, but there’s not much difference in performance and the NVMe SSD is faster, and then there’s the HD.

That’s a 62% difference.

nikonbrain Loc: Crystal River Florida

Well I just started using a mac pro , they are refurbed Mac Pro Towers all alluminum , on ebay allstarmacs is just one that I dealt with you can get a 5,1, MAC Pro 12 core 3.47 gz processors it is 2 ,6 core xeons ,with 2 tetabyte hard drive and 128 gig of ram running sierra . Price asking $1289.00 . I just took delivery from allstarmacs.com on a 2,1 2dual core xeons with 32 gig of ram 1terabyte hhd drive , with a XTX Radeon 6870 1gb video card , and 2015 photography software I wont mention what it is loaded with...price $ 338.00.......they delivered everything they said they would....it is plenty fast as I need it to be I will upgrade to a 1 tb ssd soon , it also comes with super dupper software to make a back up boot drive....very happy for sure....the thing is these are indefinitely upgradeable, I have heard storys that Apple has started to solder in ram stoping you from upgrading there new computers to force you to buy new to upgrade , that is why they stopped making these towers , so it is said ...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Just avoid the water cooled Macs at all costs 😡.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

With Apple, it is about far more than the hardware. Yes, you get similar parts that are found in a PC. But you are paying upfront for perpetual OS updates, perpetual updates of the Mac apps like Safari, GarageBand, iMovie, Photos, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iTunes, Apple News Reader, and the general ease of use of the entire ecosystem. You get free email accounts on iCloud.com, plus tight integration of the Mac OS with iOS on iPads and iPhones.

It's the software side that makes it expensive.

picsman Loc: Scotland

Thanks everyone for your replies and opinions. I still favour the i9 mac but wonder if a Dell as a photography processing tool might be a good option but then again I would have reinvest in the software again! When I am on the road I use my MBP with an SSD external hard disc to plug into my mac to upload the batch edited capture one raw files so I might lose that facility. I also appreciate the comments about using 3rd party memory to reduce costs. I will go to the Apple store tomorrow to investigate further. Thanks again.