Brucej67 wrote:
iMac 27" Retna 4 32gb memory 3tb drive fusion 128 AMD Radeon® R9 M390 graphics i7 processor. Not a toy.
The Retina is not the optimal screen for photo editing, though it is the choice for video editing. It is a 10 bit display nut on the Apple platform it uses the wrong color space for it's wide gamut support.
Now, compare this to what you have:
Asus motherboard, with Thunderbolt, USB 3/3.1, Firewire, and 8 SATA drive connections
Intel i7 6700K clocked at 5 ghz
Liquid cooling
32 gb DDR3 ram with room for another 32 gb
1 TB m.2 SSD drive
(3) 4 TB WD Black drives (5 yr warranty on those, btw)
Nvidia Quadro K2200 workstation class card to drive a NEC MultiSync PA242W‑BK‑SV with 10 bit (30 bit color) graphics pipeline and 100% Adobe RGB support (monitor not included in price)
BluRay drive
Case with 7 fans and 11 drive bays
800w power supply
wireless keyboard and mouse
Now this is a nice workstation tailored for graphics and photo editing - and it costs less than $2000. Not a toy, but not $3200 either. Okay, yours include a 27" Retina display which is standard gamut for photoshop unless you want to go wide gamut with the wierd DCI-P3 color space which is really best suited for video editing.
By comparison, while your iMac is no slouch and certainly not a toy, it's expensive and you've maxed it out. The Asus build has a 25% faster cpu, has 13tb storage (compared to 3), can accommodate 64 gb ram, and even if you add an HP Z27q 27-inch IPS 5K 10 bit display, it's still $200 cheaper, and there is no need to resort to external drives for expansion. In your system to get to 12 tb working storage you'd have to buy a collection of external drives for at least another $600 with cases (I would use the same quality drives that I use internally - WD Black or Hitachi Ultrastar) and fan vented cases.
And we should be able to put to rest all of the mythology about reliability, longevity, user friendliness, stability, freedom from virus attacks, etc. But platforms have become more or less equivalent in this respect.