27" 5K iMac 2017

redlion

redlion

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Has anyone ordered or got the 5k 2017 27" iMac?

What spec have you got?

Thinking about getting one but still undecided on the final specification

Was considered bumping the base one to an SSD drive and getting RAM from crucial.

Main uses are coding and editing personal photos and videos.

Thanks.
 
redlion said:
Main uses are coding and editing personal photos and videos.
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For coding, the basic configuration is very sufficient.
For photos, consider larger (4~6 TB) disk with nominal RAM.
For video, a larger disk AND 2x~4x RAM.

Have a good time with it! :cool:
 
Thanks for your input @Kodiak Qc

For coding it was via Sublime Edit or Visual Studio using a VM.

As for photos was considering getting Capture One Pro and video edit via DaVinci Resolve or FCPX.

Current configuration is base i5 with 512 SSD and then grab 16GB from Crucial to make it 24GB and then a large external drive from Lacie or Drobo.

I've looked at adding 1TB SSD, i7 and the 580 Gfx but might be overkill as wouldn't always utilise the power.

Thanks.
 
redlion said:
As for photos was considering getting Capture One Pro
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Capture One Pro on Mac is what I use…
and recommend, just can't go wrong!
 
redlion said:
Has anyone ordered or got the 5k 2017 27" iMac?

What spec have you got?

Thinking about getting one but still undecided on the final specification

Was considered bumping the base one to an SSD drive and getting RAM from crucial.

Main uses are coding and editing personal photos and videos.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'd spec biggest SSD I can afford today, up the ram later. iTunes/Lightroom data sat on external (though catalogue file on main SSD). Expensive to replace the SSD later, and on these the PCI SSD bus is much faster than SATA, and they're even more bleeding expensive, so you wouldn't want to do it later.
 
I ended up going with the 512 SSD as the 1TB was too much. I am exploring a Drobo 5C for external storage or a G-Raid drive and getting ram via Crucial to up it to 24GB late in the year.
 
I upgraded from a 2011 27" iMac to a retina 27" iMac last year. I just went with the 1TB fusion drive and I upgraded the RAM myself to 24GB. I have found the Lightroom is actually much slower on it than on my previous iMac. I think it is because the images being manipulated are much higher resolution and this slows it down a lot. Also, the increased screen resolution doesn't look amazingly better than the old one either. I have my photos on external thunderbolt drives with the LRCAT files on the main hard drive.
 
redlion said:
I ended up going with the 512 SSD as the 1TB was too much. I am exploring a Drobo 5C for external storage or a G-Raid drive and getting ram via Crucial to up it to 24GB late in the year.
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Be interested to know how you get along with it, this is a similar spec to what I was thinking of ...

Which processor did you go for ?

How are you finding the speed with the SSD ?
 
@andyred I ended up getting the base i5 3.4 and upgraded the hard drive to 512 SSD and getting an additional 16GB RAM via third party to make it 24GB.

The SSD is very fast. It gets some silly speeds with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.

I wanted something to run cool and quiet and be quick and it ticks all the boxes.

The actual screen is very good. Resolution and colour wise it has made me drop a dual dell setup.

If you have any other questions do ask. I just need to find a decent desk for it now.
 
redlion said:
@andyred I ended up getting the base i5 3.4 and upgraded the hard drive to 512 SSD and getting an additional 16GB RAM via third party to make it 24GB.

The SSD is very fast. It gets some silly speeds with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.

I wanted something to run cool and quiet and be quick and it ticks all the boxes.

The actual screen is very good. Resolution and colour wise it has made me drop a dual dell setup.

If you have any other questions do ask. I just need to find a decent desk for it now.
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Fantastic thanks.

This was an Apple SSD upgrade ?

Been trying to decide if it was worth upgrading to mid or high spec (along with the SSD upgrade) - think I'll go back to look at the specs again...

Where did you get the memory from ?

Cheers
 
I have a 2015 27" 5K iMac that I love working on.

I got mine with a 1tb Hybrid drive which is incredibly fast even though its a half way house. I didn't get an upgrade to the memory instead going to crucial website and buying compatible memory for less than half the cost of Apple memory. It takes literally 5 minutes to fit through a little hatch in the back. I upgraded mine to 24mb of ram.

Other than I don't think I needed anything else. It's converted me from PC to Mac.
 
Interesting read. I've been thinking about upgrading my 2009 27" iMac to the current model but undecided on specs apart from max out the RAM via third party later.

Do you think the SSD is worth while? My main uses are Photoshop CS6 and basic MS Office apps. My current i7 MBP has SSD and I find it super fast.
 
I find the fusion drive in my 2015 iMac to be really good despite some initial concerns (was going to go for a 500gb SSD but patience got the better of me as it was an impulse buy), I have the 2TB version which has the larger (128gb) SSD portion. Much quicker than the 2011 iMac I had.

It transpires to be a a great decision as it really does offer a very good compromise of both worlds (fast machine, lots of onboard storage).
 
As a computer engineer I was worried about the life of Fusion drives but up to now I've had no problems. My MacBook pro has an SSD drive and similar processor to my iMac. I can hardly notice any difference in speed or performance.
 
andyred said:
Fantastic thanks.

This was an Apple SSD upgrade ?

Been trying to decide if it was worth upgrading to mid or high spec (along with the SSD upgrade) - think I'll go back to look at the specs again...

Where did you get the memory from ?

Cheers
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It was an Apple SSD upgrade via their configuration on the base iMac and memory was from Crucial.

Have a look at the specs again and fire away with more questions. I looked at all of the specs and just settled on the base and upgraded the things that I thought would be more worthwhile and leave change to purchase other bits.
 
rpn said:
Interesting read. I've been thinking about upgrading my 2009 27" iMac to the current model but undecided on specs apart from max out the RAM via third party later.

Do you think the SSD is worth while? My main uses are Photoshop CS6 and basic MS Office apps. My current i7 MBP has SSD and I find it super fast.
Click to expand...

As a bare minimum get the 2TB Fusion as it has 128 SSD over the base 1 TB which is a measly 24 SSD IIRC. I felt the 512 SSD was worth it when combined with some sort of external storage which I am still exploring e.g. Drobo, G-RAID or a Dual 2.5" HDD.
 
redlion said:
@andyred I ended up getting the base i5 3.4 and upgraded the hard drive to 512 SSD and getting an additional 16GB RAM via third party to make it 24GB.

The SSD is very fast. It gets some silly speeds with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.

I wanted something to run cool and quiet and be quick and it ticks all the boxes.

The actual screen is very good. Resolution and colour wise it has made me drop a dual dell setup.

If you have any other questions do ask. I just need to find a decent desk for it now.
Click to expand...

How are you finding the machine ?

I'm looking to order one in next week or so and can't see what real life benefit there is jumping to the mid spec one - so the £200 saving virtually pays for the SSD upgrade.

Oh and does your info say you can upgrade to 32 or 64GB memory ?
 
@andyred I am really enjoying it. Being a laptop user for so many years this upgrade has been a good experience so far.

I had the same thinking and saved the money by going with the base and upgrading to the SSD which is blistering fast and then getting additional RAM and eventually some decent external drives.

I have not checked my info but did read various places it accepts 64GB. I am happy with 24GB so at most would have done 40GB (32 + stock 8).

Any more questions just ask away.
 
redlion said:
@andyred I am really enjoying it. Being a laptop user for so many years this upgrade has been a good experience so far.

I had the same thinking and saved the money by going with the base and upgrading to the SSD which is blistering fast and then getting additional RAM and eventually some decent external drives.

I have not checked my info but did read various places it accepts 64GB. I am happy with 24GB so at most would have done 40GB (32 + stock 8).

Any more questions just ask away.
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Thanks :)
 
Hope you don't mind me asking but how do you find the performance of the machine when it comes to video work? What about general performance in lightroom and capture one?

I've got an old 4 core Mac Pro from 2010 that is really showing its age (Capture One is pretty much unusable) and I'm torn between throwing more money at it (already upgraded the RAM and added an SSD so would add new CPU & GPU & new monitor) or replacing it with a new iMac or indeed going back to PC
 
ali_surf said:
Hope you don't mind me asking but how do you find the performance of the machine when it comes to video work? What about general performance in lightroom and capture one?

I've got an old 4 core Mac Pro from 2010 that is really showing its age (Capture One is pretty much unusable) and I'm torn between throwing more money at it (already upgraded the RAM and added an SSD so would add new CPU & GPU & new monitor) or replacing it with a new iMac or indeed going back to PC
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The iMac should be a bit faster than the quad Mac Pro. i7 should wipe the floor with it. SSD bus on the iMac is faster than SATA3 nevermind the Mac Pros relic SATA 2 so you can't even get full performance of the SSD out of it. I've just put a PCI-SATA3 card in mine, must get round to throwing away the quad core Xeon and fitting a 6 core which should give it a nice boost.
 
Jonnybrad2001 said:
I've just put a PCI-SATA3 card in mine, must get round to throwing away the quad core Xeon and fitting a 6 core which should give it a nice boost.
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I did wonder about a PCI-E SATA card with an M.2 drive in it to boost speeds and swapping the CPU out for the 6 core version but was unsure if I would run into compatibility issues. I also considered trying to source a dual cpu board as an upgrade but they are still pricey so went off that idea.

GPU upgrade would be good too, Im still on the old ATI 5870 1GB
 
ali_surf said:
I did wonder about a PCI-E SATA card with an M.2 drive in it to boost speeds and swapping the CPU out for the 6 core version but was unsure if I would run into compatibility issues. I also considered trying to source a dual cpu board as an upgrade but they are still pricey so went off that idea.

GPU upgrade would be good too, Im still on the old ATI 5870 1GB
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I just went with the OWC Accelsior for my existing Samsung Evo 2.5" drive, M2 doesn't add any extra speed, just smaller footprint for laptops, so no point throwing away a perfectly good SSD drive.
 
I think the SSD in mine is an old sata2 drive anyway, it was put it just after I got the system back in 2010 but I'll double check.

I had read on barefeets about adding a pcie card with a Samsung 951 ssd would boost speeds considerably so was thinking that would replace my 60gb ssd as my main drive
 
ali_surf said:
I think the SSD in mine is an old sata2 drive anyway, it was put it just after I got the system back in 2010 but I'll double check.

I had read on barefeets about adding a pcie card with a Samsung 951 ssd would boost speeds considerably so was thinking that would replace my 60gb ssd as my main drive
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60GB, yes possibly only SATA2, and even if SATA3 not really giving the bus too much to cope with. I'd already got a 1TB Samsung Evo so was being throttled by the SATA2 bus. PCI card was a £60 upgrade, so hasn't made it massively faster, but wasn't tons of money.
 
redlion said:
@andyred I am really enjoying it. Being a laptop user for so many years this upgrade has been a good experience so far.

I had the same thinking and saved the money by going with the base and upgrading to the SSD which is blistering fast and then getting additional RAM and eventually some decent external drives.

I have not checked my info but did read various places it accepts 64GB. I am happy with 24GB so at most would have done 40GB (32 + stock 8).

Any more questions just ask away.
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Hi, quick question- when you switch your machine on, in a very quiet room, can you hear the fan running ? It’s quiet and in the background ?

Cheers
 
andyred said:
Hi, quick question- when you switch your machine on, in a very quiet room, can you hear the fan running ? It’s quiet and in the background ?

Cheers
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On a day to day basis the fan noise isn't an issue but when working late into the night you can hear a faint whoosh sound from the fan. The Sky box and fridge nearby are way louder and irritate me more than the iMac. I did read numerous posts about the fans being loud but mine is just faint air whoosh.

I still enjoy using the machine.

Close to pulling the trigger?

Any more questions please do ask.
 
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redlion said:
On a day to day basis the fan noise isn't an issue but when working late into the night you can hear a faint whoosh sound from the fan. The Sky box and fridge nearby are way louder and irritate me more than the iMac. I did read numerous posts about the fans being loud but mine is just faint air whoosh.

I still enjoy using the machine.

Close to pulling the trigger?

Any more questions please do ask.
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Cheers mate and yes pulled the trigger on one. :)
 
redlion said:
@andyred which configuration did you end up ordering?

Enjoy your new setup :banana:
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Cheers mate, went for the 27" with a 500 SSD - would have loved the 1TB, but really couldn't justify the jump up in cost.

Going to add more memory in next month or so I think - might add 16gb, so then have 24gb.
 
@andyred that is exactly the same setup as me :)

I could not stretch for the 1TB either nor could I justify the cost.

I grabbed an extra 16GB from Crucial to make it 24GB. I would say run it stock 8GB and see how you get on first though as the SSD is so quick it hardly hogs any memory with OSX system resources.

I am exploring external hard drive options next but not sure what to get as wanted a dual drive external setup.
 
redlion said:
@andyred that is exactly the same setup as me :)

I could not stretch for the 1TB either nor could I justify the cost.

I grabbed an extra 16GB from Crucial to make it 24GB. I would say run it stock 8GB and see how you get on first though as the SSD is so quick it hardly hogs any memory with OSX system resources.

I am exploring external hard drive options next but not sure what to get as wanted a dual drive external setup.
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Cheers mate - might keep an eye the memory to see if they have any offers...

Blow the budget and get SSD external drives :)
 
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