6 year computer: Late 2015 27" iMac 5k, 24GB RAM

[mtbdudex]

Well I looked at ordering one with the built in VESA mount, as i had bad experience a few years ago
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-imac-27-screen-cracked-hazard-sharp.927143/

From the Apple online calculator, http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-vesa?product=Z0S2&step=config

Summary
27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display and Built-in VESA Mount Adapter

• 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
• 8GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 4GB
• 3TB Fusion Drive
• AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory
• Magic Mouse 2

$2,939.00

I'll add 32GB RAM via 3rd party, much cheaper.

I can't seen to find the sku for ordering the discounted one with the VESA mount ....

My 2009 27" iMac I easily removed the stand, these 2015 27" iMac seems you can't
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6912372?start=0&tstart=0

 

[mtbdudex]

I ended up buying direct thru Apple store, plus got a work discount thru the business center, same as education discount but also for the VESA product.

tem Product Product Description Total Total Unit Extended
Number Ordered Shipped Price Price
001 Z0S2 IMAC 27"/CTO/VESA 1 1 2,763.00 2,763.00

The unit above contains the following options:

PROCESSOR 065-C3F7 4.0GHz QC i7, TB up to 4.2GHz
MEMORY 065-C3FG 8GB 1867MHz DDR3L (2x4GB)
HARD DRIVE 065-C3FW 3TB Fusion Drive
GRAPHIC 065-C3FD AMD Radeon R9 M395X w/4GB
MOUSE 065-C36H Apple Magic Mouse
FINAL CUT PRO 065-C171 NONE
LOGIC PRO 065-C172 NONE
KEYBOARD AND DOCUMENTATION065-C379 Apple WL Kybd (English)+UG
COUNTRY KIT 065-C3G2 COUNTRY KIT


Subtotal 2,763.00
Tax 165.78
Shipping Charges
TOTAL USD 2,928.78

Scheduled For Early Delivery On:
Wednesday, 12/09/2015, By End of Day
Originally Scheduled For Delivery On:
Thursday, 12/10/2015, By End of Day

Looking forward to 5k display and much faster processing of images, video, etc.

 

[besler3035]

I literally just got my new iMac 27" yesterday. Same config as yours, but with 2 TB fusion drive and 8 GB ram. Gonna up it to 32 gb on my own through Crucial. Loving it so far!

 

[fathergll]

Did anyone pick up a M395 or 395x?

I pre-ordered an i7, 512 SSD, M295X but I'm thinking about canceling and going with the 395 instead and saving 250 bucks.

No sure if 2GB more of Vram is really that important. The performance in games according to benchmark doe snot show reason to spend the extra money

Depends on what you are doing with it. 4K editing? Yes the 4GB vram you want. Photography? I don't see why. My biggest concern is the heat the output on the 395x plus its more money.

 

[mtbdudex]

For me this was/is a 6 year investment, and I do lots of video work as a hobby so got the 395x.

Should mention also I'm going with 8GB base + 16GB upgrade for 24GB total RAM.
(16GB = $85). If I need in future to go to 32GB RAM surely the cost of doing that will of course drop....

2 days and counting....I've done all prep work, threw away old files/images to lean out the HDD transfer time.

 

[MadDane]

I ended up buying direct thru Apple store, plus got a work discount thru the business center, same as education discount but also for the VESA product.

Looking forward to 5k display and much faster processing of images, video, etc.

Please let us know how it performs relative to your old iMac. I have an iMac very similar to your old one and I am planning to get a similarly spec'ced 5k iMac soon, so I am very interested to hear about your experiences with your new machine.

 

[uvafan1]

My 6 year old iMac i7 with my new iMac 5k. (The old one is on the right if you were wondering.)

 

[MadDane]

View attachment 604558
My 6 year old iMac i7 with my new iMac 5k. (The old one is on the right if you were wondering.)

How is the new iMac performing compared to the old one? How noticeable is the difference in usage, other than the obvious change in resolution?

 

[mtbdudex]

iMac came yesterday afternoon, did unboxing this morning and migration of nearly 2TB data now ... show 11 hours to do it.
I'll give impressions after using for a few days.

unboxing images

.

Box in a box packaged:

.

VESA mount applied by Apple, I transfer the arm specific bracket to the new 2015 iMac on left, the old 2009 iMac is on right

.

Going here

.

Late tonight it should be done migrating 2TB, my ext 2TB HD has firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0, not 3.0, and the new iMac has no firewire so slow USB (45-ish MB/s)

now it's slowed down to 28MB/s and 15 hours left ... ugh USB 2.0 slooowwww.

 

[mtbdudex]

The data transfer while taking a long time appears to be totally successful.
All user accounts and data/applications came across, including Aperture - yep I still use it.

RAM Before

RAM after

However now I'm trying to use my 6TB My Cloud EX2 NAS as a time machine back-up
I started this before going to sleep at 11pm, and nearly 7 hours later still about 20% done, I though gigabit was way faster than USB 2.0??

There just 1 D-Link switch between me and the iMac, it's a relative new one

Features

The DGS-2205 5-Port 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Switch was designed for easy installation and high performance in an environment where traffic on the network and the number of users increase continuously.

• Five (5) 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Cable Diagnostic function at Switch boot up
• Supports Auto-Negotiation for 10/100/1000Mbps and duplex mode • Supports Auto-MDI/MDIX for each port
• Supports Full/Half duplex transfer mode for 10 and 100Mbps
• Supports Full-duplex transfer mode for 1000Mbps
• Supports IEEE 802.1p Priority Queuing, up to 4 queues
• Full wire speed reception and transmission
• Store-and-Forward switching method
• Supports 8K absolute MAC addresses
• Extensive front-panel diagnostic LEDs
• Jumbo Frame 9Kbytes
• IEEE 802.3x flow control for full duplex
• Back pressure flow control for half duplex

Now it's says about a day remaining

 

[MadDane]

It should be faster yes. But I have also had problems with Time Machine being really slow. For me it is only if I use an external HDD with USB3 that there is a decent speed. But glad to see that everything seems to be working. Keep the updates coming

 

[mtbdudex]

Well here's my 1.22TB Initial Time Machine backup over LAN to 6TB NAS Western Digital My Cloud EX2
4 hours left, so about 24 hours total to do a 1.22TB initial back-up

I'm not sure if this is "good" or "bad" or just average.

17-18 MB/s, while a gigabit = 1,000 MB/s, so my performance is slooowww??

Here's my system performance over the past 20 hours

I've got these Aperture Libraries with 10,000's of pictures plus in each

My iTunes library is pretty big also

and finally lots of digital movie clips, some from my wedding day

 

[fathergll]

For me this was/is a 6 year investment, and I do lots of video work as a hobby so got the 395x.

Should mention also I'm going with 8GB base + 16GB upgrade for 24GB total RAM.
(16GB = $85). If I need in future to go to 32GB RAM surely the cost of doing that will of course drop....

2 days and counting....I've done all prep work, threw away old files/images to lean out the HDD transfer time.

In that case enjoy. I've been actually having kernel panics on my 2014 model ever since I went up to El Captain. Im going to do a clean install tonight

 

[mtbdudex]

In that case enjoy. I've been actually having kernel panics on my 2014 model ever since I went up to El Captain. Im going to do a clean install tonight

I thought about a clean install - for about 5 seconds.
Just way too much "stuff" and also 3 accounts for each kid.....

Good luck on your clean install, I've done that before, years ago.
Hopefully I can sort out my "slow" LAN transfer speed issue.

Now, with so many applications online digital download not DVD it actually makes a clean install harder because you have to go thru the whole digital download again instead of feeding master DVD's.
Find all those accounts and passwords

 

[mtbdudex]

Ok - the first back-up got done 6am this morning, so it took 24 + 7 hours = 31 full hours for the initial back-up of 1.22 TB. Well actually it's more like 1.7TB, as I started the time machine a few times and it stalled, and I did not realize that it kept adding to it till done.
anyway glad to see this:

Here's the stat's for the time machine back-up, this shows average of 17MB/s:

and immediately it jumped into the 2nd back-up as some stuff changed in 31 hours.
(I did nothing except surf the web, but maybe the Fusion drive was re-allocating what is on it's 128MB SSD vs it's 3TB HDD)

Now showing off what 24GB of RAM can do!
I was running Aperture, copying over 100GB into a newlibrary to split up my 2014/2015 images by calendar year, and surfing the web.
Lot's of leftover RAM.
Later I'll truly test the RAM by some video processing while also photo imaging.

 

[MadDane]

So, how is the computer now after roughly having owned it for one week? And how does it compare to the old one?

 

[dimme]

Great Post, I am thinking of replacing my 2008 mac pro. The mac pro is still serving me well for my lightroom and photoshop work. I was actually thinking of keeping it and just adding a SSD. As far as replacements go I was thinking of a new (when the come out in early 2016) Mac Book Pro with a 24" Dell w? Premiere color. But my other options are a new mac pro and now the 27" iMac. What worries me about the iMac is the heat, they are very beautiful computers but from what I see they run hot when you encode video with hand break and such. However it is a nice solution to my upgrade dilemma. Ant thoughts

 

[mtbdudex]

Brief update:
1) I love the new iMac, it rocks
2) It's so fast at start up and accessing files, I've got the 3TB Fusion drive. Maybe 10-12 seconds start up? I'll time it
3) 24GB RAM, even with multiple applications open RAM is not used up, so it's not clear to me why people need 32GB or 64GB RAM
4) I'm having issues with my 6TB NAS and Time Machine, so I plan on calling Apple support. I was at the Apple Store yesterday and they advised me such

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Well here's my 1.22TB Initial Time Machine backup over LAN to 6TB NAS Western Digital My Cloud EX2
4 hours left, so about 24 hours total to do a 1.22TB initial back-up

I'm not sure if this is "good" or "bad" or just average.

17-18 MB/s, while a gigabit = 1,000 MB/s, so my performance is slooowww??

The LAN connections maximum speed is 1000 MBit/s, that's acutally just 125 MByte/s what is much slower than USB 3.0 or even Thunderbolt.

Despite that 17-18 MB/s is actually a lot slower than possible. Maybe Time Machine just isn't able to use the full speed, especially for the first backup, because it has to create a completely new "Library" and watches always for changes on your Mac at the same time.

 

[mtbdudex]

Start up speed is 5-7 seconds, hate to use the term "wicked fast", but it sure is!
(bonus points, what Mac did Apple call "wicked fast" in their marketing material? No cheating via Google either, those who have been with Mac's will know this)

I'll do a double test of my pure 256GB SSD 2013 MacBook Retina Pro vs this iMac with it's 3TB Fusion drive, but I consider Start up speed a non-issue, and overall disk access/usage also a non-issue (so far).

This is part of my AppleCare ticket, slow time machine incremental back-up's.
My workflow for image processing is:
-download into Aperture
-do initial viewings, trash the "easy to pick" bad ones immediately
-manual back-up to time machine instantly
-upon back up remove SD card
-format SD card in DSLR, as the images are downloaded and back-up, and I like a freshly formatted SD card ready for next photo shoot session

Prior to using the NAS this method wa sbullet proof, simple and it worked.

However the incremental back-up is taking way too long for nearly every one
Started this one at 6:48am:

Got all this tech errors, back-up not started after 3 minutes, normally it started nearly instantaneous

still preparing

and now shows 2 hours for a small back-up

and still stalled out and 3 hours, I stopped it

Hence AppleCare needs to help me here.....

 

[MadDane]

I am sorry to hear about your Time Machine issues. However, I am sure you are going to find a solution that works. However, I am glad to hear about your overall experience. How is to work on in Aperture compared to the 2009 version?

 

[dimme]

So I am thinking of taking the 27" iMac plunge I am not sure on the video card, do I want the 4GB version? I plan to only have one screen but since I can not upgrade in the future I should go for it, I guess.

 

[mtbdudex]

I am sorry to hear about your Time Machine issues. However, I am sure you are going to find a solution that works. However, I am glad to hear about your overall experience. How is to work on in Aperture compared to the 2009 version?

I've not done some major image dumps and PP yet, so can't say clearly.
Over xmas holiday I'll be doing some camera work and will post then.

Just for referrnce, my work laptop, hooked up to it's LAN gigabit network, gets these data transfer results, 36.2 MB/s , and that's on big network with 1,400 people in the building ...
So expecting those speeds on a small home gigabit network is my baseline

So I am thinking of taking the 27" iMac plunge I am not sure on the video card, do I want the 4GB version? I plan to only have one screen but since I can not upgrade in the future I should go for it, I guess.

This is my 6 year computer, expected to last till 2021, so I went 4GB as future proofing.

 

[MH01]

Bang in a SSD , and replace the SuperDrive in the 2009, and you can get years out of that beast ;p

 

[mtbdudex]

I like your attitude, actually the 2009 is still a good machine, I've relegated that as my kids machine....
My 11 and 13 year old can use it for home work, and of course other "stuff", my 9 year old already likes it for minecraft

btw, I just learned you can edit thread title name, so I corrected the imack to iMac (my fat finger of postr#1)