Youd be surprised. The base retina I,ads i5 will far outperform the i7 from the 2010 iMacs (over 1.5x)
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About to spend £400 on SSD upgrade.. right choice?
- Thread starter alexjholland
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Two weeks ago I performed the surgery on my 27" 2010 iMac i7. I've put in a 1 TB Samsung Evo 850. All with all it took me about two hours as I was pretty unprepaired. It was pretty easy. Put the backup back through time machine, took about 5 hours for 600 GB over USB 2.
Anyhow, I think it's definately worth it, no more beachballs and very responsive and fast startups. It even helped perform my games better. But keep in mind, the GPU is the bottleneck.
Ps, I've paid about €330 for the Evo and €28 incl shipping for the OWC upgrade kit.
Great. I'm still using the same software I was when I bought my iMac (albeit Ableton 9, instead of Ableton 8) and am editing video footage with Final Cut Pro X, which came out.. what.. two years after my iMac was the fastest you could buy?
Thusly, I'm really not sure what anyone thinks my GPU is being asked to do today, which is radically different to what it was asked to do when I purchased it, around five years ago. I don't play any games; although if I did, it'd more likely be point and clicks, rather than first person shooters.
I reckon I'll buy the 1Tb Evo 850, for sure and will pay them to fit it for me. I see no reason why I can't continue using Ableton, Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Creative Suite for several more years on this machine, with a new hard drive?
If you don't do anything GPU heavy, there's no need to upgrade the GPU. It's the one part I haven't upgraded in my iMac.
Yeah, same for the processor. I can't think of anything I do today which will cause my GPU or processor any more stress than when I first bought it, five years ago.
Adobe Live has moved from version 8 to 9
Final Cut Pro has transitioned to the new 'X' version
Adobe Creative Suite has gone from.. what.. version 5 to 6?
I upgraded the CPU on mine, but it's fairly major surgery, so you need to be pretty confident in doing so. Unless you really need it, there isn't much point paying to go from an old i5 to an old i7.
Some people in this thread think I should save the £300-£400, add in another £1,500 and spend £2,000 to buy a new iMac, with the same 1Tb SSD, the same 12GB RAM, a shinier screen and an admittedly faster processor, to run software that has evolved slightly since my i7 processor was made.
I am still trying to understand why spending £1,500 more, to get a shinier screen and a new processor is 'a good idea'.
Go with your instincts mate. Opinions on here are just that - opinions, and quite often not a lot of facts. ;o)
The screen is a massive leap forward. Honestly, once you use a retina screen the old ones looks so pixellated.
Selling yours for £500 and spending £1100 will get you an i5 27" retina with 2Tb Fusion.
The architecture of the system as a whole is 5 years more advanced as well. You're not just buying a new processor in isolation. Yes your machine is capable, but it's like saying you don't see the need to spend £700 on an iPhone 6 when your iPhone 3G works fine.
Until you have a go on your mate's 6
Selling yours for £500 and spending £1100 will get you an i5 27" retina with 2Tb Fusion.
The architecture of the system as a whole is 5 years more advanced as well. You're not just buying a new processor in isolation. Yes your machine is capable, but it's like saying you don't see the need to spend £700 on an iPhone 6 when your iPhone 3G works fine.
Until you have a go on your mate's 6
Alex, go for it! Due to the ssd the iMac even runs cooler then with the HD. I've only run a few games at full brightness, but the cpu and gpu only get about 65 degrees celsius at most, while they used to top 85 degrees. This is also because I blew out the 5 year old dust build-up. Also let them clean between the glass and the screen, dust also builds up between it. Goodluck and enjoy your fast machine. You"ll only wonder why you haven't done this before!
Well, seeing as he was planning on spending £400 anyway, he'd actually only be spending £700 more to get the latest and greatest.
Although I'm not convinced upgrading to the latest iMac is the way to go, I also think £400 is too much to spend on such an old mac.
Ok, I just got a 960Gb SSD for £149!
http://www.ebuyer.com/665518-sandisk-960gb-ultra-ii-sataiii-2-5inch-ssd-sdssdhii-960g-g25
It'll cost me £100 for an install, total cost £249 for just under 1Tb SSD.
And I'll keep the disc drive inside, just for storing my GoPro footage on.
Better?
http://www.ebuyer.com/665518-sandisk-960gb-ultra-ii-sataiii-2-5inch-ssd-sdssdhii-960g-g25
It'll cost me £100 for an install, total cost £249 for just under 1Tb SSD.
And I'll keep the disc drive inside, just for storing my GoPro footage on.
Better?
I'm not sure I would have gone for a sandisk myself, but I'm sure it'll be fine and the price is very good.
Spending £100 to get it installed is money well spent I think. I'd still seriously consider replacing the 1TB with a 4TB since they'll be opening it up anyway. That way you can get rid of one of the external drives and also recoup the cost. You'd also be replacing an old drive with a newer faster one and have less chance of a drive failure.
I hear what you're saying.. I think a key consideration is that straight away it requires a copy of the fanspeed program, as taking out the original disk loses the built-in fan control facility.
It
Additionally, I don't really need more than 1Tb internally, as it simply holds GoPro footage from my holidays.
So I'm then paying for a internal new drive, for the fan software (which is better, or worse than the inbuilt fan controls?) and make data migration more complicated than the simple carbon copy and wipe I can do by just adding in a new 1Tb drive, to gain extra space and freshness on a drive which will simply be a repository for GoPro footage.
Do critique if you think I'm missing a trick here though!
Hefty price, but i paid around 250€ ~three years ago for putting a SSD in my old 2010 iMac. There's enough room for keeping the spinner as a second internal drive. The speed difference is WOOOOAH 
Never again a spinner! But keep in mind that the 2010 iMac only have a SATA II Interface which is limited to max 300MB/s. So you can buy a cheeper SSD, maybe Sandisk or Crucial.
Never again a spinner! But keep in mind that the 2010 iMac only have a SATA II Interface which is limited to max 300MB/s. So you can buy a cheeper SSD, maybe Sandisk or Crucial.I'm not sure there are fan issues with swapping the drive? The only issue I'm aware of is that if the temperature sensor is not reattached correctly, then the fan will keep spinning. In which case you would then have to reattach it correctly or get some fan monitoring software. You'd think that the installation guys should be able to get this right though...
Data migration wouldn't be an issue at all? I presume you are doing a straight copy of everything on your 1TB spinner to the 1TB SSD. Once that happens, you don't need anything on the 1TB spinner at all. So that gets replaced by a fresh 4TB spinner. You then copy everything from the external 4TB, and gopro stuff and movies to the new internal 4TB. Now you can get rid of either of the external drives (I suggest ridding the 2TB and keep the 4TB for time machine).
So you are paying (not a lot more) for having all your external data consolidated with the go pro stuff onto a single faster and fresher internal drive compared to both your old spinner and external 4tb. If you sell your 1TB and 2TB spinners, the total cost would probably be less than £50.
I get around 260 MB/s read and 250 MB/s write with the 850 evo in my 2010 iMacHefty price, but i paid around 250€ ~three years ago for putting a SSD in my old 2010 iMac. There's enough room for keeping the spinner as a second internal drive. The speed difference is WOOOOAH
I highly doubt that, a base retina with a 1tb HDD will be even slower. Data storage is often the slowest part of any system, far slower than the processor, RAM, or GPU.
http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/ssd-throughput-latency-iopsexplained/
It's not a good idea. If you want to get a 1TB iMac you'll have to spend over 3k. The 1TB SSD upgrade to your existing machine is a fantastic idea. Also keep in mind if you're ever going to upgrade to another machine, you can always pull out the SSD and use it in an external USB enclosure http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FCLG65U?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00 as an additional 1TB SSD to whatever machine you end up getting.
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