Advice on Buying an Old iMac and Upgrading It

[SlmnB]

Hey guys,

I've never used an iMac before. I now want to buy an iMac as I broke my Windows laptop's screen a few days ago.

I'm a social media marketer. So I can't work without a pc or laptop. I mainly use Chrome browser with quite a few extensions and at least 10 tabs open at the same time. Plus I, sometimes, use Photoshop CS 6 for basic photo editing.

I expect speed and reliability from a computer. A friend of mine suggested me to go for a cheap imac mid 2011 27 inches, as it's the last imac that can be upgraded, and upgrade it step by step starting with changing the ram and hard disk.
I have a limited budget, £400, for purchasing a computer and Upgrading it.

My questions are;

- Is that true that the mid 2011 is the last iMac that can be upgraded?

- I have no technical knowledge. I watched a few videos on how to upgrade the hardware. It mainly seems like it is doable and I feel confident that I can do it myself but can I really do it? How difficult to do these tasks on my own considering I have no technical knowledge?

- Should I spend my time trying to upgrade a fairly old imac or go for a newer Windows pc or laptop?

- After upgrading it, would it give me the speed and reliability that I want?

Here's an iMac that I found on eBay;
Brand - Apple iMac
Screen Size - 27 Inch
Year - Mid 2011
Colour - Silver
Processor - Intel Core i7
Processor Speed - 3.4 GHz
Core - 4
Memory - 16GB
HDD/SSD - 1TB SATA DISK
Operating system - High Sierra
Graphics/Chipset Model - AMD Radeon HD 6970M

 

[dave255]

Hi I have a 2011 i7 imac and I still find it's a great machine.
Ram upgrades is easy i've put in 32GB (just a few screws to remove a panel at the bottom of the screen to access the ram slots). For HDD you can open up the machine but there is quite a bit involved in that so I decided not to myself. I just run everything off an external Thunderbolt 2 SSD Drive. Newer iMacs (27" models at least) you can upgrade the ram I believe

 

[zalle]

Hi,

I use 2013 iMac, (USB3) and run everything off external USB SSD. Only the thin models (2012 onwards, I believe) have USB3. You can upgrade the RAM on later models, same as before.
Maybe the OP is talking about the 21" versions, where you cannot change RAM.