Another Buying an iMac - but Which One?

[wacomme]

I have no special needs. I use the basic MS Office Suite, internet surf (lots of tabs stay open), email, and a few other specialty apps. But I want a speedy machine. I'll get third party ram to bump it up to 40GB.

Thinking:

3.7 i5
1TB SSD (I'm sure I can get by with 512, but I like the convenience of 1TB) - but maybe there's a better option.
Standard Graphics - not the Vega.

Is there any good reason to go with the i9 or the Vega graphics?

My last imac was a 2011 until it died - now using an aging 2012 MacBook Pro, but want faster.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Michael

 

[wacomme]

Other than a speed bump, is there any advantage of the 3.7GHz i5 over the 3 or 3.1GHz versions?

 

[aman88]

I have a basic office use and got the 27 inch 3.0 with the 570x, 512 ssd ... I added 16 gb of ram myself and have an external 1 tb hdd. It does everything I need... I could have dropped an extra $750+ and gotten the i9 with the Vega, but I really never would have used that...

 

[Fishrrman]

40gb of RAM makes no sense at all for the use case you describe.

16gb will be "all you need".

And if your use case ever changes, you can add more later.

 

[wardie]

40gb of RAM makes no sense at all for the use case you describe.

16gb will be "all you need".

And if your use case ever changes, you can add more later.

I got 2x8GB to add into mine which gives a nice roomy 24GB for relatively cheap memory sticks. And that’s running Lightroom plus virtual machines together. If you need more in future take out the original ones and add in another 2x8GB or 2x16GB.

 

[spiderpumpkin]

Another option is to buy the 2x4GB sticks of RAM someone took out of their 2019 iMac. I bought such a pair of RAM on eBay for $19 shipped giving me 4x4GB.

 

[alisalem]

i5 + 580X is a lot more than you need actually. I wouldn't even bother spending extra $$ on a 1TB SSD. An external HDD is a lot cheaper and will give you tons of storage. 40GB RAM is beyond overkill for browsing the web and using Office. 16GB should be plenty for years to come.

What spiderpumpkin suggested is a great idea about buying someone's 2x4GB stock RAM.