Anyone actually happy with their iMac 5K ?

[uller6]

Mine's great

Motivation: I switched from a combination of maxed out 2013 rMBP + 27" Cinema display because of the system instability: constant crashes, freezes, and generally wonky behavior. I couldn't take it anymore, so I sold the rMBP. I'm an engineering grad student writing my thesis, so I run my computers pretty hard. If I could afford the top of the line retina machine I would have sprung, but instead I purchased the base model and then added another 16 Gb of Crucial RAM for a total of 24 Gb. The 5k iMac is incredibly awesome. Here's my summary:

Screen: Right now I have the 5k hooked up to the old 27" cinema display, and the difference is striking. I only use the cinema display for movies now, while I do all reading, writing, and most of the data analysis on the 5k screen. I have negligible backlight bleed (the cinema display is worse, but still not bad), and the color uniformity and brightness are excellent. No ghosting or image retention.

Storage: The only thing I wished I'd done differently is to get the SSD-only model, since the fusion drive can be slow at times, for example when copying large (20 Gb) files on disk. But since I went with the fusion once the warranty expires I'll just swap out the original fusion drive for a 512 SSD boot drive and an 8T internal data drive.

CPU/Video Processing: The radeon 290 is good enough for me, but I don't play crysis nor do I video edit. The 290 gets the job done without lag or stutter. At night, I'm also a musician who records in 16 channel live sessions using Logic Pro, and the 5k iMac has yet to break a sweat. Most of what I do is single-thread limited, so I don't mind not having hyper threading, and I certainly don't regret saving the money I would have spent on i7 and R295 upgrades. That being said, I may swap out the CPU in a few years for the i7 to get the extra MHz and extra cores, but the iMac is perfectly fine as it is now.

Heat/Noise: The machine is always cool to the touch. The whirring hard drive is louder than the fan when I'm working unless I'm pushing the machine pretty hard. The i5 CPU will run 100% of all 4 cores at turbo boost (3.8 GHz) for days at a time, and the fan only spins up to ~1200 rpm. While I can now hear the fan over the hard drive, the 5K iMac is still faster and quieter than my old rMBP.

tldr: sweet. get one, preferably with SSD; you'll love it.

 

[SD-B]

ONLY problem I am having is with Mail but its not to do with the 5K Retina but Yosemite.

I have a LOT of email addressess and it doesn't seem to want to hold all the passwords and servers for each one.
Ive had to delete some addresses, such as 3 into one ( for b business) which really wasn't a hardship. it was laziness that got me quite as many as i had but suffice to say, I am still having a few issues with it but again, its not the machine but i suspect Yosemite, and/or having something to do with gmail as I haven't yet noticed it happening with other accounts.


The second problem now that i think of it is that i still have not been able to prevent my computer from asking me for a password when I turn it on. I prefer it just turns on and bypasses that. I do remember looking up a fix for it but it didn't work.
I haven't had time to delve into it but again, thats not the fault of the 5k.

I cant imagine how anyone could NOT be happy with this machine?
Its awesome...


I noticed some refurbs last week up for sale, according to an email I got from some refurb spot I must have asked at some point to send me notification of 5k refurbs but when I got there, they were all sold. $400 less if true, not that i was looking as I got mine at Boxing day for $200 off

Don't forget to configure yours with a 256 GB SSD instead of Fusion drive.

I bought mine with Fusion drive. perhaps because i have not yet used SSD i don't know what i am missing but this is so super fast I really cant imagine why i would need it to be faster


I can edit a movie in 5 min that takes me about 45 on my late 2011 MBP---I am about to install an SSD drive I bought at Xmas into that MBP. Haven't yet and maybe then I will understand the fascination with them but for now, I am one very happy Fusion drive buyer

 

[siddhartha]

Random reboots are never, ever, ever acceptable. I still suspect your RAM is the issue. I recommend removing the RAM for a while and seeing if the issue persists. Sometimes even RAM tests won't even find bad RAM, if you've tried that.

I have done this.

The problem seems to go hand in hand with my USB3 hub, and also the ESATA adapter for my 3 external drives. When the hub is disconnected, and the drives plugged into USB->USB it's fine.

This configuration (without the USB3 hub-had a USB2 hub on my 2011) was stable on the 2011 iMac.

That's what I mean by a bit "finicky."

One day I'm off I will torture-test the riMac to try and absolutely pinpoint the problem.

Thanks guys for trying to figure it out!

 

[Remrod]

To sum my current experience with the 5k iMac = IT IS SUPER!

I'm really happy with this baby. I have nothing to complain and I am so glad I bought this machine. Doing Lightroom (with my NEX-7) and some Video Editing with the GoPro-Suite is fabulous.

 

[aevan]

I bought mine with Fusion drive. perhaps because i have not yet used SSD i don't know what i am missing but this is so super fast I really cant imagine why i would need it to be faster

For some reason people here consider Fusion Drive slow. I have the Fusion Drive, and also I have a Samsung 700/700 PCIe 512Gb SSD in my MacBook Pro Retina, and I don't see much difference between the two. The system boots almost as fast, Photoshop starts equally fast, and it's not loud either. It is as if some people think that waiting a second longer for an app that's not used often somehow ruins the entire experience. The OS is always on the SSD part, and that SSD part is a PCIe SSD that runs quite fast. And most of the apps are on SSD too, especially those that you use often. That's the important part. Personally, I don't see much of a difference. I prefer the FD to the 256Gb SSD option because I can easily make a 150Gb bootcamp partition on this one. Granted, the speed on the bootcamp drive is HDD speed, but even that's not that bad, really. I'm really satisfied with the FD, it's my first drive of that type and it exceeded my expectations.

 

[steve62388]

For some reason people here consider Fusion Drive slow. I have the Fusion Drive, and also I have a Samsung 700/700 PCIe 512Gb SSD in my MacBook Pro Retina, and I don't see much difference between the two. The system boots almost as fast, Photoshop starts equally fast, and it's not loud either. It is as if some people think that waiting a second longer for an app that's not used often somehow ruins the entire experience. The OS is always on the SSD part, and that SSD part is a PCIe SSD that runs quite fast. And most of the apps are on SSD too, especially those that you use often. That's the important part. Personally, I don't see much of a difference. I prefer the FD to the 256Gb SSD option because I can easily make a 150Gb bootcamp partition on this one. Granted, the speed on the bootcamp drive is HDD speed, but even that's not that bad, really. I'm really satisfied with the FD, it's my first drive of that type and it exceeded my expectations.

I'm not sure people consider a Fusion drive slow, it's just most extol the virtues of SSD. And technically they are right, it is faster, it is quieter, it runs cooler, and they are more reliable., it'ssalso theefuture. But that assumes cost, capacity and convenience are never a factor. A Fusion drive is the best example on the market of a compromise between speed, capacity and cost.

I recently bought an iMac and had to weigh the pros and cons of SSD vs Fusion. Fusion would get me much more capacity without having the additional expense and inconvenience of an external drive. In the end I did plump for a SSD with an external Thunderbolt drive, but boy did I have to pay for it.

It's nice to have the choice knowing that a Fusion drive is best in class.

 

[aevan]

I recently bought an iMac and had to weigh the pros and cons of SSD vs Fusion. Fusion would get me much more capacity without having the additional expense and inconvenience of an external drive. In the end I did plump for a SSD with an external Thunderbolt drive, but boy did I have to pay for it.

It's nice to have the choice knowing that a Fusion drive is best in class.

I agree. However, the things I read here - I don't think they weigh the pros and cons, at least some of them don't because they act as if price is not a factor. Of course 1Tb SSD is better than a Fusion Drive, it is also much, much more expensive. People also throw in comments like "My iMac is fast ALTHOUGH it has a Fusion Drive" (as if it's expected to be slow with a FD) etc.

Anyway, you made a good choice, SSD + external drive is a nice combination.

 

[kis]

I agree. However, the things I read here - I don't think they weigh the pros and cons, at least some of them don't because they act as if price is not a factor. Of course 1Tb SSD is better than a Fusion Drive, it is also much, much more expensive. People also throw in comments like "My iMac is fast ALTHOUGH it has a Fusion Drive" (as if it's expected to be slow with a FD) etc.



Anyway, you made a good choice, SSD + external drive is a nice combination.

Fusion drives are fast as long as the part of the software you're loading sits on the SSD part of it. Normally, most apps are on that part. They get slow once the HDD part is accessed, which happens when you, say load your Lightroom library. At the same time, most people won't have larger LR libraries on internal drives anyway, and external SSD arrays are still insanely expensive, so the speed difference will actually be small. Fusion drives are great. They cost a lot less than SSDs and offer similar performance in many everyday situations.

They have downsides, however:

- they spin. Spinning CAN create noise and vibrations. I happen to have a very quiet one right now, which isn't any louder than the fan in my iMac. But I've definitely had my fair share of noisy hard drives in the past and that always was a pain in the butt

- SSDs tend to live much longer and are not susceptible to damage. If you move your iMac while the drive is accessed, this can break your HD.

- fusion drive are a combination of two different drive types, held together by clever software and hardware. If either one of those fails or has a bug, you may lose your data.

So if you, like me, choose a FD, make sure to:

- get Apple Care
- back up your data

And enjoy!

 

[senseless]

I'm coming back to this thread after some more experience to report. I was editing an hour long HD video and I did have some trouble. There were times when the preview video was seriously choppy or stalled while the external thunderbolt drive was accessing the clips. Since I have 24 megs of ram, I hoped all the video could load into memory, but it appears to still need to run the disk. It appears to be more of an issue for longer clips. (I have the base model retina; probably not ideal)

There might be some settings I need to change to have Final Cut X run more smoothly.

 

[driftless]

Did you happen to look at your activity monitor during your issue? There are some know software issues with the 5K and FCPX this sounds very similar.

 

[senseless]

Did you happen to look at your activity monitor during your issue? There are some know software issues with the 5K and FCPX this sounds very similar.

Resizing the timeline seems to be bring the most lag, so I tried that. Activity monitor shows FCX will spike to 50% cpu usage and 6MB disk, but memory use never goes over 1GB leaving most of the 24GB machine memory free. Why aren't more of these tasks in memory?

 

[Frits48]

As replied in a parallel thread on the subject: I am not a gamer but a fairly intensive user (read: NOT an intensive TESTER).
My computer is mainly for high-level photography and the usual business applications.
My RiMac (i7, 24GB, 4G graphics, 1TB Fusion (plus a number of ext drives) is the very best computer I ever had by a mile.
(upgraded from high-end recent iMac and high-end PC's before that)

 

[senseless]

Continuing the Final Cut X thread (with Retina iMac), I was not getting Ram usage above 1 GB, causing slow downs drawing clip thumbnails, etc. I trashed the 3 final cut X prefs, logged out, shut down and restarted.

Now, Activity monitor shows 2.5GB of memory usage by FCPX, which goes up as I scroll through panes of clips and the timeline. Once FCPX "sees" the clips once, it is now in memory and does not have to run the disk over and over, which resulted in slow performance.

So trashing the prefs seems to have solved my problem. Resizing the timeline will require FCPX to reload the thumbnails all over again, so I'm trying to avoid that. Thanks for the tip on the activity monitor!

 

[macmee]

I can't see how anyone is having a bad experience with it, it's perfect!

 

[driftless]

The FCPX issues may deserve a thread of their own. I am going to be filming later in the week and I will see if I can replicate the issues.

 

[Johnf1285]

Is anyone noticing image retention at all?

I am really looking to upgrade to a retina iMac toward the end of this year or whenever the next generation comes out, but I am a bit hesitant as my 27" 2013 model is starting to show image retention.

It really stinks when I am working for a few hours and then close all my windows and notice the image retention against the desktop background image. I do understand that this is a byproduct of IPS monitors, but I feel like it seems more prevalent on the 2012 and newer iMacs (courtesy of these sub par LG displays).

 

[WilliamG]

Is anyone noticing image retention at all?

I am really looking to upgrade to a retina iMac toward the end of this year or whenever the next generation comes out, but I am a bit hesitant as my 27" 2013 model is starting to show image retention.

It really stinks when I am working for a few hours and then close all my windows and notice the image retention against the desktop background image. I do understand that this is a byproduct of IPS monitors, but I feel like it seems more prevalent on the 2012 and newer iMacs (courtesy of these sub par LG displays).

No IR yet on my launch-month unit. To be fair, my 2012 iMac only starting showing IR after just under 2 years, so..., it can take a while to show up. Who knows if/when these new 5K panels will show similar issues.

 

[driftless]

None for me as well.

 

[schbrobro08]

A little disappointed...

My upgraded 27" 5k Imac( with i7, M295X, 3 TB fusion, currently only 8 Gb's of ram for now) arrived last Friday and I've been somewhat disappointed. A little bit of background. I've been using an upgraded 2012 27" Imac(3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB, 16 Gig ram, and 1 TB Fusion Drive) and have absolutely loved the machine. I love new technology(That 5k screen...) and was able to hold off on getting the 5k imac until now.

I do a lot of video editing and I'm surprised at a few things. When I open up final cut or after effects I see the spinning beach ball quite a bit. I don't recall ever seeing this on my 2012 machine. Also, that fan...it comes on quite a bit. I was just surfing the web and watching a youtube video and the fan overpowers the volume depending on the level. I still am waiting for an extra 16 Gigs of crucial ram to arrive but its still alarming this new machine can't handle simple tasks without small hiccups. I'm assuming the 5k screen means you have to make a few sacrifices.

These complaints may sound a little nit picky but I just dropped $3300 on this imac and am in the process of selling my 2012 for $1500 but I've held off until I've decided if I'm going to keep the 5k Imac or not. Has anybody else experienced any similar annoyances?

I will wait until the ram arrives to fully test this out but for now I'm leaning on returning the 5k and keeping my 2012 until the second gen 5k imac launches this fall.

 

[Johnf1285]

No IR yet on my launch-month unit. To be fair, my 2012 iMac only starting showing IR after just under 2 years, so..., it can take a while to show up. Who knows if/when these new 5K panels will show similar issues.

Interesting time frame...

My iMac was purchased as soon as the 2013's were available for order. The screen has been replaced 2 times now. The first screen had this odd windswept looking dust/smudge develop in the bottom left and bottom right corners which I noticed in May of 2014. It was replaced with a screen that managed to get a finger print laminated between the glass and the panel itself. I noticed that flaw about a month into the just then replaced screen. This current one seems to have neither of those issues, but suffers from IR and a nasty case of "dirty screen effect" (where the diffuser layer isn't 100% flat - its most apparent when dragging a white window around, you can notice some areas are more uniform than others - all LED IPS panels have this )

So this is screen number 3 which was replaced in July 2014. I just began noticing the IR 2 weeks ago. I've never noticed it before and over and I usually try and stop myself from going out and looking for problems if that makes sense.

 

[redheeler]

No IR yet on my launch-month unit. To be fair, my 2012 iMac only starting showing IR after just under 2 years, so..., it can take a while to show up. Who knows if/when these new 5K panels will show similar issues.

Interesting how when the iFixit teardown showed an LG panel worries of image retention peaked. No image retention on my launch-week unit so far, unlike my 2012 rMBP which had it on day 1.

 

[Cape Dave]

Go all SSD. Fusion sucks hard. You will never look back. Fantastic computer. And this coming from someone who has never bought a 1.0 of anything AND was never ever ever going to buy an all in one!

I rolled the ice and came up a HUGE winner! Great job Apple!

Get one! Love it! I sure do.

 

[aevan]

Go all SSD. Fusion sucks hard.
Get one! Love it! I sure do.

You must've seen some broken Fusion Drives, because mine is awesome.

 

[redheeler]

You must've seen some broken Fusion Drives, because mine is awesome.

The sacrifice for me wasn't worth it because I much prefer a faster 256/512 GB SSD and easy to replace external HDD storage to a slower 128 GB SSD and hard to replace internal HDD storage which also adds heat and noise to my iMac.

If the sacrifice was worth it to you, that's fine with me.

 

[Alesc]

Go all SSD. Fusion sucks hard.
[...]

The sacrifice for me wasn't worth it because I much prefer a faster 256/512 GB SSD and easy to replace external HDD storage to a slower 128 GB SSD and hard to replace internal HDD storage which also adds heat and noise to my iMac.

If the sacrifice was worth it to you, that's fine with me.

All have been said about this topic many many times, here for example.
Fast external sorage is much more expensive than the Fusion Drive option... And I don't wan't my datas on an affordable but slow and noisy USB 3 spinner.
The noise and heat of the FD is a myth: the fan of my iMac is the only sound I can hear, I can't hear the drive inside my Mac. Concerning the heat, a HDD burns 8W, nothing compared to the 85W of the CPU or the +100W of the GPU...
FD is a good compromise for some people, coma. You prefer pure SSD? OK, but stop saying FD is lame, it is not true.