Are SSD's in iMac overrated? (Seriously...)

[dizmonk]

So as I mentioned in another post, I've got a Late 2013 iMac that's probably on it's last legs. I know the Fusion drive is slower and I know SSDs supposedly last longer but I get the feeling that SSD's are overhyped. I'm consider getting a 2017 with a Fusion drive for $1000 cheaper than a 2020 with an SSD.

I have a 2016 MBP with 512SSD. Although obviously it's faster than a hard drive or fusion drive would be, I'm not convinced that there is this blazing difference.

Are the SSD's in the iMacs different than the SSD's in MBP? Thanks. I'm really trying to decide if a 2020 iMac is really worth a $1000 more than a 2017, given how long my 2013 has lasted.

 

[r6mile]

The difference between a hard drive and either a fusion or SSD is night and day, especially with recent versions of macos which are unusable with a spinner. The difference between a SSD and a Fusion, for normal use - as long as your Fusion has the 128GB SSD, not the ridiculous 32GB like more recent ones - is more marginal I'd say. There is also the issue of reliability - if either your spinner or the SSD fails, you lose all your data. But of course you can always split your fusion drive manually into an SSD to use as a boot drive and for frequently used apps, and the HDD for everything else.

If the price difference is very large, that's what I'd do. Of course that doesn't take into account any of the other improvements between the 2020 and 2017 iMacs - whether those are worth the cost reslly depends on your needs.

 

[Juicy Box]

but I get the feeling that SSD's are overhyped

This mostly depends on what the Mac is being utilized for and what OS the Mac is running. What do you do with your Mac?

On older OS versions, there wouldn't be too much of the difference between a Fusion Drive and a SSD, depending on what you do.

The problem is APFS on HDDs and Fusion Drives, and this problem has only gotten worse with Catalina. Much worse.

I'm consider getting a 2017 with a Fusion drive for $1000 cheaper than a 2020 with an SSD.

You can always save even more by getting an external SSD. In most cases, a lot more.

Actually, you could get a 1TB SATA SSD and a USB3 enclosure for less than $100 in the US. If the drive is the bottleneck for your 2013 iMac, you could always try an external drive. When you decide to buy a new Mac, take the external drive with you to the new Mac.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

So as I mentioned in another post, I've got a Late 2013 iMac that's probably on it's last legs. I know the Fusion drive is slower and I know SSDs supposedly last longer but I get the feeling that SSD's are overhyped. I'm consider getting a 2017 with a Fusion drive for $1000 cheaper than a 2020 with an SSD.

I have a 2016 MBP with 512SSD. Although obviously it's faster than a hard drive or fusion drive would be, I'm not convinced that there is this blazing difference.

Are the SSD's in the iMacs different than the SSD's in MBP? Thanks. I'm really trying to decide if a 2020 iMac is really worth a $1000 more than a 2017, given how long my 2013 has lasted.

Max out the RAM on your iMac, and spare half of it for a RAM disk, and install OS/aps onto the RAM disk.
RAM disk beat any SSD on speed easily, no matter nvme or SATA.
The cons:
RAM is much more expensive than SSD
RAM disk volume is limited to the max volume of RAM your iMac has.

 

[r6mile]

Max out the RAM on your iMac, and spare half of it for a RAM disk, and install OS/aps onto the RAM disk.
RAM disk beat any SSD on speed easily, no matter nvme or SATA.
The cons:
RAM is much more expensive than SSD
RAM disk volume is limited to the max volume of RAM your iMac has.

Ehm.. you definitely can't install an OS into a RAM disk! As it's volatile memory that deletes itself every time the computer is rebooted.

 

[Pakaku]

The difference between a SSD and a HDD is massive. As for differences between different SSDs, I honestly don't know if I can tell the difference day-to-day.

Max out the RAM on your iMac, and spare half of it for a RAM disk, and install OS/aps onto the RAM disk.
RAM disk beat any SSD on speed easily, no matter nvme or SATA.
The cons:
RAM is much more expensive than SSD
RAM disk volume is limited to the max volume of RAM your iMac has.

I've never heard of a RAM disk, let alone being used as a boot OS. I'd love to hear or see an example of how exactly anyone managed to accomplish that

 

[barnyard]

SSD is infinitely better than fusion drive. I would never recommend that anybody buy a fusion drive ever.

 

[Juicy Box]

I've never heard of a RAM disk

They have been around forever. I used to use RAM disks back in the 90's.

In pre-OSX days, creating a RAM disk was actually a part of the Mac OS. HDDs were super slow, and having a RAM disk was a way to get around the HDD bottleneck when one needed.

For OSX (and I assume Big Sur as well), you can use third-party apps to create a RAM disk or use terminal to create one. With today's RAM, a modern RAM disk would be crazy fast and run circles around even the fastest Mac SSDs. Probably 10,000MBps or faster for the newer Macs.

As for uses, most people use them as a scratch disk. RAM disks are inherently temporary, as the data would be lost on shutdown or restart, so it couldn't be used for long term storage.

It does well if one is working on a project that would benefit with disk speed. You would save the project elsewhere on long term storage, but copy it over to the RAM disk while working on it.

With the rise of faster HDDs and now SSDs, there isn't really a need for RAM disks for most people. Although, I am sure if the RAM disk GUI made it into OSX, people would use them.

let alone being used as a boot OS

I am unsure how this would work as your main OS. I bet this could work with virtual machines though.

 

[Juicy Box]

For reference for people that haven't ever heard of or never used a RAM disk, I quickly set a RAM disk up on the Mac I was typing my last post from, a 17" Late 2011 MBP.

I ran BMDST on the RAM disk, set at 3GB stress, and the speed were crazy high @3000MBps for this old Mac:


I suspect a Mac from the current line up could probably get well over 10GBps.

you definitely can't install an OS into a RAM disk!

I wouldn't say that one "definitely" couldn't install an OS onto a RAM disk, as I think my example of virtual machines may end up working with a RAM disk (I don't see why it wouldn't).

 

[jahala]

Years ago, I built a linux laptop that created a RAM disk as part of the boot process, copied the OS and applications from the hard drive to the RAM disk, then booted up to the OS on the RAM disk. It took about 5 minutes to boot, but everything ran wickedly fast once it booted. Since RAM is volatile, it was CRITICAL to make sure I shut it down properly before it ran out of power because the shutdown process synced all the programs and data back to the hard drive.

I use a MacBook Pro and the SSDs are so fast that I have not really thought about that laptop for a while. It may be possible to customize one of the alternate boot loaders to do something similar with MacOS. I would definitely try to set up a virtual machine using a RAM disk for a hard drive before attempting it, though. It would be fun to see what difference the RAM disk makes for a virtual machine.

 

[cyberstudio]

My 2013 has 16G RAM, 128G SSD and 1T HDD, and if you do the math, the SSD is exactly 8 times more than RAM and the HDD is exactly 8 times more than the SSD. IMO this is excellent balance. Any modern computer from the last few years is going to blow it away in speed. Today, Fusion is a lost cause because SSDs have become so affordable. But for a 7 year old computer it is still very serviceable. Will your "working set" exceed 128G? If not this is just every bit as good as a real SSD. It won't do molecular biology or video editing, but I did coding on it just fine.

 

[tyc0746]

For reference for people that haven't ever heard of or never used a RAM disk, I quickly set a RAM disk up on the Mac I was typing my last post from, a 17" Late 2011 MBP.

I ran BMDST on the RAM disk, set at 3GB stress, and the speed were crazy high @3000MBps for this old Mac:
View attachment 975838

I suspect a Mac from the current line up could probably get well over 10GBps.


I wouldn't say that one "definitely" couldn't install an OS onto a RAM disk, as I think my example of virtual machines may end up working with a RAM disk (I don't see why it wouldn't).

Mine from a late 2014 iMac 5k...

...will do one from a 2019 model when I've switched from W10 Bootcamp.

In both cases it's about twice the speed of the internal SSDs - but I wouldn't want to rely on it for anything critical.

 

[theSeb]

I consider it masochistic to still be using a mechanical HDD. I don't know how people can do it to themselves. But if you are happy OP, then you are happy.

 

[tyc0746]

I consider it masochistic to still be a using a mechanical HDD. I don't know how people can do it to themselves. But if you are happy OP, then you are happy.

I also find it strange when people claim their dosdude-patched 2010 Mac (with HDDs) is still as fast as their 2020 Mac with SSD - even in games

 

[dizmonk]

How much different are the SSD's in iMacs vs. the SSDs' in MacBook Pros?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I also find it strange when people claim their dosdude-patched 2010 Mac (with HDDs) is still as fast as their 2020 Mac with SSD - even in games

If they play Solitaire, then why not?

 

[theSeb]

I am not referring to the RAM disk blackamgic results above, but I do wonder if the problem is that people see these amazing Blackmagic results and they just get better and better with each new model and expect to see massive improvemwents.

The reality is that to the casual user the biggest difference will be moving from a mechanical HDD to just a plain old SATA SSD. Beyond that NVME PCie 3 or PCIe 4 drives won't be noticeable. This test has been done many times. In general use and even for gaming tech savvy people could not tell apart SATA, PCIe 3 and PCIe 4 equipped machines, which were otherwise identical. Everyone can tell the machine with a mechanical HDD though.

The reality is that Blackmagic results show you sequential read and write speeds when dealing with large files. If that's what you do all day, then you will benefit greatly. Most people do not though. As an example try to copy thousands of 10 KB files which equate to 6 GBs vs copying one 6 GBs file.

There is another thing here... when you are just using your computer your drive is mostly doing random reads and writes...

So, are SSDs overrated compared to mechanical drives? No. Are the potential performance increases between using a even a "slow" old SATA SSD vs the latest and greatest PCie 4 NVME super duper SSD worth it to everyone? No. Therefore you could indeed say that the latest SSDs are a bit overhyped to the average user, depending on what they use their computer for.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I know SSDs supposedly last longer but I get the feeling that SSD's are overhyped. I'm consider getting a 2017 with a Fusion drive for $1000 cheaper than a 2020 with an SSD."

The importance of having an SSD in a new Mac CANNOT be "overhyped".

The WORST BUYING MISTAKE you can make at this point would be to purchase a new iMac with only a fusion drive inside.

If you can't afford a new 2020 iMac, I suggest you look for an Apple-refurbished 2019 iMac with an SSD inside. These appear regularly on Apple's refurbished site. You have to keep your eyes open and be ready to buy when one appears, because they don't last very long.

I would ABSOLUTELY choose a "slightly-lesser-equipped" iMac WITH an SSD, than a "higher-equipped" model (CPU, GPU, etc.) with a fusion drive.

 

[dizmonk]

OP wrote:
"I know SSDs supposedly last longer but I get the feeling that SSD's are overhyped. I'm consider getting a 2017 with a Fusion drive for $1000 cheaper than a 2020 with an SSD."

The importance of having an SSD in a new Mac CANNOT be "overhyped".

The WORST BUYING MISTAKE you can make at this point would be to purchase a new iMac with only a fusion drive inside.

If you can't afford a new 2020 iMac, I suggest you look for an Apple-refurbished 2019 iMac with an SSD inside. These appear regularly on Apple's refurbished site. You have to keep your eyes open and be ready to buy when one appears, because they don't last very long.

I would ABSOLUTELY choose a "slightly-lesser-equipped" iMac WITH an SSD, than a "higher-equipped" model (CPU, GPU, etc.) with a fusion drive.

Explaining why might help..

I mean I have a SSD in my MBP so I know they are faster but to me the speed difference (alone) is not phenomenal. From my limited understanding I understand that Fusion drives are likely to fail sooner and more often than SSD's.

I'm just confused about my main two points.
1) Are these differences between fusion and SSD exaggerated? and
2) How different are the iMac SSD's from a 2016 MBP SSD?

 

[tyc0746]

Explaining why might help..

I mean I have a SSD in my MBP so I know they are faster but to me the speed difference (alone) is not phenomenal. From my limited understanding I understand that Fusion drives are likely to fail sooner and more often than SSD's.

I'm just confused about my main two points.
1) Are these differences between fusion and SSD exaggerated? and
2) How different are the iMac SSD's from a 2016 MBP SSD?

Download the free BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and run it on both machines - see what the throughputs are for the HDD, then SSD (the Fusion drive may give a strange result as the test might use either the SSD or HDD part).

My older late 2014 iMac's SSD gives about 1000MBps read/write. My 2019 iMac gives me over 2000MBps (which is the same SSD/interface as the MBP). So they obviously changed something with either the SSD used or the interface.

The biggest killer of HDD or Fusion drives is the forced conversion to the APFS file system of the newer OSes (APFS was around before Catalina, but it was not mandated on HDD or Fusion systems until Mojave). We were happily running a 2012 MacMini on High Sierra, but the moment we upgraded to Mojave it seemed like it was running in treacle, and we thought there was an issue.

We carried on for a while, and eventually upgraded to Catalina in case it was just Mojave, but ultimately we removed the HDD and put a Crucial MX500 SATA SSD in there. Whilst this is nowhere near as fast as it would have been with an NVMe one (500MBps vs 1000-2000MBps), it was simpler to use the connection we'd freed up from removing the HDD.

For my sister's MacMini (of the same generation) we didn't even open up the MacMini - we just installed Catalina on an external USB3 SSD (a cheap enclosure with a NVMe m.2 SSD, stuck to the side of the computer with velcro) and set it as the boot drive. The 1TB internal HDD has been erased and is just used as storage.

 

[Juicy Box]

I got a BTO Late 2012 iMac with a 1TB Fusion Drive on launch day, and have a lot of experience with them. On the same Mac, I am currently booting from a TB3 NVMe drive, and the difference between them is pretty big for both speed tests, and real world use.

I mean I have a SSD in my MBP so I know they are faster but to me the speed difference (alone) is not phenomenal.

A couple things with this.

First, if you are going by the "feel" of the computer, you have to tell us what OS you are working with on both Macs. I suspect that the one using the Fusion Drive is not Catalina.

Second, you cannot go by just a BM disk speed test comparing the Fusion Drive to a SSD.

The reason is that Fusion Drives, by design, reserve 8GB of data in the SSD portion as a "working partition", not really a partition, but a portion of the SSD that is used for writing new data.

When the BMDST goes to write the data for the speed test on a Fusion Drive, it is showing the write speed of the SSD, not the "Fusion Drive". It is also showing you the read speed of the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive, because that is where the data was left.

If the BMDST had a higher sized stress test (like 8GB+), you could would see a sharp decline of write speeds once that free "working partition" was filled and the HDD started to be utilize.

The other portion of the SSD in the Fusion Drive is used for long term storage of data that is used often, such as OS data, and app data that you use the most. Everything else is stored on the much slower HDD.


This is a real world example of the benefits and downfalls of using a Fusion Drive:
I used to Play WoW a lot.

When I was playing everyday, the load screens on WoW would be really quick. (The game was stored on the 128GB SSD portion of my iMac's Fusion Drive)

I would sometimes take a few days or weeks off from WoW, doing other things on my iMac, When I would start playing WoW again, the load screens became painfully slow. (The game data was moved from the SSD onto the HDD, and now loading from the slow HDD)

If I would just play for a short period of time and stop for a few days, the load screen times would remain slow, or at least slower than if I played often.

If I started playing a lot again, the load screens would get back to being fast again. (The game's data, along with all the other data on the iMac, moves back and forth between the SSD and HDD depending on how often that data is being used.

Are these differences between fusion and SSD exaggerated?

Generally no, but this depends totally on what you do with your computer and what OS you are on.

If you are using your Mac for Facebook and email, then you will not utilize the speed benefits of the SSD as much as people that use their Macs a lot more than just the basic of the basic of tasks.

Also, if you plan on using APFS or Catalina, there is a sharp decline in performance using HDDs and Fusion Drives, so the SSD benefits would show even more if this is the case.


At this point, I would recommend getting a SSD. If you cannot afford to get Apple's expensive SSDs, then get a cheaper option and use a SSD externally.

If you plan on using the Mac with an older OS, and get a Mac with a Fusion Drive with a 128GB SSD or larger, then you would probably be fine sticking with the Fusion Drive if doing basic tasks on the Mac.

 

[dizmonk]

Thanks. That's helpful. Right now I'm using Catalina on the late 2013 with the original 3TB it came with. I wonder if there's any difference between the 2019 and 2020 iMac SSDs?

 

[Juicy Box]

I think I asked this already, what do you use your Mac for? Also, what are the specs of your current iMac?

Right now I'm using Catalina

This probably explains your earlier statement:

I've got a Late 2013 iMac that's probably on it's last legs.

There have been many reports of performance loss with APFS on HDDs and Fusion Drives. This has only gotten worse on Catalina for some reason.

I bet if you would use an external SSD on your current Late 2013 iMac, you would probably see a performance increase.

If you are deadset on getting a newer Mac, then do it, but I wonder if the addition of a SSD on your old iMac would be able to hold you over for now.

With the cheap prices of SSDs, maybe you should consider using an external SSD on your current Mac and wait it out for the new AS Macs.



As I mentioned earlier, I my main Mac is my Late 2012 iMac. It was a BTO one, with the i7 and 680MX. I increased the RAM to 24GB.

I typically use the Mac for video encoding, but also occasionally use it for WoW.

I though I would have replaced it by now, but that iMac is such a beast. No, it isn't as fast as the current iMac line, but it is still pretty fast. (actually, Geekbench has my Late 2012 iMac around the 2017 iMac's i5's multi-core performance).

It makes me wonder what you are doing on your iMac and what you iMac's specs are.

 

[pmiles]

The reality is, SSDs are replacing the other drive types... it doesn't matter whether you think they a worth it, you really don't have a choice unless you want to get stuck in the past.

Times change, so does technology.

SSDs aren't going to be around forever... probably a lot less time than HDDs have been around. What comes next, who knows. Just know that it is coming.

Remember... prices are cheaper on technology considered to be EOL or soon to be EOL. If you buy a system without an SSD drive, you're going to end up replacing it sooner rather than later.

It is the operating system's default file system that is running on your computer that refusing to play nicely with your hard drive, not the other way around. You run High Sierra, it's happy as a clam and you'd hardly ever notice there was a slowdown. You load Mojave on it, and bam... all of a sudden it's like dragging your feet. This is because the default file system in Mojave is APFS whereas it's HFS+ in the earlier OS.

When ARM Macs start shipping, it may change all over again. Technology is beautiful... if you are the one selling it.

 

[cyberstudio]

• Many refuse to pay for the largest SSD upgrade, but they simply plug an external SSD and boot from that. For 2017+ you can use an NVMe drive in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for the highest performance. Before that, USB 3.0 speeds are not bad at all.
• The 2015+ 1TB Fusion Drive with only 24G or 32G SSD is not worth having. The SSD portion better be at least 128G. There is nothing wrong with Fusion Drive itself so long as the SSD portion is large enough to hold your "working set". If the SSD portion is only 32G you might as well save the money towards an external SSD.
• Don't even think mechanical HDD only. APFS needs at least Fusion and Catalina 10.15 forces APFS upon you.