Buying a new (2019) iMac. Fusion vs SSD?

[glenthompson]

But a 1 TB Samsung X5 that is basically the same speed for $399 and a 1 TB Samsung X5 that is basically the same speed for $399 and you still have the internal drive for back up so you get two drives for 399 instead of one drive for $300. Actually three drives because a fusion drive at 1 TB has an internal 128 GB solid-state drive.

No it doesn’t. The 1tb fusion drive only has a 32gb ssd. Too small for most working sets. Performance will be better than just a spinning drive but far short of what can be achieved with the 128gb drive in the 2 and 3tb models.

 

[glenthompson]

I’m shocked to see how many of the commenters are actually recommending Fusion drives... come on guys it’s 2020, you would have YouTube’d this question by now - Fusion drive vs. SSD.

Yes get a Fusion drive if you want to risk your new $5000 iMac with 4.4TB Fusion failing in a few years via the spinning mechanical hard drive slowing down, getting filled with dust and ultimately getting corrupted.

I’d go so far to recommend getting a 256GB SSD iMac if your budget is that restricted and buying a 2TB portable SSD for $50 from your office / computer store and booting up up your iMac externally via USB 3.0!

For $5k I can get an iMac Pro. A 27” with 3tb fusion is $2300. Spend a couple hundred more for memory expansion and you’re still under $2500.

I’d like to know where you’re buying 2tb SSDs for $50. OWC wants $400 for one. I would trust the spinning drive inside the iMac more than a $50 SSD.

I have spinning drives in my NAS that have been running fine for 5 years. If treated well they can last for years.

 

[HelpMePls]

My mistake good sir, it’s a $50 portable 2TB hard drive using USB 3.0

2tb portable - Best Buy

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But you can buy a 1TB SSD for $150 and boot externally off that.

edit: I’ve edited my original comment with the $150 for an SSD cost

 

[archrider]

No it doesn’t. The 1tb fusion drive only has a 32gb ssd. Too small for most working sets. Performance will be better than just a spinning drive but far short of what can be achieved with the 128gb drive in the 2 and 3tb models.

That was a mistake on my part. I am fully aware that it takes a 2 TB fusion Drive to get 128 GB SSD

 

[majaca]

That would be fine - my Birthday is in August 😀

OP- can you give us an update? What did you end up purchasing?

 

[amarilindra]

I currently have a 2011 27" iMac with 4-core 2.7GHz i5 processor and a 1TB mechanical (non-fusion) drive. For my uses (Lightroom, Photoshop, Screeflow, etc) it is (barely) adequate, but it's starting to seem long in the tooth.

As I have a birthday coming up, I have decided it's time to upgrade. Being retired military I can use the "Veterans and Military" area and get a discount. The system I think I've settled on is the 3.6GHz i9 (8-core processor). The base memory is 8GB which is what I'll get as I will upgrade to an additional 64GB via OWC. The base Graphics Card is Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. There is an upgrade to a Radeon Pro Vega 48 but that's over $400 and based on comparisons I've seen, I don't think I'll go that route for my uses. This configuaration comes with a 2TB fusion drive that has 128GB SSD built in included in the price. That 128GB of SSD seems pretty good compared to the 1TB fusion drive that only has 32GB SSD. If I wanted to go with pure SSD I can upgrade (or downgrade depending on your point of view) to a 1 TB SSD for $270, or I could upgrade to a bigger (3TB) fusion for only $90. I'm torn between just staying with the Base 2TB fusion (and hoping the 128GB SSD will be sufficient for the OS and common apps to see signifigant performance boost, or go with a smaller pure SSD (for $270) or upgrade to a bigger 3TD Fusion drive ($90 upgrade).

I'd love to specifically hear from those with experience moving from a fusion drive to an SSD and whether you actually saw enough performance boost to justify spending additional $270 for half the storage? If you did see a noticalble improvement, under what workflows did it seem to matter most and wrere didn't you notice much difference? Thanks in advance.

Definitely, SSD must be the best choice. It has good write and read speeds compared with fusion drive.
I have compared both Fusion Drive and SSD and you can find the results here

 

[BasilFawlty]

Definitely, SSD must be the best choice. It has good write and read speeds compared with fusion drive.
I have compared both Fusion Drive and SSD and you can find the results here

By the time I finally pulled the trigger, the new M1 was out so I decided to preorder that and ended up with an 8-core M1 with 16GB memory and a 2TB SSD and an extended keyboard. The only thing I didn't get was the track pad (I had one before and almost never used it). The screen is a little smaller than the 27" intel mac but that has so far not been an issue for me. I really love the speed of this new iMac.

OP- can you give us an update? What did you end up purchasing?

See above

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

SSD Basil and only the real true blue genuine Mr Fawlty would buy a Fusion!

 

[BasilFawlty]

SSD Basil and only the real true blue genuine Mr Fawlty would buy a Fusion!

You didn't see my last reply. I bought an M1 16GB memory and 2TB SSD