Help with purchasing a new iMac // For a UI UX heavy iMac user

[kaplaninternational]

Hey guys, I am wondering if someone can help and advise me for a Mac.

I use my iMac nearly all day - From 8am > 8pm (Of course with breaks). I am a fulltime UI/UX designer with my own business, contracting. My main tools are the Adobe Suite. Photoshop, XD, Illustrator and sometimes Video work also.

My current machine is:
iMac 27" 2017 / 3.4GHz / i5 / 8GB 2400MHz DDR4
Graphics is Radeon Pro 570 4096MB
Fusion Drive 1TB

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This Mac i have had for just over 2 years. It's gone with me for work London, Dubai, Switzerland. I feel it's just getting a bit slower and slower.

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I was considering going in for the iMac Pro, the below stats I am getting at a deal for $3800 (To be honest it's more than I want to spend but if it's really worth it, then I will get it)


Apple iMac Pro 8 Core Xeon W 3.2GHz 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 8GB VEGA GPU 2017

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My question is, do I really need it? Is the price really worth it - does someone recommend another option that will be good for me at say around $2000 mark rather then $3800

 

[phairphan]

While that is a decent deal for that iMac Pro ($1200 off new; $450 off refurb), I suspect that your current iMac is sufficient.

The two items that catch my attention with your current machine and usage are: RAM and storage. Depending on what you're doing in the Adobe suite, 8GB of RAM may not be enough. If you're swapping out to that Fusion drive, it's going to feel slow. Second, that Fusion drive is going to make the entire system feel slow.

If RAM is your problem, that is very easy and cheap to increase. While you can replace the Fusion drive with an SSD, it's quite a bit of surgery. You may be better off moving your system to an external SSD to speed things up considerably.

 

[Velin]

I hate Fusion Drive. I can tell you straight up, full SSD is way, way better. The Fusion Drive's spinning platter can be a real bottleneck. You'll notice the difference if/when you move to a full-on SSD. Plus more RAM will help your system.

I'd skip the iMac Pro. What I would do is, get a brand new iMac. A 27" iMac with a full SSD upgrade is going to be half the cost of an iMac Pro, an enormous savings. Rather than ever spending the money on an iMac Pro, just buy regular iMacs with SSDs for half the cost. Then you can upgrade much more frequently than if you're tied to the uber-expensive iMac Pro.

That's what we decided for our business -- instead of sinking all that money on iMac Pros, we'd rather get new 27" iMacs on a significantly faster replacement schedule.

 

[kaplaninternational]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

Someone else advise me the same so I actually went out and bought for $200, a Samsung T5 1TB Portable SSD - is this good enough?

So your saying to now connect this to my Mac and run everything off this, so install my OS and even my Adobe Suite, all on this and basically run from this?

 

[kaplaninternational]

What iMac is the best one to get?

 

[Fishrrman]

If you're going to boot and run from an external SSD, and you use the iMac for business, I'd suggest the Samsung X5 thunderbolt3 drive (instead of the t5 USB3).

Much, MUCH faster (just about as fast as the latest internally-installed SSDs).

They are more expensive.
I'd suggest a 512gb size.
Use the internal fusion drive for file storage, etc.

 

[kaplaninternational]

someone else already told me to get samsung t5 so i got that already yesterday

 

[kaplaninternational]

Hey I have a question, what is faster:

Samsung X5 Thunderbolt3 Drive

OR

Apple iMac Pro 27" 3.2 Ghz 8 Core Intel Xeon 'W'/32GB RAM/1TB SSD/Vega 56 8 GB

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This is related to booting OS of it and Adobe Suite for example