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streetfoldsfive

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 28, 2012
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Hey all!

So my Late 2012 27" iMac has be getting really slow. It's the 1TB hybrid version with an i7, 8GB of RAM, and the 2GB graphics card.

I've come to the conclusion the only thing that could possibly be bringing it to a crawl while doing basic 5 layer work in PS is the hard drive. I also can't figure a way to get PS on the SSD.

So my question is where can I go to get an SSD installed? I don't want to do it myself, and want to find a place that's quality and reasonable. Anyone have experience doing it/what it cost them?

Thanks!
 
Hey all!

So my Late 2012 27" iMac has be getting really slow. It's the 1TB hybrid version with an i7, 8GB of RAM, and the 2GB graphics card.

I've come to the conclusion the only thing that could possibly be bringing it to a crawl while doing basic 5 layer work in PS is the hard drive. I also can't figure a way to get PS on the SSD.

So my question is where can I go to get an SSD installed? I don't want to do it myself, and want to find a place that's quality and reasonable. Anyone have experience doing it/what it cost them?

Hybrid? Do you mean that you have the fusion drive in your iMac?
That is not technically a hybrid, which would imply a hard drive that includes flash memory (within the same device), as a method to increase speed.
A fusion drive has two physical drives, one small SSD, and a much larger spinning hard drive. Both are used as a single virtual volume.
 
Get back to us when you've bumped the memory to 16GB or 24GB and it is still s l o w

With just photoshop and Chrome open I only hit 6GB.
Should also be noted that my OS is on the SSD and it boots up incredibly slow. Like I have to wait 5 minutes before it becomes usable.
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You should really look at that 8GB of RAM - that is definitely a bottleneck when it comes to speed.


With just photoshop and Chrome open I only hit 6GB.
Should also be noted that my OS is on the SSD and it boots up incredibly slow. Like I have to wait 5 minutes before it becomes usable.
 
We are telling you where you have a problem - 8GB of RAM is a problem. It is also a more economical fix than finding someone to install an SSD for you. If you really want an SSD then buy an enclosure and boot from it it but at the end of the day, while you may see some increase in speed the fact will remain that you still have 8GB of RAM and you will bottleneck.
 
We are telling you where you have a problem - 8GB of RAM is a problem. It is also a more economical fix than finding someone to install an SSD for you. If you really want an SSD then buy an enclosure and boot from it it but at the end of the day, while you may see some increase in speed the fact will remain that you still have 8GB of RAM and you will bottleneck.

I'm just confused as to why activity manager says the ram inst bottle necking. Shouldn't 8gb be enough to do light ps work? Especially when it's the only program open?

I'm not doubting you, just confused.
 
Hey, streetfoldsfive – I don't mean to nay-say, but I'm as skeptical as the others here. In my experience and based on everything I've heard, the Fusion Drive almost always provides near-Flash performance. I'm using a 27" late-2012, 1TB Fusion Drive-based iMac as well. If my iMac really was "really slow," (it's definitely not been so far, and I'm a frequent user of hard-hitting apps like Pixelmator, Blender, Logic, Final Cut, Motion, et cetera), I'd be considering other possible culprits than the Fusion Drive until I had some evidence that it was suffering some kind of ailment. RAM is one thing, and checking for any other processor- or memory-hogging activities would be a second one. I do use 16GB of RAM – something I think I'm glad about – and if that's a possibility, RAM is much easier and cheaper to buy and install in these models than an SSD.

Sorry if you've already worked through all that – I don't think I have an answer to your actual question of where to have an SSD installed if you know that's what you want. Or, you could just store your PS files on an external USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt SSD and lose very little in the way of performance.
 
I'm not convinced adding more RAM will fix anything. If you're saying it takes 5 mins to boot your iMac into a usable state, there are issues. OS X is not a closed system so it's impossible to say what exactly has been installed over the years - startup items, extensions, background processes, etc, etc.

What I would do is backup my HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner to an external drive (backup your personal data to another drive as an extra precaution. Then I would wipe the iMac drive and do a clean OS installation with no restore of time machine or anything and get it patched up nicely. Then see how behaves. If it's still slow, it could point to a failing HDD. If it boots very fast and standard installed apps run good, I would begin re-installing the software I need and copy over my personal files.
 
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I'm not convinced adding more RAM will fix anything. If you're saying it takes 5 mins to boot your iMac into a usable state, there are issues. OS X is not a closed system so it's impossible to say what exactly has been installed over the years - startup items, extensions, background processes, etc, etc.

What I would do is backup my HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner to an external drive (backup your personal data to another drive as an extra precaution. Then I would wipe the iMac drive and do a clean OS installation with no restore of time machine or anything and get it patched up nicely. Then see how behaves. If it's still slow, it could point to a failing HDD. If it boots very fast and standard installed apps run good, I would begin re-installing the software I need and copy over my personal files.

I agree with this. Before doing the steps above though, simply create a new user and see if things run slowly under that new user.
 
This is probably not a RAM issue. 8GB is fine for light PS work. If you max out a 6GB and memory pressure is still green, you are good. The slow boot is a concerning. A Fusion drive gives priority to the OS, and as I m sure you know, boot times should be less than ten seconds. I would try. Have you checked the speeds of the drive?
 
Your hard drive could be dying basically slowing the whole system down, as you say if you aren't using the RAM more won't make any difference.
 
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