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iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) Order Thread
- Thread starter RyanXM
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In a sense, yes.
Sometimes less is more.
I have thought of donating it to someone else on this forum who would like to upgrade from 8 to 16GB. It is not worth much to sell.
Or just keep it as backup.
Not any posts here since the silicon macs were announced. Did that sap everyone's enthusiasm for the 2020 Intel iMac?
I was bettin' that Apple would release one last intel-based iMac Pro, but maybe we've seen the last of intel from apple with that 2020 iMac
I just ordered mine a few days ago and got confirmation that it should arrive around Dec 1st. I'm holding off on memory upgrade at the moment, hoping that there might be a black Friday or cyber Monday sale on the Crucial RAM. Looking to pick up 128GB.
Figured I'd pull the trigger on the iMac now since I am getting the 10% military vet discount. Not likely I'll find the BTO model I want on sale for a better deal. Ordered the i7 8 core, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, and 4TB SSD.
Can't wait for it to arrive!
Main use will be general desktop use with occasional extreme VMware Fusion usage. Sometimes test labs can take up a lot of resources. Better one monster machine than a lab of smaller ones.
Maybe just maybe I'll do Boot Camp for gaming. More likely to purchase a PS5 for that, though.
Figured I'd pull the trigger on the iMac now since I am getting the 10% military vet discount. Not likely I'll find the BTO model I want on sale for a better deal. Ordered the i7 8 core, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, and 4TB SSD.
Can't wait for it to arrive!
Main use will be general desktop use with occasional extreme VMware Fusion usage. Sometimes test labs can take up a lot of resources. Better one monster machine than a lab of smaller ones.
Maybe just maybe I'll do Boot Camp for gaming. More likely to purchase a PS5 for that, though.
We're nearing four months since the order thread started, so I suspect one part of it is just that pipeline of initial buyers is drying up. I'd imagine many non-MacRumour type customers are still buying when they feel the iMac format is the ideal one for their needs.
My months old iMac still holds up against the the M1 benchmarks (...barely), so that's ... something! Plus of course the GPU, ability to run Windows, more memory, etc. are all factors for me as well.
Honestly, if I did have a change in circumstances requiring me to travel around more (post COIVD) – and for whatever reason I wouldn't be comfortable bringing my current 13" work MacBook along but somehow I was needing some functionality beyond my 12" iPad – I'd happily compliment my iMac with an entry level M1 Air. You get a ton of power with that entry level machine now at such a reasonable price, especially if you have another workhorse to offset its few "Pro" deficiencies (GPU, multiple large displays, etc.) Having briefly interacted with people's Airs on-and-off in the past, I probably would not have considered such a possibility before – but the new Air sounds like real road warrior without the extra bulk of the MacBook Pro format.
This is said all just for fun – I certainly would not need such a combo given my current locked down circumstances and current pool of available devices
That system will be great for games in bootcamp. There may be only a couple to the super high end games that struggle at the highest settings. I've tried several triple-A Windows games with my iMac (Vega 48) and all of them run smooth as butter.
Ha yes, mine is still running smooth as butter, and I installed bootcamp in under 20 minutes with 500 GB devoted, so have been playing a few Windows-based PC games. I'm a bit unclear if the M1 chip is flexible in that regard. Now when I switch to my '19 MBP I feel as though it's fan-slog city. I would suspect it's the natural course of this type of thread that the adherents flock and then we slowly dissipate until we get gassing on something else.
At first I found the "speed increase" not as dramatic as I first thought. But now when I'm on the move and using my '14 MBP it's a very very noticeable difference. Though I have to say the fan noise of my '20 iMac is quite annoying. It's clearly audible pretty much anywhere in the room. My girlfriend has a '17 iMac 5K, but hers is completely silent when idle... Is there a difference in idle fan speeds between the 2? She has a i7-7700K and I've got a i7-10700K, so I guess thermal load is about the same?
The 10700k will output a fair bit more heat though than the 7700k, given the fact it has double the core count and a base TDP of 125W rather than 90W.
The PL2 limit for the 10700k (i.e. how much power it can use while turboing) is as high as 225W for 56 seconds - although given the iMac's thermal constraints Apple seems to be limiting this to 160W from what I've seen with Power Gadget
For comparison, the PL2 of the 7700k is supposedly only 135W, so 10W more than the 10700k's "sustained load" TDP...yeah these 10th gen Intel CPUs run hot ?
So does that mean the idle fan speed is higher as well? Or is it just that the '20 fans are louder than the '17 ones?
I'm not sure to be honest
It doesn't really look like Apple has changed anything regarding thermal design for the last few generations now but I could be wrong
(For example the iMac Pro has an extra fan I think and a vent at the bottom to help airflow, but the normal iMac doesn't have this)
That's exactly what I thought as well. Seems to me that you could theoretically switch fans between a '20 and a '17 model and everything would be fine
Seems that way to me as well.
Maybe some 2020 models are using a different model fan or something that seems to be louder?
In this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cooling-in-the-new-2020-27-imac.2248609, some are saying that it's silent, others are saying they can hear the fan like you can at idle
Thinking about going for a 2020 iMac. Currently using a 2015 iMac as my main.
The M1 Macs are not yet ready for the kind of software development that I do. Things might be different in a year or two, but right now, getting another Intel Mac is the only option for me.
I would otherwise consider an iMac Pro, but True Tone is something that I really want in a new Mac.
The M1 Macs are not yet ready for the kind of software development that I do. Things might be different in a year or two, but right now, getting another Intel Mac is the only option for me.
I would otherwise consider an iMac Pro, but True Tone is something that I really want in a new Mac.
The 'new' 2020 iMacs with the i7 and i9 are both faster than the 8-core iMac Pro. The i9 model getting closer to the 10-core iMac Pro... Next to that, the 2020 iMac also supports 128GB of RAM.
Apple is going to support these devices at least 5-7 years, since they're still selling lots of Intel based stuff. I specifically chose this intel iMac because the Intel-Apple combo has worked great in the last 15 years. Only reason for me to buy a Mac with Apple Silicon is its amazingly low power consumption. And since this is an iMac which doesn't have a battery I really really don't care how much power it consumes, it's always less than my old 2009 12-core MacPro...
I am a bit concerned about fan noise though, and my main reason for considering iMac Pro is the improved cooling capability. My impression is that the iMacs have been getting noisier during the past few years in order to reach a certain performance level.
In that case I’d look for a used iMac Pro. I just don’t think it’s worth all that money for a CPU that’s barely faster than an i9, and graphics that are very outdated and cannot be upgraded. The only reason to go with the iMac Pro would be the thermal performance... The iMac Pro is now in the place where the old trashcan Mac Pro once stood, 6 years old and still selling for the same ridiculous prices.
The iMac Pro was released 2 years 11 months 12 days ago. Not quite as bad as the trashcan. It is getting close to the Mid-2015 15" MacBook Pro models though which sold a little over three years. (In that case the TouchBar models overlapped and the older Pro style was offered as an alternative.)
There was a reason they got rid of the entry-level iMac Pro when this year's iMacs came out, they were just too similar. This was commented on above and there are no shortage of articles comparing the top iMac models to the original and current entry-level Pros.
As somebody who considered this choice recently, I'll let you know what went into my decision to go with the 2020 iMac over a discounted refurb/clearance Pro or entry-level Pro.
- Memory cost and flexibility. Winner: 5K. (Save $$$! Win.) Buying the equivalent memory yourself is just way more cost effective for the 5 mins it takes to install it. The Pro isn't designed to be upgraded and it is a significantly more complex process. But if you need a ton of memory, the Pro is the only one which goes with being able to go up to 256GB. Only adds CAD$6,500 to the base config.
- Benchmarks. Winner: Slight lead on the 5K. (Neutral, but likes the 5K was "fresher" with a few of the components.) While I think the Pro can still make sense for the most Pro of use cases, namely people who would truly benefit from the 14 or 18 core models. I suspect you don't have this use case if you're considering the 5K. The comparable models benchmark comparably to the Pro, or even better, in most measurements.
T2.Winner: 5K. Part of the reason the 5K benchmarks so well on certain tasks, like certain video encoding tasks, is because the T2 chip takes on some of these tasks. The Pro lacks this.Edit: since corrected by another user. It likely was the difference between 2019 iMac vs. 2020 iMac I was recalling instead (this did change year over year.) I was also considering clearance/refurb 2019 models for a hot minute.- Thunderbolt. Winner: Pro (but it didn't matter that much to me.) I had to think a lot about if I'd miss out on the additional Thunderbolt controller after a few years of ownership. You can drive an extra 5K monitor because of that. Or just generally have more scalable IO, external GPU, and whatever else you need ports for. (When I evaluated this for myself, I decided it wasn't worth it.) Funny enough, when it comes to displays, only the 5K can drive an XDR. Not that I plan to get one.
- GPU. Winner: 5K. Calling a winner here is tricky depending on what model we're discussing. Comparing the base Pro to the 5700 XT 16GB, it benchmarked better for MY most common use cases. If I recall correctly the Radeon Pro Vega 56 was in a bit of lead for me when considering some more obscure computational use cases, but I'm tired and might be steering you wrong.
Like you, I considered that for sustained load that the Pro might be the smarter choice. "Were the latest i7 and i9 just pushing the thermal boundaries too far!?" And a quiet machine is always nice too. Coming from a MacBook I know I can live with occasional fan noise: it doesn't really bother me and I wear headphones a lot anyway. I certainly can hear the fan across the room after pushing the machine with a big Cities: Skylines map but right now it is spinning at only 1300 RPM and I have to lean into it to really hear it. (I first turned off my air purifier which was only passively running and still making far more white noise.)
In the end there were just too many winning attributes on the 5K side to go with the Pro. Plus with memory factored in, it cost me less. With some of the hardware also being a few years newer, I felt better about aging and the potential resale value in the future with a 2020 model year (although the true Pro-grade products tend to do well years later so it may be moot.)
Anyway, that's more than I ever intended to write. Hope it helps you internet stranger!
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The Pro does have the T2 chip though.
Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support
Learn which Mac computers have the Apple T2 Security Chip.