iMac Upgrade - Life in the Old Girl Still?

[jrko]

Ive got an October 2009, 11,1 imac. Its the 27inch 2.8Ghz quad core with 8Gb running a very old OS
Im looking to get back into photography, video and a little light gaming (Civ etc)

Would it be worth my while dropping $139 on a 240Gb SSD and $134 on 16Gb Ram at OWC to perk it up a bit? Or due to its age would the $273 be better saved towards a new 21 4K or 27 5K?

Cheers

 

[keysofanxiety]

Yeah I'd say it's worth throwing some cash towards an SSD & 16GB RAM. She'll run better than new from there! Just ensure the RAM is 1066MHz.

Plus the old girl is still capable of running the latest OS. LCD/Logic Board failures notwithstanding, you'll easily get another few years from her.

 

[maflynn]

Would it be worth my while dropping $139 on a 240Gb SSD and $134 on 16Gb Ram at OWC to perk it up a bit? Or due to its age would the $273 be better saved towards a new 21 4K or 27 5K?

If you're still happy with the iMac definitely upgrade it now and continue to enjoy the machine.

 

[JackRoch]

Ive got an October 2009, 11,1 imac. Its the 27inch 2.8Ghz quad core with 8Gb running a very old OS
Im looking to get back into photography, video and a little light gaming (Civ etc)

Would it be worth my while dropping $139 on a 240Gb SSD and $134 on 16Gb Ram at OWC to perk it up a bit? Or due to its age would the $273 be better saved towards a new 21 4K or 27 5K?

Cheers

Finally got round to replacing the dead internal drive in my late 2010 21.5 “ iMac with a refurb 500Gb Samsung 850 (tad over $100 from eBay). £85 to fit + £35 for caddy and temp sensor cable.

Rather pleasingly (and unexpectedly) RAW processing of three photos (from external HD) took 43 secs; same files now take 23 secs.
I’d hoped for (and get) speed increases on disc-related actions like startup/shutdown, opening/saving but improved processing times are a pleasant bonus!

Better now than when I bought it; wish I’d done it years ago.

 

[MadDane]

I've got the same machine upgraded with a 128GB SSD (runs as a Fusion Drive) and 20GB 1333 MHz RAM. I am running using Lightroom 5 on El Capitan to process my RAW photos and it still works quite well. So I'd say go for it.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'd just put 8gb of RAM in and be done with it...

 

[kschendel]

The only question mark might be whether the graphics can keep up with what you want to do. If the answer is yes, I'd upgrade it. If you shop around a bit you might find better pricing, the OWC stuff is fine but not always the best value.

A 512 Gb SSD and 8 Gb RAM made our early 2009 iMac into a whole different machine. We don't do anything that pushes the graphics side though, no video editing etc.