Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
SSD Drive or Fusion for new iMac?
- Thread starter jaybar
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You will lose some 7% max due to formatting, so that would leave in the vicinity of 235GB available if my maths are anywhere near correct. With your current use of 95GB that will be ample.
As for speed difference with a larger capacity drive, it would be so marginal as not to be noticeable.
As for speed difference with a larger capacity drive, it would be so marginal as not to be noticeable.
The math behind all of this is actually very simple: manufacturers like to use a base of 10 for their capacity calculations whereas computers work on a base of 2. Taking a 256GB SSD as example this means the following.
256 GB = 256,000 MB = 256,000,000 KB = 256,000,000,000 Bytes
That is the actual capacity of your drive: 256 Billion Bytes, or 2.048 Trillion Bits. Given that modern computers aren't decimal but binary machines they operate on a base of 2 and a K of 1,024 (2^10) instead of 1,000 (10^3). In other words:
256,000,000,000 Bytes = 250,000,000 KB = 244,140.625 MB = 238.419 GB
In other words: a 256 GB SSD will give you slightly over 238 GB of usable storage space.
256 GB = 256,000 MB = 256,000,000 KB = 256,000,000,000 Bytes
That is the actual capacity of your drive: 256 Billion Bytes, or 2.048 Trillion Bits. Given that modern computers aren't decimal but binary machines they operate on a base of 2 and a K of 1,024 (2^10) instead of 1,000 (10^3). In other words:
256,000,000,000 Bytes = 250,000,000 KB = 244,140.625 MB = 238.419 GB
In other words: a 256 GB SSD will give you slightly over 238 GB of usable storage space.
This assumes someone is comfortable taking the screen off an iMac. OP is asking about fusion versus SSD—not to insult him, but does that sound to you like the profile of someone who would swap disks on a modern iMac?Don't bother buying a new iMac.
Just upgrade your iMac with an SSD.
The upgrade process takes <1 hr.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-27-inch-late-2013-hdd-ssd-upgrade.2122595/
Definitely SSD , FD is an unreliable fudge ( i know from my own experience ) and selling 5400 hds on a mac in 2018 is downright outrageous tbh
SSD is amazing
SSD is amazing
Aren't the iMac's due for a refresh btw? Think you should wait out a little for the new ones to appear, you can then pick up the old (now current) model at a discount.
edit: with the SSD ofcourse.
edit: https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac agrees with me. "don't buy"
edit: with the SSD ofcourse.
edit: https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac agrees with me. "don't buy"
Capacity "loss to formatting" is actually (mostly) a misunderstanding.
Drives are sold in base-10 capacities (GB), but OSes operate in base-2 capacities (GiB). See http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html
So when you buy a 256GB drive, it shows up in the OS at approximately 238GB (the OS is really using GibiBytes, aka GiB).
This is an approximate 7% reduction in numerical terms, although no space is actually lost. <-that's the answer I think you are looking for.
The rest that follows is just for educational purposes, ignore it if the 7% is the answer you needed (grin)
Partitioning on APFS (an others) does use up some space. Here's an example from my 1TB internal SSD on my iMac Pro (disk0 is the raw SSD, disk1 is the APFS container):
➜ ~ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 1.0 TB disk0s2
/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.0 TB disk1
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 322.9 GB disk1s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 21.0 MB disk1s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 509.8 MB disk1s3
4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk1s4
So you can see that 314MB is lost to an EFI partition (not seen from the end user normally), and about 1/2 GB lost to other APFS non-user-space partitions/slices.
There is some amount lost to inodes or whatever the APFS equivalent is, but it's not linear. There is also overhead per file due to block size but that's getting into the weeds for this conversation.
That's a question that's been circulating for months. There is no actual answer. The practical answer is if you need a new iMac now, get it now, If not, wait. If the current standard iMacs are not powerful enough and you need one now, get an iMac Pro. If not, or they're too expensive, wait. Whatever iMac you buy is going to be a year older in a year and you'll be back here watching people speculate about the next latest and greatest and wishing that you waited longer.
Me? I had to make the same decision, and I decided to buy. Maybe I should have waited for the next Holy Grail of updates, but I enjoy sitting down in front of my new iMac every day, and that's worth something.
It's always the same, year in and year out. Some folks are frantically yelling "wait, something great is around the corner" sometimes mere weeks after a new model has been released when in fact nobody knows what Apple's intentions are. My guess is that even if Apple does refresh the iMac later this year we will not be seeing 6-core i5 CPUs at the price of the current quad-core i5 models as that would massively cannibalize iMac Pro sales. Plus, CPU performance is not the bottleneck anymore and hasn't been for a very very very long time, at least 5-7 years. It's storage and GPU performance that makes the biggest difference these days, not raw computing power anymore.
My prediction: the base model is going to feature a quad-core Coffee Lake i3 CPU as that is more than adequate for more than 90% of all users. The more powerful hexa-core i5 CPUs will be available at the usual steep excessive ridiculously insulting barefaced Apple premium, and the price for a hexa-core iMac will almost match that of the octa-core iMac Pro base model.
My prediction: the base model is going to feature a quad-core Coffee Lake i3 CPU as that is more than adequate for more than 90% of all users. The more powerful hexa-core i5 CPUs will be available at the usual steep excessive ridiculously insulting barefaced Apple premium, and the price for a hexa-core iMac will almost match that of the octa-core iMac Pro base model.
Last edited:
iMac
Days since last release: 401
Average: 371
It's safe to assume we're going to see updates in the really near future, no? And even if the latest hardware is more than what you need, you'll be able to buy the then old model (now the current one, am I making sense?) for less. Or still use the same budget but get a larger and/or faster harddrive or more RAM, whatever. Better value for the cash.
Days since last release: 401
Average: 371
It's safe to assume we're going to see updates in the really near future, no? And even if the latest hardware is more than what you need, you'll be able to buy the then old model (now the current one, am I making sense?) for less. Or still use the same budget but get a larger and/or faster harddrive or more RAM, whatever. Better value for the cash.