Talk me out of spending 500 € to upgrade to an iMac.

[pier]

ok - will you cut out the patronising insults to my intelligence?

It's not really an insult. SSDs are objectively better than Fusion drives.

1) So much faster

2) Longer lifespan (opening iMacs is a bitch)

3) Less heat

4) Less noise

You could argue that price is an issue but since you can get cheap USB 3 external drives for your bulk data choosing to get Fusion over SSD to save a couple hundred bucks is just a terrible decision.

 

[vkd]

Very well.

There's no denying that you will notice a massive increase when upgrading to a fusion from a pure spinner, the difference is phenomenal. That does not, however, mean that the fusion drive is the most optimal setup. Anything utilizing a spinner in part will be slower than pure SSD, and the dual drive setup makes for increased chances of hardware failure and compromised data.

Just because you upgraded to a fusion drive from a pure spinner and noticed a significant performance increase, does not mean my argument is suddenly rendered invalid. It is factually incorrect to argue that the speed of the fusion drive is anywhere near comparable to that of a pure SSD, especially if you're using the one shipped by Apple like I am. Is it possible you've never used a pure SSD before?

I hedge a bet that you have no real experience of Fusion Drives. FYI they run at the speed of the SSD, NOT the HD. This is because all data is taken from the fast SSD cache with delayed write to the HDD. In my case, as it is running at full SATA 3 speed which is around 500 MB/s. This is the only limitation, the bus speed, not the drive speed. To experience faster SSD speeds you will need to connect them to faster busses, PCIe, M2, etc., which are the latest connection formats available. In my case, 2011 machine, SATA3 is the fastest its got. If you buy a more recent machine with a Fusion Drive I wager that the SSD will be connected by PCIe or M2 so your FD will run at that speed in that case.

The other point you raise regarding failure, all drives are prone to fail be they HDD or SDD, ok SSD have a proposed longer lifespan but that is not a guarantee of non-failure.

 

[varian55zx]

I hedge a bet that you have no real experience of Fusion Drives. FYI they run at the speed of the SSD, NOT the HD. This is because all data is taken from the fast SSD cache with delayed write to the HDD. In my case, as it is running at full SATA 3 speed which is around 500 MB/s. This is the only limitation, the bus speed, not the drive speed. To experience faster SSD speeds you will need to connect them to faster busses, PCIe, M2, etc., which are the latest connection formats available. In my case, 2011 machine, SATA3 is the fastest its got. If you buy a more recent machine with a Fusion Drive I wager that the SSD will be connected by PCIe or M2 so your FD will run at that speed in that case.

The other point you raise regarding failure, all drives are prone to fail be they HDD or SDD, ok SSD have a proposed longer lifespan but that is not a guarantee of non-failure.

No real experience? I owned one for a brief period and have been working with them for years.

 

[jerwin]

How much would it cost you to get an SSD installed in lieu of a fusion drive?
Or would this completely kill the economics of the side grade?