Thinking of switching - is iMac 5k as good as they say?

[bogg]

Some replaceable glue wouldn't make me call anything unable to be upgraded. I've never owned a computer I haven't opened up and replaced, upgraded or repaired something in. I soldered more ram into my Amiga 500 when I was 12, did the same operation to the original
Xbox a decade later and have had to replace or repair traces on on several circuit boards over the year. Anything but BGA mounted chips (or similar) i regard as upgradable. Probably we are coming at this from different positions

Note I say upgradable, not "user upgradable" I prefer to see those two as separate things

 

[maflynn]

That's fine for you, but for the majority of consumers, its not upgradeable, pure and simple. So in your case, you can upgrade the iMac but for most others its not.

 

[bogg]

That's fine for you, but for the majority of consumers, its not upgradeable, pure and simple. So in your case, you can upgrade the iMac but for most others its not.

As I said, I see upgradable and user upgradable as two different things.

 

[maflynn]

As I said, I see upgradable and user upgradable as two different things.

That's fine, you can use your definition as you want and I don't think anyone is arguing your ability to upgrade, but for the clear majority its not. I don't think we need to continue to debate the semantics of what is upgradeable, as the OP wanted how good the iMac 5k.

 

[Grade]

The issue is, i might go for both, but that is stretching the price. I was simply wondering what is better for speed of process the I5 to i7 or an SSD?

Of course speed of the i5 and i7 is quite different of course.

 

[maflynn]

I was simply wondering what is better for speed of process the I5 to i7 or an SSD?

Depends on what you're doing regarding the i5 vs. i7. Does the apps you use require a lot of computing power and/or threads?

The SSD will give you a boost over any disk i/o

 

[bogg]

The issue is, i might go for both, but that is stretching the price. I was simply wondering what is better for speed of process the I5 to i7 or an SSD?

Of course speed of the i5 and i7 is quite different of course.

Depends on how you define speed and what you are going to use that speed for. for everyday tasks like browsing, word processing and so on the ssd will impact the speed more.

 

[Grade]

I would be using InDesign a lot (i think I will be doing a lot of homework, since where I work usually there is those periods, and normally is like 90 plus page type of files), and casual usage with Photoshop and Illustrator and Imovie to do vacation videos. I would like also start using any of Affinity programs and the Ibooks author.

The main usage is for writing, Football Manager, Civilization, a few point and click or any of indie games (those not available on PS4), Netflix, youtube, gmail, use photo app from apple to manage my photos and alot of Itunes.

Just in case i don't have enough cash, what will be best for me? i7 or the SSD drive?

 

[maflynn]

I don't see any tasks that will show a clear advantage of the i7 over the i5. The SSD definitely will be a better upgrade over the i7 upgrade - just my $.02

 

[monokakata]

Grade, take note that InDesign CC looks beautiful on the retina iMac, but Indesign CS6 looks bad. ID6 hasn't been undated for that screen, and most likely won't be. It's usable, but it's a world away from ID CC.

 

[Grade]

I can use the Adobe CC that i use at work, for home, so that isn't an issue. But thanks for the heads up.

 

[TheCopywriter]

OP, the clarity is unbeatable. I've been looking at screens since the CRT terminal (eg VT100) days. I've had 27" 2540x1440 screens, 24" HD, and others. There's no comparison, none at all. I've been using mind for more than a year. I'm probably in front of it 5 or 6 hours a day, often more. I work with text a lot, and that's really why I went for it. Text on the riMac is unbeatable. No yellow (a few years ago I rejected a 27" iMac that was delivered with the yellow issue, and never tried an iMac again until this one.

I'm not fond of all-in-ones, but until I can get a 5K monitor and something powerful (and up to date) to drive it, I'll stay with this one.

Thank you! I'm pretty much set on getting one. I'm coming from a six year old Dell pc with a 24" regular HD monitor, so I'm looking forward to it.

 

[ElectronGuru]

i7 makes some things faster. SSD makes everything faster.

 

[loekf]

i7 makes some things faster. SSD makes everything faster.

In the past I built my own Win + AMD PCs, with a HW upgrade every 2-3 years, which usually
took me 2K euro's.

My 5k iMac I would expect to last at least 4 years.

Fusion drive is ok for most users. Put data on an external USB drive, make sure you've an external
Timemachine drive as well, backup the data on that external USB drive. I have a 1TB fusion drive and
apps like Photoshop CC, Office 2016. I'm using ~250 GB out of that 1 TB.

If you have money to spend, first take at least a 512GB SSD. 256 GB is too small.

If you have more money to spend and are into gaming, pick a more powerfull graphics card.

If you have a lot of money to spend take an i7. An i7 only makes sense if you are into multi-threaded apps.

 

[makrom]

For FCPX I would easily pick the i7 over a bigger SSD, just in case you see yourself changing from iMovie some time. It's far from unuseable on the i5, but the thought of having faster render times is tempting. I keep my FCP libraries on external drives though.
It really comes down to what you are planning to do with it. From the tasks you've listet, most of them hardly benefit from either a faster CPU nor a full SSD, at least if you compare it to the 128GB SSD FD.