Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?

[EugW]

Isn't OWC very good too? Do you know if its Micron also, please?

OWC is a 3rd tier brand, a step above noname but a step below companies like Kingston IMO. However, it has a good reputation because they have very good customer service and respect their warranties, so I wouldn't have a problem buying from them if their prices were significantly cheaper. However, often their prices aren't great (at least here in Canada) and if prices were in a similar ballpark, I'd choose Crucial or Samsung branded RAM over OWC any day of the week.

As for chip brands, I suspect that like other smaller companies, OWC uses several different ones, whatever is cheapest/easiest to get at the time.

My experiences of iMacs are they get hot under load. The 24 inch, I could have cooked an egg on it. The 27 inch blowed when ever you did more than one thing.

I'm in an attic studio room. So heat rises (especially on these British 'muggy' days...) and iMac can get 'warm' to the touch even if it doesn't do anything(!)

10 core. when I get mine. I'll do 3 passes of Cinebench and see if the fans kick up hairdryer mode.

Azrael.

My 2017 quad-core i5-7600 runs pretty cool. In fact, that's why I bought it. The i7-7700K I had before it ran hot and loud, so I returned it to get the i5. Handbrake transcodes would get the 7700K to hairdryer mode in about 30 seconds. It would almost ten minutes on the i5-7600.

 

[Azrael9]

Ahahahaha ! Good one !!! 😂 😂 😂

Heh, heh, heh... (see? I do actually listen to people...I've even learned useful stuff on this thread like NAS and System Ram and Vram ratio balance. 2:1, was it?

Azrael.

 

[pldelisle]

Not sure yet. I used to use a pair of Sony MDR 7506's, as those are what I learned on and I know them sound wise pretty good as I used them for years, but eventually the thin metal jack broke off into the side of my MBP and it's still stuck there to this day. lol

* Sony MDR 7506's / ATH-Mx40's / BD DT 770's..............I think I got the name on all those correct. I've been trying to read as many reviews and watch as many comparison videos online.

I think I'm going to get the MDR 7506's & a 2nd pair so I have another reference. I really like the MDR 7506's but they could be better in the Bass/mids, so I'd like a 2nd pair to help me out when those aren't working.

These are more sound engineering headphones. I only know the BeyerDynamics But I always read Sony is the best headphones for doing this. I have Audeze LCD-2. Definitely not the same purpose
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Vram ratio balance. 2:1, was it?

Yep 2:1 at least.

 

[Azrael9]

So, as I understand from the very useful posts in this thread (thank you all! ) this is a very good upgrade for my 2017 3.8 580 iMac.

I think that I'll go with the 8 core 3.8 (3.8 again!), 5700 XT 16GB, 1tb SSD, 10GB Ethernet (for future proofing).
The 500 nano texture glass is yet an expensive option and unknown factor in general.

I would like to have the 10 core CPU but I worry a bit for the thermals. Do you think that it will be fine?

Do I think it will be 'fine' or 'fire?'



Seriously. 8 core? 10 core. We'll have to see.

CWallace pointed out that he went for the lower tiers as the parts won't run as hot and so preserve the life of the iMac. I can see his point. When you run the engine hard...or burn the candle hot? That is just the nature of things. Especially Intel these days.

Until we get AS and the new Apple Performance Republic for Macs.

That said. You could easily go with the 8 core (more than good enough...) at that tier 3 price (very good value...you used to have to pay for an 8 core option...) and ploughing into 10GB Ethernet and RAM might be better spent for you.

I think the nano glass is a red herring. I have my iMac parked away from window light. So no reflections at all.

Doing 3d renders. 8 core is very decent. But I've opted for the 10 core. Two extra cores and 4 extra threads on rendering.

I won't be rendering out animations. Just still images. So I won't be flogging this iMac 24 hours a day with that load of rendering.

You'll still get a decent upgrade from your 2017 iMac. Especially with that 5700XT 16 VRAM!

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

Can't say for newer devices, but Catalina, from 10.15.3 worked totally fine on my Late-2013 MBP. The mess was before .3.

I have a general rule of thumb of waiting until at least .3 before I upgrade a MacOS. It's generally held fast at that general rule.

Though some have had problems still with Catalina.

I hope Big Sur ...gets Apple back to polishing it's Jewel in the Crown.

Azrael.

 

[DrRadon]

I am still feeling so happy the wait is over and relief that a new computer is finally on it's actually way, just one or two weeks away. Like, legit.

 

[Azrael9]

He gets to the actual point of the lowest end iMac starting at around 9:00.

And for some people, his advice may be spot on.

If all I was doing was PS/Image editing? The Tier 1 with it's (still) hard to compare 5k display, 6 core, moderate 5300 and the SSD would be 'just fine' for such work. n Just get 32 gigs of ram from somewhere else and Bob is your Uncle.

It will do PS work much faster than my 1997 Power Mac Tower did!

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

I am still feeling so happy the wait is over and relief that a new computer is finally on it's actually way, just one or two weeks away. Like, legit.

Really happy for you Dr.

Your rig is on point. I would have gone for 2TB SSD. At £3.4k, that was enough for me. I didn't want to pay hundreds more for the 2TB. But I'm going to make a point on this to .5TB the Mac and the PC Bootcamp. 500 gigs each. And keep the boot drives really clean. Should be more than enough for just the OS and 'clutch' of OS apps.

I'll order some fast external SSDs and use them for Apps and Data. My experience of having all this stuff on one drive is that it sours performance over time. Maybe not initially but certainly after a year or so.

I know it was getting like cabin fever on this thread towards the 'end' (we're still waiting on the redesign for the AS iMac 24...) and many just needed to buy and wondered what the hell was holding Apple up.

I can't say it's been a barrel of fun being without my Mac. Sure...it didn't vibrate...but it was an essential companion for this 'Cut me and I bleed six colours' (of Jobs' Apple.)

So yes, the wait is nearly over for you, Dr. Relief. I can tell in what you type. So you're just a week or two away?

Mine's set to arrive on August 18-20th.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

So, as I understand from the very useful posts in this thread (thank you all! ) this is a very good upgrade for my 2017 3.8 580 iMac.

I think that I'll go with the 8 core 3.8 (3.8 again!), 5700 XT 16GB, 1tb SSD, 10GB Ethernet (for future proofing).
The 500 nano texture glass is yet an expensive option and unknown factor in general.

I would like to have the 10 core CPU but I worry a bit for the thermals. Do you think that it will be fine?

I think the 10 core will be fine. If you do eg. 3D? Get it.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

I have a near top spec 2019 iMac I purchased in March and have had zero issues with Catalina. Overall this has been pretty significantly the best computer I’ve ever owned.

On the topic of cooling/noise, I have the 6-core i5 and granted my work is not CPU-heavy but I would say I am keenly sensitive to fan noise (I was involved in building “silent” PC’s back in the 90’s) and I’ve never noticed the fan on this iMac. My Thinkpad X1 Carbon sitting right next to it is clearly audible, often while sitting seemingly idle. I work mostly in Creative Cloud - typically Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop, in web browsers, and with a Windows VM running - often having 55GB+ of my 64GB of RAM used, so a different kind of “power user” for which this iMac is perfectly suited.

Hopefully they have in fact improved the cooling system in this update even more - but as is common here - I suspect the complaints are driven by a vocal few and a great deal of actual owners will never actually have an issue.

You have a decent workload on you, there. In 2D mainly? Which any recent iMac (especially teh 2019....) will handle in it's sleep.

It recently conquered video work in the last several years. With better gpus in the iMac. And especially the newer Navi1 in the current release is stomping the Mac Pro with its improved codec support. So any one doing video work? Get the 2020 iMac..!

The iMac's achilles heel is the 3D side of things. Or very intense gaming. Again. 3d work. That's why I waited for the 2020 iMac vs the 2019 iMac.

So I'm keen to see if this iMac can finally handle rendering and games without the fans screaming in protest.

We have to remember. The iMac has 'invaded' the traditional Mac tower market in the £1500-£3k range. As the Mac Pro (for some inexplicable reason...) moved on up.

3D for rendering. Perhaps less mainstream than Video work? But for games? Very mainstream. And for the price Apple charges I've been relentless in my criticism that they put gpus that are worthy of Apple's marketing and price tags.

So, vocal minority though some may be...they have a point re: fan noise for certain types of workload.

For example. When ever I did Pages work on my Mac? I never heard any noise. (Nor should you for work processing.) Nor for any Affinity App of Photo, Design or Publisher.

But doing 3d in Bootcamp? An old game from 2004? The fans blew in protest. Sure, my iMac was 2012. But the underlying principle remains.

Has the iMac finally conquered it's last frontier of workload? 3D!!!

Azrael.

 

[filmak]

Do I think it will be 'fine' or 'fire?'

This was a really good one!

 

[pldelisle]

I hope Big Sur ...gets Apple back to polishing it's Jewel in the Crown.

Well, they are well started for doing so. Beta 4 is rock stable for me. Parallels need to be started from command line because it fails to detect the "11.0" version, but it's the only minor thing I can speak of. I hope Parallels rewrote their virtualization engine for Apple Silicon or will do very quickly. It's such a nice tool for running Linux.
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This was a really good one!

It's not the Mac that is in fire today, it's Azrael itself !

 

[Azrael9]

Well, my main issue from the beginning in my original post was the underpowered GPU 5300 in the first two 27" models and as a side note I saw that you can't configure the storage at all. Then someone pointed out like you in another discussion that for the price of a SSD upgrade to 512 you get also a better CPU. That's fair, but it is still not the same as before.

Last year both models had the same HDD size of 1TB. That was enough for most of us that didn't need SSD. You had to buy the second model only if you wanted a better CPU or GPU, not because of a too small HDD. Now with only 256 GB we almost have to buy the second model even if we don't want to. Yes you get a better CPU but why would I have to pay not $200 but almost $300 extra here in Sweden just to get an extra 256 GB? Yes you can argue all day how much better SSD is but it doesn't make the drive bigger. The question is not how much better hardware I get, it is if I really need it.

At the same time you don't get a better GPU. Having only 256GB is like having 8GB of RAM. You must upgrade it somehow for an additional cost and Apple knows it. My point is that Apple should have included 512 GB in all 27" iMacs and justified the price difference with a better CPU and GPU in the second model, just like last year. Now I don't get enough storage right from the start, I have to spend another $300 or get an external storage by myself and if I want a better GPU I have to go all the way up to the top model.

The iMacs may be cheaper comparing to last year's standards but not really according to today's standards. Here in Sweden they're actually only about $8 cheaper. Oh well, that's the way it is now. Looking forward to AS. Hope Apple doesn't disappoint and play cheap next year but I'm afraid they may just try to barely outperform Radeon 5500XT and advertise it as "AS outperfoming last year's top Intel iMac".

Apple will have no shame when they announce 'this year's AS' outperforming 'last year's AMD gpu.

They'll show you the % and the price tag.

And they'll say, '100% faster.' etc.

Why? Because nothing less than 50-100% faster on cpu or gpu makes this transition worth doing. Primarily about heat and efficiency...but that has to be compelling performance or people just won't buy something slower or equal.

Apple don't go on about the performance of their phone and pads 'that' much. But they've buried the competition who have been at cpus and gpus for years. Nv. Intel. AMD. Others. Completely smashed.

But yes. Apple's marketing is 'bl**dy cheeky.'

After starving Mac desktops of oxygen for years...they'll claim they have the life giving elixir of performance in the form of AS.

And I may well be lining up to get the 32 inch iMac AS. With inane look in my eyes...and my wallet well vaselined.

Azrael.
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This was a really good one!

I couldn't resist... (*Cheap shot, Azrael....* We expect 'better' of you...)

Azrael.

 

[filmak]

Do I think it will be 'fine' or 'fire?'



Seriously. 8 core? 10 core. We'll have to see.

CWallace pointed out that he went for the lower tiers as the parts won't run as hot and so preserve the life of the iMac. I can see his point. When you run the engine hard...or burn the candle hot? That is just the nature of things. Especially Intel these days.

Until we get AS and the new Apple Performance Republic for Macs.

That said. You could easily go with the 8 core (more than good enough...) at that tier 3 price (very good value...you used to have to pay for an 8 core option...) and ploughing into 10GB Ethernet and RAM might be better spent for you.

I think the nano glass is a red herring. I have my iMac parked away from window light. So no reflections at all.

Doing 3d renders. 8 core is very decent. But I've opted for the 10 core. Two extra cores and 4 extra threads on rendering.

I won't be rendering out animations. Just still images. So I won't be flogging this iMac 24 hours a day with that load of rendering.

You'll still get a decent upgrade from your 2017 iMac. Especially with that 5700XT 16 VRAM!

Azrael.

No 3d rendering, Adobe suite (Ps, Id, Ai, Lr, Acrobat), still images too, and VMs (the main reason the extra cpu cores needed).

 

[filmak]

Also about the RAM, I think Crucial has great quality and reliability, it would be my first option too.

 

[Azrael9]

Radeon 580 was standard on the top model with 3.8GHz CPU. The BTO option was for the 4.2 GHz CPU. It could be had with iMac Radeon 575 or 580. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...7-inch-aluminum-retina-5k-mid-2017-specs.html

5500XT is actually similar to 580X. Here you can see that RX 5500XT performs the same as RX 580 in some games and a little better in other games. So not much improvement over the past three years. 5700 should be standard on the top model. You never know with Apple though. They may have clocked 5500XT in such a way that it appears to be faster than 580X.

I wish they'd have put the 5700 on the Tier 3.

At least we got the option for the 5700XT 'Pro' with 16 gigs of Vram.

The exciting thing is the support for codecs in video work according to Max. 2x and 3x faster in some cases.

At the end of the day. We have a faster iMac. Overall, all that incremental and not-so incremental speed increases add up.

I'm very pleased with the codec news (not primarily for myself...but for others that need it...) but the SSD speeds are blazing fast. Anybody coming from a 2012 iMac is going to get Riding Rita speeds.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

No 3d rendering, Adobe suite (Ps, Id, Ai, Lr, Acrobat), still images too, and VMs (the main reason the extra cpu cores needed).

*Nods. VMs. Noted.

I wonder. If by having '10 cores' now on a new rig I could actually move to having Fusion or Parallels for 'creative' work but keep Bootcamp for 'the odd' game.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

Also about the RAM, I think Crucial has great quality and reliability, it would be my first option too.

Yeah. Just got to get that order in. I think I'll go with them.

40 gigs of Ram when I add the 2x16gigs to the 8 included.

That should allow my 3D and multi-task work loads to breath somewhat.

Azrael.
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How soon will someone rip one of these open to show us the thermal design?

It won't be long. A week tops.

Azrael.

 

[DrRadon]

2020 iMac Benchmarks Surface Online, SSDs Soldered to Motherboard

Sort of a bummer. Very much suggesting Apple Care if it makes sense with your country's warranty laws.
If anything breaks the entire computer is broken.
If they did not change the cooling there must be crazy amounts of spaces inside now, with no fusion drive data corner an the SSD slot gone with the new SSD just soddered on somewhere.
I happy i picked 2TB, replacing my HDD with SDD in my old iMac really (still) prolongs it's life. Zero chance of something like that happening... well i suppose thunderbolt external SSDs are cool.

 

[pldelisle]

How soon will someone rip one of these open to show us the thermal design?

By the end of the week I think we will see it.

 

[pldelisle]

2020 iMac Benchmarks Surface Online, SSDs Soldered to Motherboard

Sort of a bummer. Very much suggesting Apple Care if it makes sense with your country's warranty laws.
If anything breaks the entire computer is broken.
If they did not change the cooling there must be crazy amounts of spaces inside now, with no fusion drive data corner an the SSD slot gone with the new SSD just soddered on somewhere.
I happy i picked 2TB, replacing my HDD with SDD in my old iMac really (still) prolongs it's life. Zero chance of something like that happening... well i suppose thunderbolt external SSDs are cool.

It's actually a good news for cooling. Seems like the internal got a major revision.

 

[Martius]

They probably have a warehouse full of 2017 iMac boxes. Well they could at least print a sticker of the new wallpaper and stick it on the box, so it would look new 😂

 

[filmak]

And I may well be lining up to get the 32 inch iMac AS. With inane look in my eyes...and my wallet well vaselined.

Sort of a bummer. Very much suggesting Apple Care if it makes sense with your country's warranty laws.
If anything breaks the entire computer is broken.

So there it is.
And if they also embed RAM in the SoC, with the Unified memory architecture, as they say, then we will have to pay a good extra for it... in advance. Soldered ssd and invisible Ram for the AS iMacs, will they have some RAM slots?
If not, no escape then, no Crucial, no options... also forget the slightest repair.

 

[DrRadon]

Someone under that news post pointed out soldered ssd was a neccecery for t2. But i thought it is not since MacPro has replaceable apple t2 SSDs?

 

[pldelisle]

So there it is.
And if they also embed RAM in the SoC, with the Unified memory architecture, as they say, then we will have to pay a good extra for it... in advance. Soldered ssd and invisible Ram for the AS iMacs, will they have some RAM slots?
If not, no escape then, no Crucial, no options... also forget the slightest repair.

I think this is the last iMac with upgradable memory. For future iMac you will have to select the memory size upfront since, as you said, it will be a SoC, so embedded memory within the chip. Unless Apple surprises us with non-embedded memory, but that would surprise me a lot.
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Someone under that news post pointed out soldered ssd was a neccecery for t2. But i thought it is not since MacPro has replaceable apple t2 SSDs?

False.

Even iMac Pro has T2 with removable SSDs.

Soldering allows miniaturisation on the motherboard, room for additional cooling, etc... No link with T2 chip.