5k iMac.

Phil White

Phil White

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I will be purchasing a new 5k iMac soon and have chosen the spec I want apart from the storage drive, would you choose the fusion drive or the SSD?
 
I am in process of getting one soon too, but i found best cost effective option is to get 512GB Flash drive ( i7 / 8GB RAM / 512GB SSD / R9 M395 ) And of course when it arrives remove those 8GB RAM and replace with 32GB Crucial or similar RAM. Not sure if R9 M395X worth the extra £200 (still doing some research).

And use external thunderbolt2/USB3 HDD + NAS for storage
 
I have 2TB Fusion Drive in my 5k iMac and I think it was a good purchase for what I do (Lightroom, Photoshop and also Software development).

You'll get SSD performance most of the time (OS files, app starts, Lightroom catalogue, previews, stuff you work on right now etc). It automatically demotes older RAW masters and video files to HDD. This is exactly what I would be doing if I used a pure SSD and external drive. Also the 1TB SSD is prohibitively expensive and 512GB is not big enough for my data.

I am glad I got the Fusion as I can avoid using any clumsy external enclosures (except for NAS for backups) and I have all my data available.
 
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I'm running an iMac with the 2TB fusion drive, however I also run a Samsung SSD as one of my external drives via the USB3 port. For applications that need fast disk access this works well
 
Phil White said:
I will be purchasing a new 5k iMac soon and have chosen the spec I want apart from the storage drive, would you choose the fusion drive or the SSD?
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Same dilemma I've been going through - think I've decided on an SSD option, but thinking I'm going to wait til (hopefully) they launch the revised version later in the year include the SSD as standard (or bring the price of upgrade down)
 
asaspasas6 said:
I am in process of getting one soon too, but i found best cost effective option is to get 512GB Flash drive ( i7 / 8GB RAM / 512GB SSD / R9 M395 ) And of course when it arrives remove those 8GB RAM and replace with 32GB Crucial or similar RAM. Not sure if R9 M395X worth the extra £200 (still doing some research).

And use external thunderbolt2/USB3 HDD + NAS for storage
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Did you get any luck re if the R9 M395X was worth the cost, I know last time I looked I couldn't really decide ...
 
andyred said:
Same dilemma I've been going through - think I've decided on an SSD option, but thinking I'm going to wait til (hopefully) they launch the revised version later in the year include the SSD as standard (or bring the price of upgrade down)
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I wouldn't be surprised if UK price of Macs actually goes up this fall. They often adjust international prices as result of FX changes during product refresh and now they have a very good reason...

Given by there is no prospect of having faster CPU (there is already the best available Skylake CPU in 27inch) and only a tiny prospect of having faster graphics I don't see enough reasons for holding back a purchase of 27" inch iMac at this time. Unless you absolutely need Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.1 (such as for driving external screen).

21" and Macbook Pro is a different thing...
 
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andyred said:
Did you get any luck re if the R9 M395X was worth the cost, I know last time I looked I couldn't really decide ...
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Unless you are doing monster video work or gaming then I can't see that it makes any sense at all.
 
asaspasas6 said:
I am in process of getting one soon too, but i found best cost effective option is to get 512GB Flash drive ( i7 / 8GB RAM / 512GB SSD / R9 M395 ) And of course when it arrives remove those 8GB RAM and replace with 32GB Crucial or similar RAM. Not sure if R9 M395X worth the extra £200 (still doing some research).

And use external thunderbolt2/USB3 HDD + NAS for storage
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The £200 graphics update is not worth it. LR performs much better with GPU acceleration turned off.
 
andyred said:
Did you get any luck re if the R9 M395X was worth the cost, I know last time I looked I couldn't really decide ...
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not really :) im using photoshop and illustrator most of the time, but slowly getting grips with premiere pro and after effects... so it will benefit me.... as for £200 difference in price don't think it's worth if you just using for photo editing etc.
 
asaspasas6 said:
not really :) im using photoshop and illustrator most of the time, but slowly getting grips with premiere pro and after effects... so it will benefit me.... as for £200 difference in price don't think it's worth if you just using for photo editing etc.
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Yes, pretty much the conclusion I came to when I was researching it.
 
asaspasas6 said:
I am in process of getting one soon too, but i found best cost effective option is to get 512GB Flash drive ( i7 / 8GB RAM / 512GB SSD / R9 M395 ) And of course when it arrives remove those 8GB RAM and replace with 32GB Crucial or similar RAM. Not sure if R9 M395X worth the extra £200 (still doing some research).

And use external thunderbolt2/USB3 HDD + NAS for storage
Click to expand...

Where can I buy that Crucial ram from?
 
My main Lightroom machine (MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch with SSD) died so I decided it was time to replace my ageing iMac with a new 5K model with 2TB Fusion drive and 24GB RAM. Whoa! Personally, I think the 2TB Fusion drive option is the better choice for fast overall performance and plenty of built-in storage for photo and video editing.
 
The fusion drives are SSHDs. They are about 30% faster on small regular access files and no different on anything else as the access is provided by the 5400rpm 2.5" drive rather than the SSD side.

Total waste of money. Get the 512GB drive and 8GB of ram. Buy 32Gb of ram from Amazon and fit it yourself, use usb3 or LAN to a network drive for storage. Save money, have a faster system, have more storage over all and have the facility of backing up to an external device.

Apple are a rip off in most cases unless you know what your looking at.
 
Andrew Moore said:
The fusion drives are SSHDs. They are about 30% faster on small regular access files and no different on anything else as the access is provided by the 5400rpm 2.5" drive rather than the SSD side.

Total waste of money. Get the 512GB drive and 8GB of ram. Buy 32Gb of ram from Amazon and fit it yourself, use usb3 or LAN to a network drive for storage. Save money, have a faster system, have more storage over all and have the facility of backing up to an external device.

Apple are a rip off in most cases unless you know what your looking at.
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The 2TB Fusion drives in the 27-inch iMac are 7,200RPM with 128GB of flash storage. I also have 1TB external USB 3 SSD and Synology NAS on Gigabit LAN. My iMac shipped with 8GB RAM, I bought the additional 16GB from Crucial. I can appreciate the speed and the cost of a complete SSD system, but still the 2TB Fusion drive is my current preferred choice.
 
I am using 512GB SSD at work and 2TB fusion at home and there is no difference in performance. Writes under certain threshold always go to SSD on FD and reads of recently/frequently too. Only my older masters go to HDD which is what I want.

I think 2TB/3TB fusion it is particularly well suited solution for Lightroom or people with media libraries. Having all data on internal volume simplifies workflow and backup. If they make affordable 2TB SSD option, I will change my mind, but until then FD is no brainer for me.
 
A SSD will always be balls out faster. You're relying on the fusion to put your working files on the flash portion, until it does that you'll be running on the mechanical which will be much slower.

Personally I'd rather be in control of what files are available to the maximum performance of my system. And then archive to spinning media as and when required.
 
Rumour has it that there is a new iMac due out around Oct/November with the new intel cpu's in and new AMD polaris gpu. I can't be 100% certain but I am sure I saw it somewhere so I am holding off until at least then to buy one just in case.
 
neil_g said:
A SSD will always be balls out faster. You're relying on the fusion to put your working files on the flash portion, until it does that you'll be running on the mechanical which will be much slower..
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True. However, the Fusion drive is in fact an SSD. It is the same SSD plus HDD with LVM layer on top. Not like a inferior cheaper SSD or something like that.

If you workflow involves doing heavy transfers of gigabytes of data back and forth (such as raw video cut or running benchmarks, or searching though huge databases) then you are indeed better served by a pure SSD. Fortunately vast majority of tasks I do on my Mac and certainly not Lightroom photo editing is’t like that.

You won’t be running on mechanical once filling up the SSD portion. That’s why there is the LVM manager to make sure that the blocks are moved between SSD/HDD as needed and give you SSD performance most of the time. Yes, it possible to tire the fusion drive down so that the performance is degraded, but it is not actually as as easy as one might think. Fusion drive also fixes weaknesses of SSD and HDD technologies (write amplification/endurance and low capacity of SSD and slow random access of HDD).

You could argue that by having separate HDD and SSD and managing data manually you can get maximum performance, but most likely the block-level based LVM consistently managing the data based on least recently used algorithm will be smarter and give you better performance than managing data manually between SSD and an external HDD array. Especially if you want fresh photos to reside on SSD and older masters on HDD.

A 3TB flash-only SSD option would be nice. But until we have it, large fusion is the second best option. At least for me and my huge photo library.
 
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Andrew Moore said:
The fusion drives are SSHDs. They are about 30% faster on small regular access files and no different on anything else as the access is provided by the 5400rpm 2.5" drive rather than the SSD side.
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A fusion drive is two separate hardware devices, an Solid State Drive and a Hard Disk Drive. They are combined logically to show up as a single volume. MacOS manages the file locations.

An SSHD is a hard drive with some solid state storage inside it. file location is managed by the drive.

Overall, Fusion wins out because the SS part of it is usually larger than you get on a hybrid drive (although the current 1TB Fusion only has 24GB).
 
I had the same dulemma; 512GB SSD or 2TB Fusion. After lots of reading of forums and other research I went for the Fusion and I'm quite happy with it.
 
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Yeah, I've no regrets with my 3TB Fusion drive, works very well. Wouldn't get a 1TB one though as the SSD in it is tiny.
 
I've a 2012 iMac with 3TB Fusion drive. Had horrendous problems with it recently when (as it turned out) the main HD started to fail. I did multiple rebuilds and quite often all that was showing in Finder was the SSD (which as any Fusion owner will tell you, shouldn't normally be visible as a distinct drive). Spent literally hours (6+) on the phone to Apple Support and they failed to diagnose what I suspected was the problem all along. They really didn't want me to bring it into the local Genius Bar (I didn't fancy lugging it there myself but I was getting desperate) but in the end I had to. Turns out mine was within the date-band of a recall for failing Fusion drives although the actual serial number didn't confirm this. Of course it failed six months outside the 3 years of Apple Care - but they replaced it FOC anyway - given the circumstances.

Rightly or wrongly, I'd be wary about getting another Mac with a Fusion drive as a result.
 
My Windows PC has an SSD and an SSHD installed and the SSD is only slightly faster, I think I'll opt for the 2tb Fusion Drive and only get the standard 8gb RAM as the upgrade to 32gb is a ridiculous price and third parties are so much cheaper and I'm competent to install it myself. Not sure whether to get Final Cut Pro as well as I do some video editing too.
 
I think it is a smart choice (large Fusion drive and buying memory later). When upgrading you can also use that opportunity and upgrade all DIMMs to premium 2133 MHz modules which will give you a tiny bit of extra power compared to low-end 1866 CL13 modules Apple ships.

Whether to get Final Cut Pro is something you need to answer yourself. Final Cut is good, Adobe Premiere is also very good.

I seldom cut video and for what I do even iMovie is adequate...
 
psybear said:
I've a 2012 iMac with 3TB Fusion drive. Had horrendous problems with it recently when (as it turned out) the main HD started to fail. I did multiple rebuilds and quite often all that was showing in Finder was the SSD (which as any Fusion owner will tell you, shouldn't normally be visible as a distinct drive). Spent literally hours (6+) on the phone to Apple Support and they failed to diagnose what I suspected was the problem all along. They really didn't want me to bring it into the local Genius Bar (I didn't fancy lugging it there myself but I was getting desperate) but in the end I had to. Turns out mine was within the date-band of a recall for failing Fusion drives although the actual serial number didn't confirm this. Of course it failed six months outside the 3 years of Apple Care - but they replaced it FOC anyway - given the circumstances.

Rightly or wrongly, I'd be wary about getting another Mac with a Fusion drive as a result.
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Any hard drive, whether SSD or spinning platters, could fail. Your unfortunate experience just reinforces the importance of back-ups and redundancy. Happy for you that Apple were willing to sort it out well outside of warranty!
 
If your buying an iMac 5K to run lightroom, I wouldn't bother, Ive got one and my friend who I shoot weddings with he has one too.
They are so slow with Lightroom because of the amount of information it has to render for the screen.
This is only in Lightroom, I'm hoping that Adobe bring out an update soon to speed things. Don't get me wrong, my 5K is amazing at everything else, just so laggy with Lightroom.

I also have the fusion drive, I would never pay the amount they ask for the SSD. The fusion has never let me down yet.
 
Fortunately, the performance issue has been resolved in recent version of Lightroom CC. It is true that before these patches it was't great. There was a lag. Not just on the 5k, but also on on hi-res PCs.

Now it is snappy (i5 3.3/m395)
 
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I must not have had the update yet then. I was using last night and it still seemed pretty crap!
 
Ok I have just made my purchase and got the following spec, 4ghz i7, 3tb fusion drive, 4gb graphics, 8gb ram (to be upgraded to 32gb by myself)
I will be collecting it at all he end of the month when I'm home from Italy.
 
Bulli1987 said:
If your buying an iMac 5K to run lightroom, I wouldn't bother, Ive got one and my friend who I shoot weddings with he has one too.
They are so slow with Lightroom because of the amount of information it has to render for the screen.
This is only in Lightroom, I'm hoping that Adobe bring out an update soon to speed things. Don't get me wrong, my 5K is amazing at everything else, just so laggy with Lightroom.

I also have the fusion drive, I would never pay the amount they ask for the SSD. The fusion has never let me down yet.
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Thank for that, I will be getting Lightroom as one of me editing tools.
 
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