Just bought my xmas present to myself early this year

[Xerra]

2-3 weeks for delivery /grumble.
Taps foot.
COME ON!!!

Can't wait to replace this iMac with the new one.

[Steve Elliott]

lol yes the great feeling you get when ordering new computer goodness...Then the (annoying) wait for it to arrive.  Congrats.

[Amon.]

That is a juicy Mac.

[Xerra]

That is a juicy Mac.

Would hope so for that <ouch> price. I've been dithering about getting another one for around six months now. Almost went the second-hand route a few times and thought I'd found the machine I was going to buy until a mate talked me out of getting a refurb and pointed out the differences in tech spec between a 2017 machine and just getting the most recent Apple machine with a bit more ram. As it is, I just added an extra 8GB but I'm thinking I might upgrade it again without killing the warranty. As it's got a USB-C port I could also stick a mental GFX card on it later on, if it does get a bit behind.

I was originally going to get this model second hand for exactly the same price:
Apple iMac with Retina 5K display - all-in-one - Core i7 4.2GHz - 64 GB - 1TB SSD - LED 27" - English - Gold Grade Refurbished

That looks tasty as well until you consider it's a 2017 model, so the SSD is probably a bit slow after all this time, and it's second-hand. The faster CPU doesn't mean anything when you consider it's a quad core. It has a AMD Radeon Pro 580 in it but that's well out of date compared to what the new beast has.

 

[Steve Elliott]

Yes looks really good, the SSD is a bit small though.

[Xerra]

Yes looks really good, the SSD is a bit small though.

Yeah, I agree. And I almost put in another £400 to upgrade it to 1TB then thought maybe I can just be a bit better about handling all my stuff.

On this Mac, I have a 1TB fusion drive. There's currently 561GB of that available, and this has all my development stuff on it, all my music, and  a lot of emulation files that I probably don't even need as I have retro-pi on a raspberry, if I want to tinker with that. I'm just going from memory as a quick browse shows I've also got a lot of pdf files of old magazines, back ups of stuff on the drive, which is pointless as if the drive failed then they're gone too, and all sorts of other things.

So, I have bit bucket for storing all my code. I'd keep local copies of stuff I'm actively tinkering with, but stuff like the huge resources folders that I might use one day, and code for languages I've not touched in years, etc. I've got a Qnap that I use as a media player with two 4TB drives in it so I can run Plex on the telly downstairs. I've still got shedloads of space on that so all my music and stuff can go on there. I keep a 2TB seagate drive on the Mac which I can use for installing stuff onto, and just keep basically the O/S and dev stuff that I want accessed quickly for compiling speed on the internal drive.

If it all goes according to plan then I shouldn't need anything else.

[Steve Elliott]

I totally understand, I've been juggling with all my drives recently and managed to spread data much more evenly - but still back up data in the process.  In todays computing files are ridiculously massive so it's a real micro management job of ensuring you don't run out of storage - but also back-up your data too.

[Qube]

Nice, you'll love it

When I opted for the Mac mini I went for the 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM. I know I could have stripped it down and added RAM cheaper but as it's not super straight forward I thought sod it.

512GB SSD is easily enough and if needed you just shove data files on an external HDD ( or SSD for speed )

One thing that did really annoy me was how terrible the integrated GPU was for a 2020 ( 2018 really ) model and no option to opt for something better. So I bought an external GPU ( Blackmagic eGPU with a Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM ). It's nice and quiet and covers all my needs but bloody crazy expensive at £599 - Guess I can reuse it if / when I grab new Mac mini's.

[blinkok]

I had no idea. An external GPU. Do they have those for windows?

[Qube]

I had no idea. An external GPU. Do they have those for windows?

They do - They require a USB-C or Thunderbolt port and you can buy an enclosure and GPU of your choice. Mine is plugged into a Thunderbolt port which is faster than USB-C but I don't know if the eGPU would be just as fast via USB-C. Also keep in mind that with an eGPU you'll lose about 10%-15% performance compared to if the GPU was internal. Personally I've not seen any performance loss with anything I've tried but I think that applies when using the eGPU along with a laptops internal display. Luckily my setup goes from Mac mini > eGPU > Display port on the external monitor.

One more point is that overall an eGPU setup is big and expensive so if you have a desktop PC then just replace the internal GPU. Mind you, for the price you could build your own half decent gaming PC

[Xerra]

Buddy of mine has a GPU on his Mac mini as he went a similar route to what you've done. If I'm able to do it for this iMac then that's a route I'm definitely going to take when I need to. The price I'm paying for this computer I really want 10 years out of it.

The other 27 inch iMac I had, which the missus now uses, is 10 years old now and still going strong. That's one of the things I love about these machines.

[Xerra]

Delivery date Tues 29th September....

taps feet.

Can't wait...

[Ashmoor]

That is a sweet rig. May I ask what are some of the advantages over a similarly priced PC?

[GfK]

That is a sweet rig. May I ask what are some of the advantages over a similarly priced PC?

I am definitely all ears for this one.

[Qube]

That is a sweet rig. May I ask what are some of the advantages over a similarly priced PC?

I am definitely all ears for this one.

Uh oh, here we go with the great PC vs Mac debate

From my point of view ( just a couple.... for now ) :

1.. Windows 10 is horrible, looks horrible and just feels wrong and unfinished. MacOS is a much better experience in stability, use-ability, security and no messing with drivers.

2.. Many PC's are huge and noisy whereas Mac's are mostly whisper quiet unless under really heavy CPU load but return to quiet once that task is over.

3.. PC's lose their value a lot quicker than Mac's.

4.. If you have other Apple devices then they all integrate with the Mac brilliantly.

Tiny list to begin with... Flame away boys, flame away