iMac 2015 vs 2017

[noggin2k1]

Howdy all,

Currently have a trusty late 2012 MBP (one of the early retina's) - it's been flawless, but at coming up to 6 years old, it deserves a bit of a rest. It's currently connected through a Samsung 1080p 24" monitor (sacrilege I know wasting that beautiful display).

Financially, the 27" 5k is outstanding value, when you factor in what you'd have to pay for the monitor alone, plus the hardware, so it'll be my preferred route. There also appears to be some excellent genuine apple rectified options on the used market which I'm currently exploring.

Usage is literally browsing, a bit of video playback, and LR with a bit of PS. Absolutely no gaming.

For the same sort of money, I could get one of the following;

1. 2015 model, 4Ghz i7 Skylake, 16GB DDR3 RAM
2. 2017 model, 3.4GHz i5 Kaby Lake, 16GB DDR4 RAM

I know LR is relatively CPU intensive, so I'd have though the i7 could potentially be a better option - but the DDR4 memory on the 2017 could potentially negate that?

Interested to know people's thoughts..

 

[photosen]

Whatever you do, make sure to get it with an SSD as opposed to a regular drive; then make sure you keep all your photos and docs on an external regular drive. A friend's iMac just failed, it's still covered by warranty but they will only backup her info for a fee.

Upgrades are a huge hassle, so don't count on getting more RAM or changing the drive later; and taking them in for warranty is also a huge hassle given their physical size.

 

[Tom_N]

Interested to know people's thoughts..

The latest iMacs have Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, in addition to USB 3 (USB-A) ones. So you might want to consider that.

I see that you have not mentioned what sort of internal drive (SSD, Fusion Drive, or HDD) each machine has, That is also something to consider.

 

[noggin2k1]

As far as photos go, everything is stored on 2x WD My Book Duo Thunderbolt drives (effectively 4x 4TB drives in RAID10).

So my live library won't be stored on the iMac, which means the HD/SSD should make very little difference.

They're also TB2 connection - easy enough to use a 2015 with TB2, or a 2017 with TB3 (via adapter).

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

 

[Mike Boreham]

There also appears to be some excellent genuine apple rectified options on the used market which I'm currently exploring.

I have not heard of "genuine Apple rectified" Macs on the used market and would be a bit suspicious.

Over the years I have bought several genuine Apple Refurbished Macs direct from Apple (not a third party). These have always been indistinguishable from new and carry the full Apple warranty and Applecare cover as new items, but are a good saving.

 

[bent christian]

2017 if an iMac.

2015 if a Macbook Pro.

 

[robgendreau]

As far as photos go, everything is stored on 2x WD My Book Duo Thunderbolt drives (effectively 4x 4TB drives in RAID10).

So my live library won't be stored on the iMac, which means the HD/SSD should make very little difference.

They're also TB2 connection - easy enough to use a 2015 with TB2, or a 2017 with TB3 (via adapter).

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

You’re saying having the Lr catalog on an internal say 1TB HDD Fusion (which these days has a pretty small flash component) doesn’t matter vs an SSD?

 

[bent christian]

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

Thunderbolt 2 is 20GB/s, but through bi-directional channels. Thunderbolt 3 is 40GB/s, and the same. Thunderbolt 2 maxes out at around 1GB/s each way. Probably less with overhead (800MB/s?). Thunderbolt 3 will do twice that. PCIe SSDs are hitting 3GB/s, so yeah, drives exist that are much faster and can certainly saturate a Thunderbolt 3 bus.

2017 iMac, for sure. 2015 wins for most uses with the Macbook Pro (USB-A, SD card reader).

 

[johnbandry]

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

Thunderbolt 2 is 20GB/s, but through bi-directional channels. Thunderbolt 3 is 40GB/s, and the same. Thunderbolt 2 maxes out at around 1GB/s each way. Probably less with overhead (800MB/s?). Thunderbolt 3 will do twice that. PCIe SSDs are hitting 3GB/s, so yeah, drives exist that are much faster and can certainly saturate a Thunderbolt 3 bus.

I'm wondering where you get your figures from. I've not seen any benchmarks that show TB3 delivering only 2GB/s. 40Gb/s with a 20% overhead would be 4GB/s max per channel.

For anyone interested, some (partisan) info on TB3 here and overall here .

 

[noggin2k1]

As far as photos go, everything is stored on 2x WD My Book Duo Thunderbolt drives (effectively 4x 4TB drives in RAID10).

So my live library won't be stored on the iMac, which means the HD/SSD should make very little difference.

They're also TB2 connection - easy enough to use a 2015 with TB2, or a 2017 with TB3 (via adapter).

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

You’re saying having the Lr catalog on an internal say 1TB HDD Fusion (which these days has a pretty small flash component) doesn’t matter vs an SSD?

 

[noggin2k1]

I'm not overly fussed about TB3 - TB2 still delivers 20GB/s throughput, which is infinitely more than what any drives I'll ever be purchasing are capable of!

Thunderbolt 2 is 20GB/s, but through bi-directional channels. Thunderbolt 3 is 40GB/s, and the same. Thunderbolt 2 maxes out at around 1GB/s each way. Probably less with overhead (800MB/s?). Thunderbolt 3 will do twice that. PCIe SSDs are hitting 3GB/s, so yeah, drives exist that are much faster and can certainly saturate a Thunderbolt 3 bus.

2017 iMac, for sure. 2015 wins for most uses with the Macbook Pro (USB-A, SD card reader).

Just to be clear; it's 2017 iMac i5 vs 2015 iMac i7, not iMac vs Macbook Pro.

Totally agree with the potential of TB3 and what those PCIe SSD's can do, but again, they aren't on my roadmap anytime soon - getting far too much value out of typical HDD's.

 

[tonyswash]

I recently got a top of the range iMac 27inch, did my own upgrade to 40GB of RAM. This was to replace an upgraded 2008 Mac Pro, which had held its own for a surprisingly long time, and which had 4 internal hard drives. So the new iMac presented the problem of the best way to store a very large (100,000+ images) Lightroom catalogue and photo collection which were too big to fit on an internal SSD.

So I opted for a 1TB internal SSD for the system and apps. I then bought an Inateck Aluminum USB-C RAID HDD Dual Bay Enclosure. I put two 500GB SSDs in the enclosure in a striped RAID 0 configuration which gives me 1TB of storage (which I could increase at a later point) connected via a Thunderbolt 3 port. I use this for just the Lightrooom catalogue and Previews. I get a Read speed of 884GBs per second and Write speed of 820GBs per second.

Also bought a Inateck Aluminum USB 3.0 to SATA Dual-Bay USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 Inch & 3.5 Inch HDD in which there are two 3TB HHDs in a striped RAID 0 configuration which gives me 6TB of storage, connected via USB 3.1. I use this for my actual photo collection (which takes up over 3TBs). I get a Read speed of 322 GBs per second and Write speed of 300GBs per second.

This set up works pretty well. I get a lot of fast storage which I can upgrade if necessary and Lightroom runs very fast, fast image browsing and loading, fast copying, fast exports. Sweet.

Here are the links to the kit I mentioned:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073P2C3FM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01KWQ8WFG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[noggin2k1]

Just incase anyone is interested;

Opted for base spec 2017 27" iMac (3.4GHz quad), added extra 16GB of RAM to take up to 24GB.

2x WD My Book Duo Thunderbolt 8TB drives in RAID10 used as my single LR environment (both live and backup) - theses are TB2 (so using a TB2-TB3 adapter), but bonkers cheap - £300 for 8TB of storage in RAID10!

All in all, more than capable setup with no lag or hold ups dealing with 24MP RAW files.