I’m seriously considering buying a 27″ 5k imac but wondered what other mac users thought about the pros/cons of buying an “off the peg” imac from somewhere like John Lewis (lots of warranty), vs going through the apple store itself and selecting a few upgrade componenets.
As far as I am aware you can only upgrade components with Apple themselves, and as with all macs, once you’ve bought it you cant really upgrade it.

I’d be using it to edit large (D810) DLSR RAWs in Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as some 4K video from a drone in final cut or adobe premier (but I am a noob at the video!) Beyond that it will be a very shiny regular home office machine for everyday tasks.

Trying to future proof myself as much as possible I am looking at the 3.8GHz processor, which if bought from anyone apart from apple comes with a 2TB fusion drive.

Now, I could accept the package as it is, but I am very tempted to upgrade the Fusion drive to an SSD at purchase.
I will not be storing finished files on the main SSD/mac but will need a quick drive for the RAW/video files while they are being edited.

The alternative solution is to buy a USB 3 external SSD and use that for the RAW/video files etc while being edited, and them move them to another external HDD/SSD once finished.
I quite like the idea of an NAS storage drive to access photos/music when away from home without the mac being permanently on, and to get music/films down to the TV in the lounge, but again have no experience with this yet)

What do you folk reckon, is paying apple more money for storage a false economy?!
If upgrading the Fusion to an SSD would you also part with another £180 for a 4.2GHz processor?

Thanks in advance…

Can you poat a link to the slec you are looking at ? I would say there is a trade off between spending money on processor vs ram – my guess is 16gb ram would be more useful than further pricessor upgrades.

USB 3 is very fast so external drives / SSD should run at full soeed ie same as internals (worth checking)

You could post a question on MacRumors forum or search their threads

The 5k 27” is a lovely piece of kit 8)

I’ll be honest with you, I’d go for the lot, right from the off.

I’m typing this on a 5 year old Macbook Pro. I bought the highest spec I could get, and it was money well spent

I upgraded it last year to an SSD, and the difference that made was huge. I edit mahoosive photoshop files and it never struggles.

Well out the loop on Mac, so can’t really advise beyond agreeing with binners, max out ram and processor as much as you can afford, you sound like you’ll get away with the minimum internal storage no bother, think they are all SSD. External storage I wouldn’t bother you can buy those later.

This is probably a useful article for you talking about 4k editing, which will no doubt be your most intensive work. doesn’t seem any choices on the video card, so I’d make sure that is capable for what you want to do(google that separately and read about it). Quick scan of the article below, guy seems to reckon people will be happy enough.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/7/15751814/apple-imac-2017-first-look-review-specs-ram-4k-video-editing

There’s an imac pro out in december as well. Probably cost a fair bit though, but if you are feeling flush, might be worth waiting for.

I’ll be honest with you, I’d go for the lot, right from the off.

+1. If you’re using it professionally (i.e. to make money) it’s a no-brainer as a) you can work quicker b) it’s tax-deductible so doesn’t really cost that much more c) it’ll last you longer before you have to get a new one

I’d advise keeping a regular eye on the official Apple refurb store though. I managed to pick up a top-spec iMac for about £800 less than RRP. 2% cash back via Quidco on refurbs too, which is £60 odd on a £3k iMac!

If it were me though I’d probably wait until the iMac Pro is officially announced (although it could well be horrendously expensive, but you never know!)

Whatever you do go for the X graphics card and seriously consider learning FCP-X, it’s cheap and really flies compared to premiere, I don’t even bother with proxies and work on native footage and it still feels snappy and fast.

Ram is upgradable and I would not pay Apple prices for the ram. I think it depends how you work re the HDD but whatever you go for I would have an ssd in there somewhere be it fusion or normal. I don’t keep any crap on my mac as I’m constantly moving jobs (images and video) on and off the Mac as they get finished, so there are no home snaps or music clogging the machine up and once a job is delivered it’s archived elsewhere so I manage with a 512gb SSD and many terabytes of separate storage.
If I im working on a big project I use an external SSD and normal bigger HDD’s connected through thunderbolt and USB-C
I used to use a fast SSD as a scratch disk for Photoshop but don’t do that now, I have realised that the real bottleneck is now poor software (that’s you Adobe) and how the graphics card works with the software, the hdd and processor speeds are not the problem.

I get all my macs from the refurb store and often they are brand new and just old inventory they want to shift. There is a website that monitors the Apple store and emails you when the model comes in stock.

Cheers chaps,
Lovely as the new iMac Pro would be I cant really justify the enormous £4900 price tag (even if it does come with more RAM, SSD storage and CPU as standard.
I just don’t think I’d ever stretch it enough to warrant the cost.
I mean, saving the money between the standard iMac and iMac Pro would buy me 14 days in Iceland taking photos, which is probably a much better life experience!

Jamba, spec is as follows;
27” 5K iMac
3.8GHz i5 (or 4.2GHz i7 for +£180)
Standard 8gb RAM (but will be upgraded to 16bg with a couple of stick of Corsair)
3TB Fusion (or 512 SSD for +£90 OR 1TB SSD for +£450)
Radeon Pro 580

Sadly the refurb store isn’t stocking the newer Kaby Lake chips (only the Skylake) and there IS a definite advantage to getting Kaby Lake.
I’m a little reluctant to drop a fair wedge of cash on a 2015 machine with older architecture.

Note that it’s not necessarily about “stretching” it per se, but perhaps the added longevity through having a better spec. But £4900 is a lot. I’m off to splash out rather less on a macbook shortly…

£4900

😆 jebus!

My gut feel, in priority order

RAM to 16 for sure
512 SSD with as you say external external storage for the library – cloud will get cheaper too
Processor upgrade lowest priority and maybe not at all – 32GB RAM maybe better use of cash than the processor upgrade

£4,900 is for the iMac Pro chaps

I know, that’s what i’m laughing at! 😆

If you are going to pay ‘extra’ then get the 4gb graphics over ram or processing speed, ram is cheap and be be upgraded later to 32 or 64gb I would get whatever leaves some slots free so,you can keep what comes with the Mac but have room to upgrade. The latest MacBooks have just gone into the refurb store, if you check,the upgrade cycle on macrumours it may give you an idea when the same happens with the iMac.

Jeebus.
The porn on my £280 laptop is top quality.