Hello, a few months ago I asked about the best spec for a new iMac - Does anyone have any updated thoughts on this now please - should I wait for the new iMacs to arrive? Or is the spec below a good investment? How much RAM?
27" 3.6 8 core i9. SSD drive
And why not use the old thread or at least this time post in the correct forum, instead of spamming the Cubase Forums with the same bullshit again…?
Waiting is always a gamble with iMacs. I waited and waited until I just got over it and bought the 2017 model in 2018. I got the 27-inch quad-cord i7. It came with 8GB of RAM and I added a further 32GB giving me a total of 40GB. Also got an internal SSD and an external SSD for storage of samples, projects and templates. It does very well.
My opinion is wait if you can. But if you can’t then the i9 will be exceptional for music production.
Don’t worry about cpu speeds these days.
Buy plenty of ram after purchase and upgrade yourself if you can still do that in iMacs. Get 32gig ram. Spec out the for storage so I would go with at least 2tb if ssd.
I have a top spec iMac from 2012 when they went with the design that have now. I got the quad core i7. Cpu speed is still only ever using 20% of that thing.
Your biggest benefit will be ram speed and ram amount and storage size and storage speed.
I’d be happy with an i5 now they have hyper threading. Don’t bother with an i9. You’ll need to upgrade everything eles by the time your cpu runs out of fuel.
Also don’t bother upgrading the graphics.
Current i5 iMac don’t have hyperthreading but they’re now 6-core CPUs.
Blink
You seem to be correct for the most part. MacBook Pro i5 has hyper threading for many years now, older i5 iMacs had hyper threading but not the current gen.
I would perhaps go for the cheapest lowest end huperthreaded cpu. I9 just isn’t worTh the premium Doing audio work.
The current(2019) i9 iMac is great, with 32 GB and NVME SSD.
I installed a couple for clients, and decided to built a Hack lookalike because they’re that good, Coffeelake + Intel i9.
I had an 6700k/Skylake before, quite a difference. The i9 is much more powerful.
I don’t think the new iMac series will be much better, Intel hasn’t made that much progress.
Many thanks, one and all for your helpful replies. Apologies for using the '‘wrong’ forum…