The 27-inch Apple iMac Review (2011)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 27, 2011 2:30 AM ESTFunky Cables and SSDs
Apple doesn't just use the extra chassis volume in the iMac for heat dissipation, the system also comes equipped with a single 3.5" hard drive rather than the smaller 2.5" drives you find in notebooks. With the exception of the entry level iMac which comes with a 500GB drive, the remaining iMacs ship with a 1TB hard drive. By today's standards 1TB isn't anything to be excited about, particularly if you're storing a lot of music, photos and videos. The drives are all 7200RPM and come from either Seagate or Western Digital.
Retail drive cost is around $65 and the cost to Apple is likely even lower than that as an OEM ordering in bulk. With less than 3% of the cost of the high end 27-inch iMac being devoted to the hard drive it's clear that Apple doesn't view storage as anything other than a commodity. This philosophy extends to Apple's take on SSDs as well. While my review system didn't come with a SSD, Apple tells me that the 2011 iMacs use the same SSDs that the 2010 iMacs offered as an option (apparently a Toshiba based SSD - confirmed it's the same Toshiba SSD used in the 2011 MacBook Pro). The SSD isn't available on the $1199 iMac.
There's only one drive offered: a 256GB Apple branded drive for $500 in lieu of your internal hard drive. If you want it in addition to the 1TB hard drive it'll be $600 or $750 if paired with a 2TB hard drive. I don't have to tell you that while I believe an SSD is worth that much money, the drive Apple will sell you isn't exactly worth its upgrade cost.
While it's possible to add an SSD on your own, doing so requires a pretty lengthy teardown process. There are great tutorials online that help show you the way as well as provide you links to all additional cables that you'd need. There's no tray for the SSD to live in by default so you either have to cleverly adhere it to the inside of the chassis or order a part specifically designed to do so.
Apple opted for high quality fairly standard SATA cables for the iMac so I don't believe we'll see the compatibility issues on the iMac that we've seen in the MacBook Pro. In typical Apple fashion there are no spare power cables just laying around inside the iMac, instead you'll have to split power off from the hard drive to power both it and your aftermarket SSD. The whole process looks doable with a bit of patience and the right tools.
Apparently Apple likes to query HDD temperature quite frequently and uses that data in determining fan speed. In order to keep those requests off the SATA bus Apple supplies a custom power cable with surprisingly low gauge wires to not only power the hard drive but also return temperature data to Apple's fan controllers. The cable looks like this:
The standard SATA power cable is five pins. There's one pin for each voltage rail (3.3V, 5V and 12V) and two pins for ground. Apple's custom cable has seven pins, the remaining two are for temperature data. If you replace the iMac's internal hard drive with a drive that doesn't provide the appropriate temperature data, Apple's fan controller will go bonkers and try to cool what it assumes is an overheating drive.
When presented with this information, our own Brian Klug had a simple suggestion: short the two temperature pins to fool them into thinking all is good. It turns out that Apple provides a similar suggestion if you have a SSD-only iMac. Awesomely-named-site Hardmac.com has the scoop.
On the iMac, HDD power is provided through a proprietary connector on the motherboard. Short pins 2 and 7 (just connect the two using a simple wire) and you'll be able to run the iMac with no HDD plugged in and avoid the uber-spinning-fans. I'm guessing if you want to run with your own 3.5" drive in there that doesn't work with Apple's sensor setup simply short those two pins on the power cable itself (you'll have to tap into and modify the cable for this to work) and you should be good to go. Given that this is a review sample from Apple, and that Apple isn't too fond of me taking their review samples apart, I haven't tried the solution. But if shorting pins 2-7 on the motherboard header works, then shorting those two pins on the cable should work as well.
Now it's a pain that we even have to have this discussion, in fact it's the lack of easy upgrades that makes me so uncertain about the iMac. It's a fast machine with a great display but what happens in a couple of years when I need a faster GPU or even sooner when I want an SSD or larger HDD. At least the latter is possible.
With PCIe it's completely feasible to bring some modularity to these components. If anyone is willing to break the mold and explore something unique it's Apple, unfortunately I'm just not seeing that here.
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meorah - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
"Example: My 2007 24" imac was ~£1200. Resale value for similar spec on ebay today: ~£650-700. That means it's cost me around £500-£550 over 4 years, roughly the cost of a low-end desktop with an OK screen."its cost to you was 1200. it has depreciated around 500-550 over 4 years.
If you were trying to lease an imac for 500-550 over 4 years, then it would have cost you 500-550 over 4 years, but you bought it so that's not right.
psonice - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
What difference does it make? At some point (probably soon) I'll sell it and buy a new box. At that point it'll have cost me 500-550, for 4 years of use.KoolAidMan1 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
Depreciation on PC parts is much worse. I sell my old PC components on roughly the same schedule as my Macs, every 2-3 years, and with my Mac sales it is more than enough to help pay for its replacement. With my old PC parts, not so much. :)KoolAidMan1 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
You nailed it. You aren't "losing a good monitor" when you sell your old iMac for a new one, you're getting a better monitor with the major revisions.The 24" iMac had a great H-IPS panel in it, but the upgrade from that to the 27" IPS panels in the new iMacs is well worth the upgrade. Combine that with high resale value on Macs and its a pretty good deal, ridiculously easy upgrade too (just pack the old one in the box it came in).
DarkShift - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link
"Basically, macs are surprisingly cheap when you factor in the resale value. You either keep them long term (and they pay for themselves then anyway), or you sell after a few years and get half your money back."That's surpsrising considering that Mac's are mostly underpowered even as new. 650£ for 2007 iMac is way too much considering how slow it must be.
I have noticed, that most people who happily buy macs really don't know anything about tech stuff. Many still think that there must be something in Apple hardware that's better than in PC's while they often share same components.
For comparison, my self build PC workstation runs circles around these iMac's and it cost me less. And that is with Intel i7 2600K @ 4.6Ghz, 3 SSD drives,16GB ddr3 ram, Blue ray and USB 3.0 ports. And absolutely no blue screens after 5 months use. ;)
Benchmarked results:
Retouch artics Photoshop (with CS5): 9,5s
Cinebench R10 Rendering single: 7690
Cinebench R10 Rendering multi: 30536
Performance is the most important thing for pro users at it tells how fast you get your job done. Other issues are mostly cosmetic as most pro software is found for both Mac and PC. You get paid for using the tools, not for using them on specific OS.
jonwd7 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
Unless I am mistaken, your claim that the SSD in the 2011 iMac is the same old Toshiba one they've been using is pure speculation, but you don't treat it like so. If you attempt to order a new 2011 iMac with an SSD, the shipping date gets moved back significantly. There is some possibility that this is because they are switching to a newer, possibly Samsung-branded SSD. It being Samsung is just a rumor I believe, based on what they used in the newest MacBook Airs.kevith - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
I think it´s not a drawback, but quite the opposite, when a laptop or an all-in-one is fitted with too little RAM and/or too little HDD/SSD, since it´s the only things you can upgrade yourself.And that always cheaper than the price-premium the manufacturer will charge, certainly if the manufacturer is Apple...
So for my part I always look for laptops without SSD and with as little memory as possible.
tech6 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
Looks like a nice system that is held back by a design problem. Most laptops have easy access service panels for RAM and disk upgrades or replacements and the lack of this feature would rule this system out for me. That's a pity as it looks good and is reasonable value but if you have to remove the LCD and board just to get at the disk, that is just plain stupid industrial design.Johnmcl7 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
It's worse than stupid, it's entirely intentional as you're not supposed to repair or upgrade your iMac you're supposed to buy a new one. I cannot stand Imacs for their appalling internal design and I'm surprised a tech site like this can still praise Imacs given that laptops a fraction of the size are a two second job to get the drive out so there's absolutely no reason for the Imac to be any different.Even putting the Imac's terrible design aside, I'm not a fan of all in one PCs as I struggle to see the point unless you're really, really tight on space. You're essentially getting the disadvantages of both a laptop and a desktop but none of the advantages as the system is neither portable nor flexible/upgradeable or offering topend performance. I have a Dell U2711 which thanks to having just about every input possible can currently hook up to a few different machines and I expect it to last far beyond the current desktop PC it's mainly hooked up to. This new Imac seems even worse for use beyond the builtin computer with a very limited video input.
John
wintermute000 - Friday, May 27, 2011 - link
The main issue is that its still laptop-esque price/performance for a desktop.The lack of an apple tower or upgradable box is quite astounding. They could just keep it single socket, 8Gb RAM or under, and consumer (not pro variant) gfx cards.
2k USD can buy you a liquid cooled quad-core sandy bridge, mid-high GPU, SSD rig + a decent 24" IPS display with a spare 4 or so Tb of spinning platter storage. No contest except for OSX tax if your apps demand OSX. Back in the XP days the OS was worth the markup but no more IMO