Deciding on Mac Upgrade

[austinmd]

Hi, I am deciding between a new 2019 iMac 27" with either:

3.7 i5 6-core | 8GB RAM | AMD Radeon Pro 580x 8 GB | 1 TB SSD

Apple 27" iMac with Retina 5K Display Z0VT-MRR12-03 B&H

or

3.6 i9 8-core | 8GB RAM| AMD Radeon Pro 580x 8 GB | 512 TB SSD

Apple 27" iMac with Retina 5K Display Z0VT-MRR12-22 B&H

In other words, the difference between the two is i5 6-core with 1 TB SSD, or i9 8-core with 512 TB SSD.

Additionally, do you think buying from B&H is just as good as buying from Apple? i.e. will I be getting the exact same product? Just worried that somehow buying from B&H means that the computers aren't put together as perfectly as they would be buying from Apple.

Thanks!

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

Some things to note:

1. B&H has a no return policy which they have enforced in the past. So beware. I personally have purchased items from them with no problem whatsoever but you do need to be aware of the no return policy.

2. The i9 iMac is noisy (fans ramp up) and really does not provide that much more computing power. I advise you to save $ and go with the i5 and larger SSD instead.

You asked about the same product from B&H as Apple.... An iMac is an iMac whether it's sold by B&H or directly from Apple. They are the same machines and B&H is an authorized Apple dealer. But again, just be aware of their return policy.

 

[Slydude]

I purchased my current iMac from B & H in 2015 after Charlie mentioned them as a possible source. Their price was a tad better than the vendor I had previously ordered from. I haven't had any issues that I can trace to ordering from them.

I also considered the refurbished/clearance section of the Apple site but they did not have a configuration I was interested it.

 

[austinmd]

Bump.

For more about my uses, I am working on an illustrated/immersive book that I would like to turn into something as beautiful as it can be. Although I am a novice, I would like to do video editing, illustration, 3d modeling, animation, etc.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

First, the i9 8-core is about 35% faster than the i5 6-core which is a significant bump in performance based on your use case. The other thing that is going to help greatly is increasing the 8GB of RAM to at least 32GB. The 512GB SSD is not a big deal since you can grab a large external SSD to augment.

I have no info on the fan noise or whatever, so you'll have to do more research on that. But purely on a performance basis, I would recommend the 8-core version of the machine.

From a place of purchase perspective, B&H is just a retailer that sells Macs built by Foxconn for Apple in China. Whether you buy the machine from B&H or Apple, you get the same machine. What will vary are the return policies and possibly pricing. Generally, you are better of purchasing directly from Apple where possible.

 

[austinmd]

I guess what I'm wondering about then is this: if a faster processor is recommended to help me do intensive projects, wouldn't those intensive projects produce fairly huge files? In which case, 512 GB will be used pretty quickly. And even if it is not completely used up, it will have a significantly higher % of space used than the 1TB...which would mean that the computer, even with its faster processor, would be slowing down simply because more of it is being used.

 

[MacInWin]

Put the files you are working on at the time on a big external drive, preferably a big external SSD. That way the internal drive isn't going to fill up as fast. Manipulating big graphics files can also take a lot of memory, which is why the upgrade to 32GB would make sense. The interfaces on those machines are super fast, and if you get an external to match, you won't be disappointed.

 

[ferrarr]

You can usually get an external SSD 512GB or 1TB for less than $150, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N14MM96/?tag=macforums0e4-20.