The slowest 2017 iMac on Earth - How to diagnose which is the issue?

[hamnickel]

Hi all!

Thanks for your help and for reading this post. I’ll try to be as short as possible. I have an iMac 2010 and it’s still running like a champ today. This machine became very sluggish twice, once in 2016 when I installed Mavericks on it. So I bought some RAM, upgraded it to 14GB of RAM and then it ran like new. Last year it became very slow again but the issue went away when I emptied my 1TB HD which was almost totally full.

This year I finally had some money to upgrade this old machine. After months searching I found a great deal, a 2017 iMac (4K retina, core i5, Radeon Pro 555 2GB, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD) for 1.250 USD (yes, that’s what we call a pretty good deal here in Brazil). I bought it. When I tested it I noticed that it was running poorly, the system was sluggish but I thought “well, I’m going to format this, install Catalina and everything will run smoothly”. I went home and did that but, oh, I was wrong. Since I formatted and installed Catalina this machine is running very poorly. Compared to my 2010 iMac it’s super annoying to use this and there were times I wished to throw it in the wall.

I have screens freezing / unresponsive and loading icons all the time. I’m using it as a regular user for daily chores (Chrome browser with a few tabs opened and very lightweight apps opened like Spotify and Notes). I’d like to know if there’s a way to inspect the hardware via software to check if there’s some faulty component causing those issues. I already installed iStats Menu but I can’t see anything wrong judging by its stats.

I already bought two 8GB of RAM and I have a SSD that I want to install on it. I bought a kit to open it as well. These things are coming from China and they’ll take a long time to get to my house (2 months or so). It’s my fist time doing that and I know it’s not going to be an easy task but companies here charge 250 USD just to install RAM and SSD on an iMac (if you already bought the RAM+SSD, if not they can charge you up to 500 USD or more for this job).

I’m trying to work using this computer but it’s such a chore. I don’t have those problems with my old iMac and that bothers me. Both are running mechanical HDs so I don’t think that this machine is slow because of the HD. There are cases here in Brazil from people selling old 2013/2014 MacBook Pros that are actually 2009/2010 MacBooks. They change the About screen on the system to pass it as a newer model. So after knowing this, anything is possible, and this machine is so slow that I really doubt about its specs.

Anyway, if anyone can help me with that I’ll be very glad and grateful!

Thank you so much if you read all this rant. If you don’t want to waste your time just read the TL-DR.

TL-DR: I bought an used 2017 iMac (MRT32BZ/A) last month and it’s running slow as ****. It seems very inferior compared to my iMac 2010. I have screens freezing / unresponsive and loading icons all the time. I’m using it as a regular user for daily chores (Chrome browser with a few tabs opened and very lightweight apps opened like Spotify and Notes). I’d like to know if there’s a way to inspect the hardware via software to check if there’s some faulty component causing those issues.

 

[ferrarr]

You can run Apple Diagnostics, How to use Apple Diagnostics on your Mac - Apple Support. You can also check Activity Monitor, in Applications > Utilities.

Have you run Disk Utility > First Aid, on the hard drive?

 

[hamnickel]

Hi, @ferrarr! Thanks for your suggestions! I'm going to run Disk Utility - First Aid today. I was going to run a little sooner but I needed to work so I'll run it later. Judging just by the monitoring of iStats I see no issues on CPU / Memory and HDD usage. But if I had to guess... I think that the problem is with the HD.

 

[harryb2448]

Sunds like you have a slow old platter drive in that computer. In particular the 21.5" model is slow as molasses using a 5400rpm laptop style drive.The go was to have purchased a model with a fullSSD/Blade PCI-e drive.

 

[hamnickel]

Here's one example of how slow / sluggish it is. It's like that all the time

 

[chscag]

Harry is likely spot on. The 2017 iMac 21.5" models use a slow 5400 RPM drive unless they have a Fusion drive installed instead. But even at that, they're slow.

Also, the description he gave may indicate a failing hard drive. Removing it and replacing it with an SSD should vastly improve speed.

Edit: Just watched the video and it's beach balling with just about every movement of the cursor. Does look like a failing hard drive to me.

 

[hamnickel]

Another example

 

[hamnickel]

I'll surely do that! I'm wondering if it's possible to run the system from an external SSD right now while I wait for the stuff to upgrade the machine. Also, do you know if I'll need some adaptor to replace the HD with the SSD? I haver a Crucial MX500

- - - Updated - - -

What I don't understand is why my old 2010 iMac with a 5400RPM hard drive runs so smoothly and flawlessly with worst specs and the 2017 iMac runs like a 7 year old Windows machine?

- - - Updated - - -

No issues found after running Apple Diagnostics. I ran Disk Utility - First Aid as well and had zero issues.

 

[hamnickel]

Edit: Just watched the video and it's beach balling with just about every movement of the cursor. Does look like a failing hard drive to me.

Do you know if it's possible to diagnose a failing HD via software somehow?

 

[hamnickel]

I'm googling on how to run an external SSD with an iMac. If all it needs is a USB 3.0 to SSD adapter cable I'll try that.

 

[ferrarr]

It’s hard to know, when the entire screen is not seen. Other apps may be open and using resources. You should also use Activity Monitor and look at ram/memory usage.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[Ratsima]

I have the same machine but with an Apple SSD and have never seen that sort of performance degradation. It would be nice if you would show us a screenshot of Activity Monitor sorted by CPU, or run this in a terminal session and give us a screenshot. (Wait a few seconds for it to sort.)

/usr/bin/top -ocpu -F -s 2 -n30

 

[TotalSolutions]

Ratsima, That code is nice, got any more tips or please tell where to find these. Thanks

 

[NSMacGuru]

Have you given EtreCheck a try? It's helpful in diagnosing issues...

 

[Ratsima]

Ratsima, That code is nice, got any more tips or please tell where to find these. Thanks

I just worked this one up myself. I have an alias to it in my .bashrc file:

alias zop='/usr/bin/top -ocpu -F -s 2 -n30'

So, if I want to run it I don't have to type the whole thing. I usually keep a terminal window open on my desktop all the time with this running. That way I can easily spot a runaway process.

 

[hamnickel]

Just an update: I thought that by running the system via an external SSD connected with a SATA to USB 3.0 cable adapter would do the trick for me. I ordered the cable and today I used Carbon Copy to copy my HD to the SSD. I did some quick speed test with the external SSD using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and it was giving me around 450 MB/s on writing and reading. I changed my startup disk in System Settings to the SSD and rebooted. The system now is even worse running through the external SSD. I only had Chrome opened with 21 tabs when I restarted the system. The system started and it took 14 minutes just to stop the beachballing while loading Chrome. That was the only application opened. I tried to open Safari while Chrome was loading and it took five minutes for it to load. Apps in background and tabs on Chrome gets unresponsive all the time (when I right-click an app in the dock I see 'Application Not Responding').

That's bad news for me because I was putting all my hope in a bad HD. The problem seems to be deeper than that and I have no idea what to check or where to start.

 

[hamnickel]

I have the same machine but with an Apple SSD and have never seen that sort of performance degradation. It would be nice if you would show us a screenshot of Activity Monitor sorted by CPU, or run this in a terminal session and give us a screenshot. (Wait a few seconds for it to sort.)

/usr/bin/top -ocpu -F -s 2 -n30

Thanks for the tips, Ratsima! Here are some screenshots from activity monitor and terminal.

 

[hamnickel]

I'm running EtreCheck right now. I'm not sure if the system is running through the external SSD. I'll google how to check that. If anyone knows please give me a tip! The only test I did was to take some screenshots and check where the files were saved. They are being saved to the internal HD of the iMac and not to the SSD.

 

[ferrarr]

Have you tried to start up in safe mode?

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

To see which drive is the startup drive, go into System Preferences, and select Startup Disk. It will show you which disk/drive you are running off. You can also use that access panel to switch to a different startup disk option.

 

[hamnickel]

40 minutes more or less after restarting the system and only now it seems to be more or less stabilised. However I had to close all my tabs on Chrome and I'm running only Chrome with three tabs opened at the moment. It was running like that: