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Comment by m_eiman | Hacker News Reader

I have a 2010 iMac that's unbearably slow at the moment, and since I suspect that the hdd is the reason I'm considering upgrading to a 1TB SSD (since I don't want less storage space).. But including installation, that's roughly $400. And spending $400 to prolong the life of an iMac with a fairly crappy GPU seems a lot. But on the other hand a new iMac (with a non-Intel GPU) is $2000 or more. Hard decision!

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Would that $400 investment increase your resale price somewhat (probably not 1:1, but you will get utility out of it).

Alternatively, just buy whatever's on sale for small SSDs and do a fusion-drive on it.

I'll keep the iMac until it gives up the ghost completely, so resale value isn't a parameter. It's more a question of "will the $400 give it enough longer life to make more sense than buying a new one now".

Perhaps I should go with a 500GB SSD and transfer the movies and whatever else is taking up space to the server. And then buy a new iMac once they put the next-gen GPUs in them.

Why not a hundred dollar ssd and a drive upgrade kit for $50, so you can keep your current drive as well? Or fit a new 3TB drive while you're at it.

What 1TB SSD costs $400? The 512GB SSD I bought merely cost me $120. The 1TB Model costs a slightly more than twice that.

So far I've been completly disappointed with my purchase. Compared to my 3TB HDD I've spent more money yet only see a 2x improvement in speed compared to my HDD for sequential loads. Sure it now boots much faster but that's hardly worth the money I've spent on it.

I was just about to say I've never seen 1TB SSD's anywhere near that cheap - Apple in Australia still charges $800 to add a 1TB SSD to a MacBook Pro. But I see Amazon now sells SanDisk X400 1TB SSDs for $230 USD.

Alas, everyone still seems to recommend Samsung Evo if you want reliability (I do), and $330 for a 1TB EVO 850 is still a little more than I want to pay. (Especially when a 2TB spinning disk selling for $95 now.)

get a smaller one for your OS + common apps and a used nvidia gpu from a newer mac.

an ssd is a completely different paradigm. it's night and day, even on an old sata bus.

this shoudn't even be a question. hdd computers are completely unuseable to me now. i sat down at one the other day and i thought it had crashed and almost rebooted it, but it was just chugging the disk.

Hard to switch GPUs in an iMac, isn't it?

I have considered switching out both the HDD and the DVD drive to get space to build a Fusion drive, but I kinda want to keep the DVD drive; it's the only one we have in the house.

Hm. Maybe I should build a Fusion drive and add an external optical drive...

not really. it's just a pci card. just make sure you get one with a mac compatible firmware.

It's just a PCI card, buried beneath 51 disassembly steps: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2389+G...

A bit more complicated than I'd like :)

i was referring to mac pros. i don't use imacs because of this reason.

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