# Do you think this computer will do the job well enough?



## EBicks (Oct 30, 2018)

Hey so I'm seeking some advice from you veterans out there. Currently I'm running a 2011 macbook pro as my studio computer. Needless to say it's beginning to be a struggle. Especially being maxed out at 16GB Ram with an old i7. It does well, but loading up a bunch of Kontakt instances and multiple reverbs and it can't handle it. I have my eyes on an iMac on ebay that I think is at a very reasonable price at the moment. Let me know how you think a computer with these specs will perform:

2015 27" iMac
4.0GHz i7 (think it's a quad core?)
64GB RAM (yay)
3TB Fusion Drive (i think)

Looking to bust through my current limit of around 20 kontakt tracks at a time without having to freeze them, and be able to run multiple reverbs and plug ins with running out of CPU power.

Any thoughts or information would be greatly appreciated! Haven't bought a new computer in 7 years..

Thanks guys!


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## jneebz (Oct 30, 2018)

Considering you're coming from a 16GB MBP, you will notice a large improvement in performance. I run a 250+ track template (mix of orchestral, electronic) on a 2012 iMac i5 2.9GHz with 32GB RAM, with VEPro (on the same machine) with very few problems.

I too bought a refurbished late 2015 (for the 64GB RAM, of course ) and am making the transition in January. Will be streaming my samples from a BlackMagic Multidock too, which I'm looking forward to...

Good luck!


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## EBicks (Oct 31, 2018)

jneebz said:


> Considering you're coming from a 16GB MBP, you will notice a large improvement in performance. I run a 250+ track template (mix of orchestral, electronic) on a 2012 iMac i5 2.9GHz with 32GB RAM, with VEPro (on the same machine) with very few problems.
> 
> I too bought a refurbished late 2015 (for the 64GB RAM, of course ) and am making the transition in January. Will be streaming my samples from a BlackMagic Multidock too, which I'm looking forward to...
> 
> Good luck!



Nice! Thanks for the info. Yeah I would consider that a huge template so I’m sure it will be more than enough for me then, ha ha. Thanks for the help!


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## Damarus (Oct 31, 2018)

it should be noticeably faster in every way. I assume it's a good deal, but an SSD would be much faster, but the fusion will suffice.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 31, 2018)

EBicks said:


> Looking to bust through my current limit of around 20 kontakt tracks at a time without having to freeze them, and be able to run multiple reverbs and plug ins with running out of CPU power.



A computer like that should be able to run way more than 20 Kontakts and lots of plug-ins.

The weak link is the Fusion drive. I'd suggest replacing it with an SSD (or multiple ones, internal and external) and relegating it to back-ups or something. That alone makes more of a practical difference than an entire computer upgrade!


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## EBicks (Oct 31, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> A computer like that should be able to run way more than 20 Kontakts and lots of plug-ins.
> 
> The weak link is the Fusion drive. I'd suggest replacing it with an SSD (or multiple ones, internal and external) and relegating it to back-ups or something. That alone makes more of a practical difference than an entire computer upgrade!



Right now I'm running my samples from the internal SSD that I installed on my MBP. I was planning on just streaming samples from an external SSD via USB 3.0 on the iMac. Would that be sufficient? Right now I have virtually no lag time and super fast loading (I know it's not ideal to stream from an internal though). I will probably just take the SSD out of my MBP and use that as external since it already has all samples on it. Will this work fine?


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## Oguz Sehiralti (Oct 31, 2018)

It should be quad core, yes. 

Is it the retina model? 

About the drives: I believe 2011 MacBook pros had SATA III, so the bus speed is faster than usb 3. But the iMac should have 2 thunderbolt 2 ports which are faster than SATA III. If you can find thunderbolt 2 drives or enclosures, you might get a better performance.


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## Damarus (Oct 31, 2018)

EBicks said:


> Right now I'm running my samples from the internal SSD that I installed on my MBP. I was planning on just streaming samples from an external SSD via USB 3.0 on the iMac. Would that be sufficient? Right now I have virtually no lag time and super fast loading (I know it's not ideal to stream from an internal though). I will probably just take the SSD out of my MBP and use that as external since it already has all samples on it. Will this work fine?



Yup, that would work! Also mentioned above, if you wanted more speed from those drives you could move them to a Thunderbolt drive or find a thunderbolt enclosure.


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## EBicks (Oct 31, 2018)

Oguz Sehiralti said:


> It should be quad core, yes.
> 
> Is it the retina model?
> 
> About the drives: I believe 2011 MacBook pros had SATA III, so the bus speed is faster than usb 3. But the iMac should have 2 thunderbolt 2 ports which are faster than SATA III. If you can find thunderbolt 2 drives or enclosures, you might get a better performance.



Yes it is the Retina model, thanks!


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## EBicks (Oct 31, 2018)

Damarus said:


> Yup, that would work! Also mentioned above, if you wanted more speed from those drives you could move them to a Thunderbolt drive or find a thunderbolt enclosure.



Awesome. Thanks so much for the help guys!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 31, 2018)

Oguz Sehiralti said:


> About the drives: I believe 2011 MacBook pros had SATA III, so the bus speed is faster than usb 3. But the iMac should have 2 thunderbolt 2 ports which are faster than SATA III. If you can find thunderbolt 2 drives or enclosures, you might get a better performance.



As I've posted in other threads, chances are that the bus won't make a difference in the real world (because you're unlikely to saturate it).

But the newer Macs use USB-C connectors for Thunderbolt. I don't know what's lurking behind those connectors on the 2015 iMac.


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## EBicks (Nov 2, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> As I've posted in other threads, chances are that the bus won't make a difference in the real world (because you're unlikely to saturate it).
> 
> But the newer Macs use USB-C connectors for Thunderbolt. I don't know what's lurking behind those connectors on the 2015 iMac.



I believe the connections on the back are USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 2, 2018)

EBicks said:


> I believe the connections on the back are USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2



Could be, but you do follow what I'm saying, right? That Apple now sends Thunderbolt (the data) over a USB-C connector?

USB-A through -C are the physical connectors, and USB 1 through 3.1 are the data formats.

It's likely to get confusing, and even more so when - if rumors are correct - Apple replaces the Lightning connector on iOS devices with a USB-C connector!


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## JohnG (Nov 2, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The weak link is the Fusion drive



Nick is right. Do not get a fusion drive; get SSDs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 2, 2018)

Yeah, Fusion drives were an okay idea when SSDs were expensive - a tiny SSD used to cache frequently-accessed stuff off the spinning drive they were attached to - but nowadays that's silly.

And I can't imagine that scheme would work for streaming samples anyway.


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## EBicks (Nov 2, 2018)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Yeah, Fusion drives were an okay idea when SSDs were expensive - a tiny SSD used to cache frequently-accessed stuff off the spinning drive they were attached to - but nowadays that's silly.
> 
> And I can't imagine that scheme would work for streaming samples anyway.



I am planning on streaming my samples off an SSD via USB 3.0 (or thunderbolt if necessary- would need to find an enclosure), and will run session off a separate HD via usb as well. Or I could run session off same SSD as samples. Not sure which is better. 

Do you guys think that will work fine?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 2, 2018)

The session can be anywhere - it's a very small file and it loads into RAM.

I'd put everything on SSDs, and it probably doesn't matter where they are. Standard practice is to use one drive for your system (i.e. macOS and all your programs) and other drives for your sample libraries. Or you could create a partition on an SSD for your system and leave the rest of the drive for libraries.

But really, I think you'd be fine putting everything on a single drive if you want.

One caveat: a fellow posted in another thread that writing to SSDs strains them, but the article he linked was from 2013, and I don't think that's much of a consideration anymore.

The main thing is to back everything up multiple times so that you don't lose anything if a drive fails. I've never had an SSD fail, just spinning drives, but you don't want to take a chance.


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