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!

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.

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.)

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.

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.

My 2009 core 2 duo is still running smoothly with maxed out ram and an ssd upgrade. Granted, it doesn't do games, and I wouldn't want to train a neural net on it, but even as a primary desktop it's still nice to use.

2009 Mac Pro 2.66 quad here.

just did a 3.46 hex cpu upgrade. 32GB 1333 RAM sm951 AHCI pcie m2 boot drive (700MB/700MB) nvidia 1080 when it comes out.

bootcamp for games. 40" 4K Philips in os x for everything else.

So what is "Mac Pro" in this now? The case and the power supply?

The ship of Theseus :-)

well the cpu, ram, storage, and video card were never made by apple anyway. the case, motherboard, and other various hard bits and (maybe most importantly) operating system are still apple.

If you want ultimate speed then take the RAM module out of Slot 4 because that CPU natively wants a triple-channel arrangement

good point, I can probably get by with 24GB.

2006 core 2 duo 6600 dell running just fine here. It's exactly 10 years old. running windows 7. Using HDD and graphic cards so weak it has no fan.