Possible IMac Upgrade

jonritter

Senior Member
I posted this on macrumors as well. I'm considering upgrading my older IMac, maybe a SSD and upgrade ram. I would use it for work, MS office work, mainly heavy excel, email, Remote Desktop. Also for photo editing, a mix of Lightroom and affinity photo. With the stats below worth upgrading?

CPU: 3.06 core duo
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForece9400 256 MB

My other computer is a work computer that I can use its a MBA 4Gigs of ram 1.6 I think processor.
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
I've upgraded my iMac to 12GB ram and couldn't be happier. A friend of mine got an external SSD to hold his system OS and he's noticed a MAJOR improvement with his speed opening and saving photoshop files.
 

RocketCowboy

Senior Member
I posted this on macrumors as well. I'm considering upgrading my older IMac, maybe a SSD and upgrade ram. I would use it for work, MS office work, mainly heavy excel, email, Remote Desktop. Also for photo editing, a mix of Lightroom and affinity photo. With the stats below worth upgrading?

CPU: 3.06 core duo
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForece9400 256 MB

My other computer is a work computer that I can use its a MBA 4Gigs of ram 1.6 I think processor.

The Core Duo processor is pretty old ... I'm thinking 2007ish?? As I recall, it's a 32-bit processor, so it's not able to recognize more than the 4GB of RAM currently installed. I still have my first MacBook pro ... with a Core 2 Duo processor, and it only recognizes 3GB of the 4GB of RAM installed.

So that said ... yes, Lightroom would LOVE for you to have more memory installed. I would suggest 8GB as a minimum, and as Marcel said, 12GB or more would be ideal. I run 16GB of RAM on my laptops, and 32GB of RAM on my desktop ... but I don't notice a significant speed improvement with Lightroom on the desktop, so 12-16GB is probably the sweet spot. Lightroom also can take advantage of the GPU on your graphics card, so an iMac refresh would help there.

I don't think you'll see much improvement for your email and remote desktop use, but photo editing will for sure. Depending on the functions you're using in Excel, you may see a performance improvement there too.
 

Mark F

Senior Member
I posted this on macrumors as well. I'm considering upgrading my older IMac, maybe a SSD and upgrade ram. I would use it for work, MS office work, mainly heavy excel, email, Remote Desktop. Also for photo editing, a mix of Lightroom and affinity photo. With the stats below worth upgrading?

CPU: 3.06 core duo
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForece9400 256 MB

My other computer is a work computer that I can use its a MBA 4Gigs of ram 1.6 I think processor.

On my Mid 2012 MacBook pro with Core i5 2.5 processor... best upgrade I have done with it was 16 gigs ram and a 500gig ssd hard drive. Officially it will only support 8 gigs but it actually supports 16 with the newest osx
Put the old 500 gig hard drive in the place where the optical drive was and use it for extra storage like photos. https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-500GB-Ultra-NAND-SATA/dp/B072R78B6Q

According to everymac.com, yours is a late 2009 and can support up to 16 gigs. I would start at at least 8 and see if it speeds it up. Then go to a ssd upgrade.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...uo-3.06-21-inch-aluminum-late-2009-specs.html
 
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PapaST

Senior Member
I have a late 2009 27" iMac with Duo Core 3.06 Proc. I upgraded to a 1TB SSD and 12GB of RAM. I use it for email, browsing, plex watching, texting, remoting and some video conferencing. With those tasks it's a little bit slow but not bad. I however could not see using it for editing. I will admit I haven't tried Lightroom or Photoshop on it (I use a different computer for those tasks). Given the wait times for my normal day use I think the proc would be a dog for editing.

A big reason I keep it around is the 27" monitor is just astounding. I use the thunderbolt connector to connect my MBP to it and use the laptop for Final Cut Pro editing on the big screen.
 
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