1 00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:01,680 I'm gonna be upfront with you guys. 2 00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:04,040 When I saw that Apple had updated the iMac, 3 00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:07,160 I didn't really think about it twice. 4 00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:09,420 I mean, it's just a refresh 5 00:00:09,420 --> 00:00:12,180 and they didn't make a bunch of noise about it. 6 00:00:12,180 --> 00:00:14,780 But then I saw that it came with 7 00:00:14,780 --> 00:00:18,780 up to a core i9 eight core processor. 8 00:00:18,780 --> 00:00:21,660 At that point, I had all kinds of questions like, 9 00:00:21,660 --> 00:00:23,460 how the heck are they gonna cool one of these 10 00:00:23,460 --> 00:00:25,220 in a standard iMac? 11 00:00:25,220 --> 00:00:27,740 Does this make the iMac Pro basically pointless? 12 00:00:27,740 --> 00:00:30,660 And how quickly can we get one? 13 00:00:30,660 --> 00:00:32,740 Well, let's answer that last one first. 14 00:00:32,740 --> 00:00:34,280 It takes about a week. 15 00:00:34,280 --> 00:00:36,260 As for the rest of it, stay tuned 16 00:00:36,260 --> 00:00:39,140 because we are about to find out. 17 00:00:39,140 --> 00:00:42,000 The Hot Docs uses the Ergo Docs design, 18 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:43,760 which keeps you comfortable typing away 19 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:45,200 for long periods of time 20 00:00:45,200 --> 00:00:49,300 and features QMK firmware and hot swappable key switches. 21 00:00:49,300 --> 00:00:59,470 Check it out at the link below. 22 00:00:59,470 --> 00:01:01,410 Within its iconic trapezoidal box 23 00:01:01,410 --> 00:01:04,770 and sandwiched between three pieces of protective styrofoam, 24 00:01:04,770 --> 00:01:09,710 we find the beast with its glossy 27 inch 5K retina display 25 00:01:09,710 --> 00:01:11,530 front and center. 26 00:01:11,530 --> 00:01:12,710 I've got to praise Apple 27 00:01:12,710 --> 00:01:14,950 for their multiple layers of protection 28 00:01:14,950 --> 00:01:17,090 to ensure that your iMac reaches your desk 29 00:01:17,090 --> 00:01:18,990 without any scratches or scuffs. 30 00:01:18,990 --> 00:01:21,870 But I do think that there's room to improve 31 00:01:21,870 --> 00:01:24,330 on the amount of non-recyclable material 32 00:01:24,330 --> 00:01:25,790 that they use for packing. 33 00:01:25,790 --> 00:01:28,530 The same can also be said for the IO. 34 00:01:28,530 --> 00:01:30,750 It's mostly great, actually. 35 00:01:30,750 --> 00:01:32,650 We've got two Thunderbolt 3 ports 36 00:01:32,650 --> 00:01:34,350 and more than enough type A, 37 00:01:34,770 --> 00:01:38,530 and you can charge up to four USBs for the average desktop, 38 00:01:38,530 --> 00:01:41,210 especially when you consider that Wi-Fi is integrated 39 00:01:41,210 --> 00:01:43,950 and the magic keyboard and magic mouse 40 00:01:43,950 --> 00:01:45,710 need to be charged so infrequently 41 00:01:45,710 --> 00:01:47,250 that they can share a cable. 42 00:01:47,250 --> 00:01:48,870 But dang it, Apple. 43 00:01:48,870 --> 00:01:50,590 If we're gonna shower you with praise 44 00:01:50,590 --> 00:01:53,710 for including 10 gig Ethernet on the iMac Pro 45 00:01:53,710 --> 00:01:54,930 and the Mac mini, 46 00:01:54,930 --> 00:01:57,010 then you've got to expect the opposite 47 00:01:57,010 --> 00:01:59,010 when you don't do it. 48 00:01:59,010 --> 00:02:00,930 It's not even an option here, 49 00:02:00,930 --> 00:02:03,930 which is a real shame because you're stuck either, 50 00:02:04,770 --> 00:02:08,010 whether you're charging up to five level network speeds 51 00:02:08,010 --> 00:02:10,770 or shelling out several hundred dollars 52 00:02:10,770 --> 00:02:13,830 for a Thunderbolt to 10 gig Ethernet adapter. 53 00:02:13,830 --> 00:02:15,210 As for the rest of the design, 54 00:02:15,210 --> 00:02:18,330 Apple has taken the if it ain't broke, don't fix it approach, 55 00:02:18,330 --> 00:02:21,990 remaining fundamentally unchanged since 2009. 56 00:02:21,990 --> 00:02:25,650 In fairness, it somehow still looks pretty sexy, 57 00:02:25,650 --> 00:02:28,890 but the bezels and especially the chin bar 58 00:02:28,890 --> 00:02:31,910 are just massive for a modern machine. 59 00:02:31,910 --> 00:02:34,770 And we feel like even timeless designs, 60 00:02:34,770 --> 00:02:37,390 need to be refreshed once in a while. 61 00:02:37,390 --> 00:02:41,370 That said, the 2019 iMac does have one welcome remnant 62 00:02:41,370 --> 00:02:45,170 of that bygone era, user expansion. 63 00:02:45,170 --> 00:02:46,650 Apple's still rocking it 64 00:02:46,650 --> 00:02:50,810 with four easily accessible DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, 65 00:02:50,810 --> 00:02:52,490 which means unlike Anthony, 66 00:02:52,490 --> 00:02:54,510 when he purchased this machine for review, 67 00:02:54,510 --> 00:02:57,930 you can skip the Apple tax and install your own memory 68 00:02:57,930 --> 00:03:00,110 to not only save yourself a little cash, 69 00:03:00,110 --> 00:03:02,170 but to push your system RAM capacity 70 00:03:02,170 --> 00:03:04,030 to a staggering 128 gigs. 71 00:03:04,930 --> 00:03:08,070 That's double what Apple has available on their store 72 00:03:08,070 --> 00:03:10,210 for about the same price. 73 00:03:10,210 --> 00:03:12,710 So Apple, I don't want to beg. 74 00:03:12,710 --> 00:03:15,250 It's not dignified, but I will. 75 00:03:15,250 --> 00:03:17,740 Whatever the next iMac looks like, 76 00:03:17,740 --> 00:03:20,000 please don't take this away from us. 77 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:22,280 Between this iMac and the Mac mini, 78 00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:24,580 you've shown us that there are still some people there 79 00:03:24,580 --> 00:03:25,840 who care. 80 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:28,380 It's not too late to change. 81 00:03:28,380 --> 00:03:29,760 Enough about the future though. 82 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:31,780 Let's take a look at the machine we have today. 83 00:03:31,780 --> 00:03:35,100 So we kitted ours with the top end Core i9-9900K, 84 00:03:35,100 --> 00:03:38,100 and we're going to take a look at what it's capable of. 85 00:03:38,100 --> 00:03:41,100 So we're going to take a look at the top end Core i9-9900K-F, 86 00:03:41,100 --> 00:03:44,100 and that F means that it omits the Intel HD graphics 87 00:03:44,100 --> 00:03:47,100 that typically come along for the ride in consumer chips 88 00:03:47,100 --> 00:03:50,170 in favor of slightly improved thermals. 89 00:03:50,170 --> 00:03:54,170 Unfortunately, while our unit also has dedicated graphics, 90 00:03:54,170 --> 00:03:57,170 we opted for the Radeon Pro RX 580X, 91 00:03:57,170 --> 00:04:00,170 figuring that if we needed a lot more horsepower, 92 00:04:00,170 --> 00:04:02,170 we could get more with our Radeon 7 93 00:04:02,170 --> 00:04:03,170 in an external enclosure. 94 00:04:03,170 --> 00:04:05,170 No onboard GPU means that Intel's quick setup 95 00:04:05,170 --> 00:04:08,170 and sync video encoding is out of the question here. 96 00:04:08,170 --> 00:04:11,170 It's a good thing that Apple is big on OpenCL. 97 00:04:11,170 --> 00:04:14,170 So onto our performance analysis then. 98 00:04:14,170 --> 00:04:17,170 We're going to focus mainly on the iMac's CPU performance 99 00:04:17,170 --> 00:04:20,170 with emphasis on how well Apple managed to cool 100 00:04:20,170 --> 00:04:23,170 our beastly eight-core hyper-threaded CPU 101 00:04:23,170 --> 00:04:25,170 if they managed it at all. 102 00:04:25,170 --> 00:04:32,340 And actually, it keeps our Core i9 going 103 00:04:32,340 --> 00:04:36,340 over even long workloads with core temperatures hovering 104 00:04:36,340 --> 00:04:39,340 around the low to mid-90 degree mark. 105 00:04:39,340 --> 00:04:42,340 Now to be clear, that's higher than what I'd be comfortable with, 106 00:04:42,340 --> 00:04:46,340 and that's especially true once there's some dust in the cooler 107 00:04:46,340 --> 00:04:47,340 a couple of years later, 108 00:04:47,340 --> 00:04:50,340 but it's actually better than I expected. 109 00:04:50,340 --> 00:04:54,340 And if, like us, you have concerns about the long-term health 110 00:04:54,340 --> 00:04:57,340 of any machine that's running hot enough to cook instant noodles, 111 00:04:57,340 --> 00:05:01,340 you can use a piece of free software called Max Fan Control 112 00:05:01,340 --> 00:05:03,340 to bump up your fan speed. 113 00:05:03,340 --> 00:05:06,340 So then at full, our temperatures looked a lot better 114 00:05:06,340 --> 00:05:11,110 and a lot more sane without our machine becoming unreasonably loud. 115 00:05:11,110 --> 00:05:14,110 But not all of the news here is good, 116 00:05:14,110 --> 00:05:16,110 or even necessarily bad. 117 00:05:16,110 --> 00:05:18,110 Some of it's just kind of weird. 118 00:05:18,110 --> 00:05:21,110 While our CPU frequency is constant, 119 00:05:21,110 --> 00:05:24,110 which would indicate that we're not throttling, 120 00:05:24,110 --> 00:05:28,110 let's just overlay the base clock on this graph and... 121 00:05:28,110 --> 00:05:30,140 Ooh. 122 00:05:30,140 --> 00:05:32,140 We're a little off there, aren't we? 123 00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:35,140 Let's zoom right in on the first minute of the temperature 124 00:05:35,140 --> 00:05:37,140 and CPU speed graphs 125 00:05:37,140 --> 00:05:38,340 and... 126 00:05:38,340 --> 00:05:40,340 That's weird, too. 127 00:05:40,340 --> 00:05:42,560 It's not even thermal throttling. 128 00:05:42,560 --> 00:05:43,560 So... 129 00:05:43,560 --> 00:05:46,560 It kind of smells like a power limit issue. 130 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:49,660 Sure enough, then, if we look at the package power 131 00:05:49,660 --> 00:05:51,660 using Intel's power gadget, 132 00:05:51,660 --> 00:05:54,660 we're actually running at around 80 watts sustained 133 00:05:54,660 --> 00:05:58,660 instead of the 95 that they rate this chip for. 134 00:05:58,660 --> 00:06:01,660 Now, it's unclear whether this is a deliberate measure 135 00:06:01,660 --> 00:06:03,660 to protect constrained VRMs 136 00:06:03,660 --> 00:06:06,660 or if it's because of a firmware bug, 137 00:06:06,660 --> 00:06:09,660 but what we do know is how it impacts performance. 138 00:06:09,660 --> 00:06:11,660 So, in some of our tests, 139 00:06:11,660 --> 00:06:15,660 we got similar performance to our comparison 9900K, 140 00:06:15,660 --> 00:06:17,660 but heavier loads like Cinebench 141 00:06:17,660 --> 00:06:20,660 revealed the 6% difference 142 00:06:20,660 --> 00:06:23,660 that we would expect from lower clock speeds. 143 00:06:23,660 --> 00:06:28,660 So, it looks like Apple managed to tame the beast, 144 00:06:28,660 --> 00:06:31,660 but they only did it by removing some of its venom, 145 00:06:31,660 --> 00:06:32,660 which is... 146 00:06:32,660 --> 00:06:35,070 sort of cheating. 147 00:06:35,070 --> 00:06:38,070 We did find outliers the other way, though. 148 00:06:38,070 --> 00:06:39,070 This is really interesting. 149 00:06:39,070 --> 00:06:41,070 So, in this Blender render, 150 00:06:41,070 --> 00:06:44,070 we managed higher performance 151 00:06:44,070 --> 00:06:47,140 than our reference comparison CPU. 152 00:06:47,140 --> 00:06:49,140 This one took us a little while, 153 00:06:49,140 --> 00:06:50,140 but here's what happened. 154 00:06:50,140 --> 00:06:53,140 Remember that controversy over motherboard manufacturers 155 00:06:53,140 --> 00:06:56,140 basically factory overclocking Intel CPUs 156 00:06:56,140 --> 00:07:00,140 by removing some of Intel's recommended constraints? 157 00:07:00,140 --> 00:07:01,140 Well, around that time, 158 00:07:01,140 --> 00:07:04,140 we switched to running all of our benchmarks 159 00:07:04,140 --> 00:07:07,140 at Intel recommended turbo boost settings, 160 00:07:07,140 --> 00:07:12,140 which is something that we can't manually control on the iMac. 161 00:07:12,140 --> 00:07:14,140 So, then it looks like what Apple has done 162 00:07:14,140 --> 00:07:18,140 is played around with the turbo clock speed dials a little bit, 163 00:07:18,140 --> 00:07:22,140 provided that the chip does not exceed their power limit, 164 00:07:22,140 --> 00:07:25,140 which actually resulted in a continuous boost clock speed 165 00:07:25,140 --> 00:07:28,140 of 3.8 GHz in this test. 166 00:07:28,140 --> 00:07:30,140 As a sanity check, 167 00:07:30,140 --> 00:07:33,140 we ran our comparison 9900K with its limiter disabled 168 00:07:33,140 --> 00:07:35,140 and a beefy cooler, 169 00:07:35,140 --> 00:07:37,140 and it performed better still. 170 00:07:37,140 --> 00:07:39,140 So, now you know. 171 00:07:39,140 --> 00:07:41,420 Which leads us, then, 172 00:07:41,420 --> 00:07:43,940 to the price. 173 00:07:43,940 --> 00:07:47,540 It's actually pretty reasonable 174 00:07:47,540 --> 00:07:50,540 compared to building your own comparable desktop setup 175 00:07:50,540 --> 00:07:52,540 with the same features. 176 00:07:52,540 --> 00:07:54,540 This is something we've talked about before, 177 00:07:54,540 --> 00:07:55,540 and it's happening again. 178 00:07:55,540 --> 00:07:57,540 If you want that hardware, 179 00:07:57,540 --> 00:08:01,740 Macs are generally actually not that expensive. 180 00:08:01,740 --> 00:08:03,770 So, the question then becomes, 181 00:08:03,770 --> 00:08:05,900 should you buy one? 182 00:08:05,900 --> 00:08:08,900 At 2700 US dollars for the Core i9 version, 183 00:08:08,900 --> 00:08:10,900 you're looking at someone who needs 184 00:08:10,900 --> 00:08:14,900 the high per-thread performance of the Core i9-9900K, 185 00:08:14,900 --> 00:08:19,900 as well as excellent, if not the best multi-threaded performance, 186 00:08:19,900 --> 00:08:22,900 8 cores really is a nice sweet spot, 187 00:08:22,900 --> 00:08:24,900 and an excellent 5K display. 188 00:08:24,900 --> 00:08:26,900 So, we're looking at photographers, 189 00:08:26,900 --> 00:08:27,900 video editors, 190 00:08:27,900 --> 00:08:29,900 and other visual media professionals. 191 00:08:29,900 --> 00:08:31,990 Looks like they kind of nailed it. 192 00:08:31,990 --> 00:08:33,990 In fact, ironically, 193 00:08:33,990 --> 00:08:35,990 in some ways, they nailed it a little too hard, 194 00:08:35,990 --> 00:08:37,990 because it's actually a better machine 195 00:08:37,990 --> 00:08:39,990 for a lot of those users 196 00:08:39,990 --> 00:08:41,990 than the iMac Pro, 197 00:08:41,990 --> 00:08:44,990 and that computer is nearly twice the price. 198 00:08:44,990 --> 00:08:46,990 So, then, if you're one of those people 199 00:08:46,990 --> 00:08:48,990 who needs that magic blend of performance 200 00:08:48,990 --> 00:08:51,990 and dorm-friendly form factor, 201 00:08:51,990 --> 00:08:54,020 you really can't go wrong. 202 00:08:54,020 --> 00:08:55,020 Unless... 203 00:08:55,020 --> 00:08:57,090 paying for computers that don't perform 204 00:08:57,090 --> 00:08:59,090 quite as the specs indicate 205 00:08:59,090 --> 00:09:02,820 and come with a mouse that you can't use while you charge it 206 00:09:02,820 --> 00:09:03,820 just... 207 00:09:03,820 --> 00:09:08,640 straight up rubs you the wrong 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