so two of the main arguments that PC guys will make about Mac is number one
they're really expensive and number two they're very difficult to upgrade so
I've actually been using the Mac for over a month now as my daily driver and
quite frankly from a hardware perspective the iMac 5K 27 in retina
blah blah blah this thing actually not that bad especially if you look at the
projected price of other 5K displays and the hardware that's included with it but
that's not the subject of today's video for today's video we are going to be
cracking this bad boy open and talking about the experience of upgrading the
hardware versus the experience of upgrading the hardware on a typical PC
where in theory although I've never done this before it is much easier so I
intentionally ordered a Mac that didn't have a ton of storage didn't have a hard
drive so that I could add an SSD for more storage in our case a 1 tbte class
SSD now v310 from Kingston and I ordered
one with only 8 gigs of RAM a to see how OS 10 handled a more you know down toe
configuration and B Because upgrade RAM is so expensive when you order the Mac
in the first place that I wanted to instead throw in some Mac compatible RAM
in this case we're going to be throwing in 32 gigs of it also courtesy of
Kingston so uh come along for the ride
then guys we're going to upgrade the iMac
ensure Swift Victory with Corsair's highly responsive lightweight gaming
mouse the saber RGB click now to learn
more so I want to begin this adventure with a couple of shout outs to our
buddies at Kingston Who provided an SSD for us to use in the hard drive slot of
our SSD only iMac to add some not quite
PCIe fast but still very fast solid state storage and 32 gigs of their apple
compatible sodum memory as well as iix
it whose excellent guide and tools we use throughout the deconstruction
process speaking of which the first thing I noticed as I begun this process
was the tools required on a typical PC
I'd expect to be able to do everything I needed with a standard multi-bit
Screwdriver from the local hardware store and in most cases I'd never use
anything but the Philips head on the Mac the process starts with a special little
pizza cutter tool and Ires credit cards
a spudger torque screws throughout and finally some custom cut adhesive strips
for reassembly so because you can't just
up and decide you're going to open it one day for Giggles the local you know
store is unlikely to carry all that stuff and the Mac uses non-standard
internals so you'll need to order any replacement parts you need online anyway
there is a significant time barrier to
DIY Mac upgrades and repairs that will deter a great many people from Ever
attempting something like this especially if their Mac is the only
computer they have and they need it back up and running quickly the next thing I
noticed was the difficulty level compared to a PC an iMac upgrade is much
less friendly to newcomers there's no remove the side panel realize you're in
over your head and bail I mean once you cut the adhesive strips it's basically
point of no return most of the connectors are these thin fragile ribbon
cables with tiny contact pins on the ends that make even SATA's laughable 50
insertion rating look robust and the internal guts need to be handled with
extreme care to avoid damaging them and
to avoid damaging yourself the power supply contacts on the back of the PCB
are completely exposed but should not be touched under any circumstances this
could severely injure or even kill you disassembling the iMac was honestly
pretty nerve-wracking for me since I've never done it before and the only time
I've done something even similarly delicate was when I replaced the broken
screen on my wife's Droid DNA phone which was even then comparatively no big
deal since I was working with something that was already broken in that case
with the iMac one slip up could turn into a $3,000 paper weight I'm
exaggerating a little bit you could replace the dead components but still
very expensive so most people even with
an excellent written or video guide will not be comfortable tackling this and the
final thing I noticed about the process was the actual upgrade or modification
possibilities frankly there's just not a lot you can do to the iMac once you
finally got it open I was only about 30 minutes into my tear down and almost at
the part where I was ready to install my shiny 960 gig SSD when I got to the step
in the guide that said to remove the hard drive cable from the hard drive
well I bought an SSD only iMac instead of a fusion drive one so mine doesn't
have a hard drive or a hard drive cable
I called up I fix it to find out if we could get a replacement cable
overnighted to us only to have them tell me that because this model is so new
replacement cables are not available yet the data connection is a standard one so
I actually considered just soldering a standard SATA power lead onto the
proprietary header after checking the voltages but upon further reading online
I discovered that even if we did find one and put in an addin drive and solder
it together it's possible that the IMAX fan would spin at full speed all the
time thanks to the hard drive temperature detection not working
correctly so I Was Defeated as far as
the hard drive upgrade was concerned but I decided to finish the tear down for
fun and see what else we can change while we're in here removing the power
supply speakers and logic board was all
surprisingly okay pretty easy Once we' made it this far but honestly even
stripping it down down that far reveals very few user swappable components the
hinge at the back could be replaced with a Vasa compatible one if it was
available separately but as it is Apple requires you to decide at the time of
ordering the iMac which version you want the SSD could be replaced if Apple was
allowing thirdparty vendors to make replacement drives yet the wireless
module could be upgraded if it wasn't already a top-of-the line three spatial
stream AC module the graphics card could be upgraded if it wasn't a mobile GPU
soldered to the motherboard I mean I think you're starting to see a pattern
here it basically leaves the CPU um
although ours already has a 4790k in there so there's nothing better to put
in that socket and the RAM which could just as easily be accessed by pressing
the little release on the hatch at the back of the mac and doesn't require any
sort of tear down in order to swap at least until our Apple overlords decide
that we are worthy of being allowed to upgrade the other things
inside so I guess all that's left is the conclusion at this point are the
tradeoffs that Apple makes on the iMac 5K 27 in with respect to design function
cost and performance right or would I
prefer they did it differently as far as performance is concerned I actually
think for most people this is a pretty good sweet spot it uses a full desktop
CPU although we'll investigate thermal throttling in an upcoming video and
while Gamers might bemoan the R9 295 M GPU I will remind them that this is not
a gaming machine and frankly even a gaming GPU won't be playing AAA titles
at 5K anyway the cost is almost
justifiable in my mind for the hardware that you're getting and if the 5K
display could be recycled for another computer afterwards then that would be a
slam dunk for me and the design is subjectively beautiful but where the Mac
really let me down was in terms of the upgradeability not because it can't be
upgraded well enough it's actually more easily modifiable than many other super
slim devices mostly notebooks and especially tablets but because Apple
locks down what few choices I had for Hardware changes forcing me other than
RAM to pay far too much for upgrades to what is also a very expensive machine in
the first place at the checkout as a
tinkerer and a hardware geek the iMac 27in 5K retina just doesn't make sense
to me but I can hope that that will change over time as it becomes slightly
less shiny and slightly less new and we're allowed to put slightly other more
different things inside speaking of things that I hope will change over time
the way that mobile carriers operate I'd love to see more of them work the same
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new account today on top of everything else I said good stuff thanks for
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