Upgrading my 2015 imac 27"

[flyboyy]

I have an iMac 27" 2015 with a 250 GB SSD. I would like to either get a new internal SSD or an external additional SSD because I have to be constantly be mindful of filling it up.

Any suggestions like brands to get/avoid ?
I also have 8 GB Ram so would like to increase that. Any suggestions?

I'm in Canada.

 

[pigoo3]

Upgrading the RAM is very easy...can upgrade to as much as 64GB of RAM.

The internal SSD is a difficult DIY project...but it can be done if someone is experienced...or is very motivated...patient...and careful. Here's the ifixit.com procedure:

iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Blade SSD Replacement

If your iMac was configured with a solid state drive or Fusion Drive, it includes a blade SSD on the back of the logic board. Use this guide to...

www.ifixit.com

You could try an external SSD...but since you're used to the speed of an internal SSD...you may find an external SSD slow. You could give this a try...and see if it meets with your approval.

Nick

 

[pigoo3]

I should mention...if you had the internal SSD replaced professionally...could be cost prohibitive compared to the full used value of the iMac itself. Could get a local estimate to see if this would be agreeable.

Nick

 

[ferrarr]

I usually head to Crucial.com and see what upgrades are available for my macOS or winOS PC's. It'll tell you what memory upgrades as well as disk drive upgrades are available. Then I shop around for better pricing.

 

[pigoo3]

2015 27" iMac's use a blade/NVMe SSD...and unfortunately it has a proprietary Apple connector. I took a look at Crucial.com...and I didn't see any blade/NVMe SSD's compatible with Apple products. I didn't do an exhaustive search...so maybe I missed something.

OWC (macsales.com) does have them...but there's a special note saying the blade SSD's OWC sells are NOT compatible with Late 2015 27" iMac's!

27-Inch iMac SSD Upgrade Kit for 2013 - 2019 iMac Models

Upgrade your iMac 27" (Late 2013-2019) storage with an OWC SSD. Easy DIY installation and significant performance gains. Find your compatible SSD today!

eshop.macsales.com

- Nick

 

[ferrarr]

I found this,

Memory RAM & SSD Upgrades | Crucial.com

Crucial Memory and SSD upgrades - 100% Compatibility Guaranteed for - FREE US Delivery.

www.crucial.com

 

[pigoo3]

I should also mention that 2015 27" iMac's can support dual internal drives.

The internal blade SSD (what the OP has)...is installed in a very difficult to get to location on the logic board (the rear-side of the logic board)...the side opposite of the display.

But...since 2015 27" iMac's also could be configured with a 3.5" Fusion drive at the time of purchase...2015 27" iMac's also support a 2.5" or 3.5" drive.

In the photo...location of 2.5"/3.5" drive (green)...easy to get to. Location of blade/NVMe SSD (red)...very difficult location on rear-side of logic board:



- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

You're absolutely right Bob.

I was looking for blade SSD's at Crucial for Late 2015 27" iMac's...and I forgot to look for 2.5" SSD's as well (which are also supported).

Thanks,

Nick

 

[pm-r]

OWC (macsales.com) does have them...but there's a special note saying the blade SSD's OWC sells are NOT compatible with Late 2015 27" iMac's!

That seems a bit odd, and I wonder what the lack of compatibility is???

NOTE: Aura Pro X2 is not compatible with iMac17,1 (Late 2015).

27-Inch iMac SSD Upgrade Kit for 2013 - 2019 iMac Models

Upgrade your iMac 27" (Late 2013-2019) storage with an OWC SSD. Easy DIY installation and significant performance gains. Find your compatible SSD today!

eshop.macsales.com

That would have been my first choice, even if they might be a few dollars more. But not to be in this case it seems...

Try the external drive method I guess, and maybe utilizing one of the faster ports available on the iMac and the external enclosure.

Just don't be too disappointed if you don't get some of the advertised and rated speeds that some of the ports and connections supposedly support. But that should only really affect those applications used that need to use a lot of disk read and writes I would imagine.

But I must say the crucial SSD looks pretty darn good even if the replacement is a bit of a hassle. At least their drives are compatible and an adapter is included which I guess is needed. A nice convenience and bonus.



- Patrick
=======

 

[Rod]

If you decide to take it on you will need a couple of specialised tools see Nick's link to iFixit in Post #2. Personally if it was a spare device I'd give it a try. I fyou decide on the external SSD route give this discussion on MacRumors Forum a read. External Bootable SSD Late 2015 iMac
Like the poster I too thought a Thunderbolt connected drive would be preferable but maybe USB-3 would be enough for your needs as this guy wanted to use the EHD as a boot drive.

 

[pm-r]

Like the poster I too thought a Thunderbolt connected drive would be preferable but maybe USB-3 would be enough for your needs as this guy wanted to use the EHD as a boot drive.

I know my 2011 iMac uses older and slower versions of the Thunderbolt connections, but I had similar thoughts years ago when I purchased a 2.5 in Buffalo spinner HDD that I use for Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) backup as well as occasionally using it as a boot drive.

I also use a Western Digital Black 3.5 in 7200 RPM spinner HDD for the same usage but connected via one of my Firewire 800 ports.

The point of my comment is that I discovered the speed of the Thunderbolt Buffalo Drive was barely or even the same speed as the WD Black HDD, but I am assuming that was due to the speed capabilities of the drive itself, rather than the theoretical speed of the Thunderbolt 1 connection which is theoretically an amazing 10 Gbps!!!

I'm sure that a faster drive would certainly have a faster speed, at least for file transfers and backups.

By the way, I do not notice any major slow down when I have used either backup drive as a boot Drive using the same connections. I do not usually do any video or media or photo editing or retouching.

At least your 2015 iMac has USB 3.0 Port connections which have some speedy advantages along with much cheaper costs for attached drives. And theoretically, any decent solid state drive should be even much faster than any spinner drive. Another alternative to consider.

Good luck with your upgrade regardless of route you take and maybe do a bit more of the Google searching on such an upgrade for various users results. Experience is good to know.



- Patrick
=======

 

[Rod]

Very true Patrick.
I like a number of others in this forum have a Samsung 2TB T5 SSD which ran my 2015 MBP quite well from a CCC Bootable Clone using USB-3 so just a personal recommendation based on my limited experience with external SSD's.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I have an iMac 27" 2015 with a 250 GB SSD. I would like to either get a new internal SSD or an external additional SSD because I have to be constantly be mindful of filling it up.

Any suggestions like brands to get/avoid ?

Your iMac has USB 3.0 ports good for 5 Gbps data transfer.

The easiest way to go would be to get an external SSD to offload a bunch of stuff to. Consider this one which is currently an excellent deal:

Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSD – CT1000X8SSD9
$90
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YD5TK4F/

I also have 8 GB Ram so would like to increase that. Any suggestions?

Unless you are doing something that is exceptionally RAM hungry (3D graphics, movie editing, lots of advanced graphics effects using Photoshop plug-ins), you have plenty of RAM.

 

[Rod]

I too only had 8GB RAM and was still able to run graphically demanding games like Borderlands 2 the only thing that limited my device beyond that was CPU speed.

 

[pm-r]

Unless you are doing something that is exceptionally RAM hungry (3D graphics, movie editing, lots of advanced graphics effects using Photoshop plug-ins), you have plenty of RAM.

Can one still assume that using the the memory monitor in Activity Monitor.app should give the user a pretty good idea if they have adequate memory installed or not???

Just wondering in case some of Apple's latest MacOS versions have changed the situation.



- Patrick
=======

 

[Rod]

Patrick I think that's a "yes" to your question. This is my M1 MBP with 16GB RAM and 5 apps running. The "pressure" being the critical reading.

 

[pm-r]

Patrick I think that's a "yes" to your question. This is my M1 MBP with 16GB RAM and 5 apps running. The "pressure" being the critical reading.

Thanks Rod,
Actually my question was aimed mainly for the benefit of those with recent Mac models who might be contemplating increasing their installed RAM memory and who might read the post.


Apple seems to have increased a much more efficient use of memory with their more recent Mac OS versions from what I have read.

It's sort of hard to lose or disregard the old adage: one can never have enough installed RAM memory... that had been drilled into our brains over the years... ;-)

Not that much difference to what activity says on my 2011 27" iMac and running Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.5 after a day-long use:





- Patrick
=======

 

[techiesteve]

I've come to this thread late, but please note the following. If the OP considers fitting a 2.5" SSD in their 27" 2015 iMac, there is no mounting hardware or cables to suit in their iMac. When Apple supply only a bladed SSD socket on the rear of the logic board all fixings and cables for a 3.5" HD are not factory installed. Whenever I clone either the iMacs standard HD or a FD to an SSD, I always boot from it via USB3 before fitting internally. I find a very noticeable reduction in speed from when I later fit internally, and personally would not be happy with a 'make do' fix. By using an external USB3 SSD to hold data only may suite the OP, but only trying it will tell. A lot depends upon if you expect the same speed when accessing data as your current configuration and what is acceptable to you.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...I find a very noticeable reduction in speed from when I later fit internally...

The point of adding an external SSD isn't to get an external drive that is as fast as an internal SSD. And, in fact, this can just about never be the case, because the external bus will always be quite a bit slower than the internal bus and will be a bottleneck.

The point of the external drive is to offload as much data as possible to the external drive so that the internal drive never fills up and remains functional and offers the best performance.

The reason to have an external SSD instead of an external RDHD is to get the best performance that one can get from an external drive. (Which will, again, never be as fast as an internal SSD.)

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Can one still assume that using the the memory monitor in Activity Monitor.app should give the user a pretty good idea if they have adequate memory installed or not???

I tend to advise folks NOT to use Activity Monitor to keep track of their RAM usage, because folks don't understand the data that Activity Monitor shows them.

Macs have had very advanced memory management for many years now, including memory compression. It is so advanced that the Mac OS will notice that unused RAM is just sitting around doing nothing, and the OS will cache random things in RAM on the chance that you might need them again soon, so caching them will cause your Mac to run faster. The Mac OS might go so far as to make use of every last bit of free RAM that you have.

Many users will see this behavior, and jump to the conclusion that the Mac OS "requires a lot of RAM", or that their computer has a "memory leak" somewhere, or that they need more RAM because they are "running out." None of these are true.

The thing is that 8 GB of RAM is plenty for just about anything that an ordinary user would do. If you are a professional, who pushes your personal computer to the limit, it might be nice to have more RAM. If you are the latter, you know who you are. If you aren't, the old wisdom to "buy as much RAM as you can afford" is an anachronism and anyone who says that to you is just encouraging you to throw away money.

Actually, with the advent of the new Apple Silicon computers, the new wisdom is to purchase the largest amount of storage you can afford (and go with the standard amount of RAM). The storage in an M1 or M2 package can't be upgraded, and SSD's begin to slow down as soon as they hit about 50% full. The larger the SSD you purchase, the longer your Mac will continue to run like new.