Gadgetory

so two of the main arguments that PC guys will make about max 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-inch retina blah-de-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 one terabyte class SSD now v3 10 from Kingston and I ordered one with only eight gigs of ram a to see how OS 10 handled the more you know down-to-earth configuration and be-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 come along for the ride then guys we're going to upgrade the iMac ensure swift victory with Corsairs highly responsive lightweight Gaming Mouse the Sabre 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 on the iMac to add some not quite PCIe fast but still very fast solid-state storage and 32 gigs of there Apple compatible so dim memory as well as I fix 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 requires credit cards a spudger Torx 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 locals 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 and I'm a cup grade 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 status 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 like 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 paperweight 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've finally got it open I was only about 30 minutes into my teardown 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 I bought an SS the 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 on to 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 ad in 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 teardown 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've made it this far but honestly even stripping it down that far reveals very few user swappable components the hinge at the back could be replaced with a vase a 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 third-party 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 on mobile GPU soldered to the motherboard I mean I think you're starting to see a pattern here it basically leaves the CPU 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 teardown 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 trade-offs that Apple makes on the iMac 5k 27 inch with respect to design function cost and performance right or what 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 be mone the r9 to 95 m GPU I will remind them that this is not a gaming machine and frankly even a gaming GPU won't be playing triple-a 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 and 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 upgrade ability 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 27-inch 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 way as today's episode sponsor ting comm ting lets you pay for only the talk text and data that you use they use the Sprint network as their backbone rather than a janky small one and with the rates that they offer over 90% of the US customers that they pulled would save money by switching to ting so to find out if you would save money just go ahead over to the link in the video description and use their savings calculator and if you like what you see until January 5th 2015 ting will even pitch in up to 50% of the cost to terminate your current contract up to a hundred and fifty bucks then starting in February any GSM compatible devices that's like 80% of smartphones out there in the US will be able to be used on the Tang Network including the iPhone 6 and 6-plus whoo so head over to ting calm / - to get 25 bucks in device or service credit with a new account today on top of everything else I said good stuff thanks for watching guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you just like to leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this as always check out the support us link in the video description you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one you can give us a monthly contribution or you can change your amazon bookmark or the one with our affiliate code so whenever you buy cool stuff on Amazon like IMAX or whatever it is you buy we will get a small kickback thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe