Today I am a very happy and excited man, because
Apple, out of the blue, just updated their
Intel-based iMacs, and there were a couple
of things that we were really really hoping
for, so we already ordered two of these 5K
iMac so if you want to see us test it, go
ahead and subscribe right now.
We ordered a $2300 8-core model and $3300
10-core model, both of them with only 8GB
of RAM because we’re gonna upgrade it ourselves
to 64GB of RAM for only around $230 instead
of $1000 from the Apple website, and we’ll
leave the link to that RAM down in the description
below!
And yes, you can still upgrade it yourself,
because if you look at this image from the
new iMac listing page, it clearly shows the
RAM door behind the stand.
What makes me excited is that my predictions
from my last iMac rumor video were almost
completely correct, except for one feature
that’s disappointingly missing on the 5K
iMac.
So what I’m gonna do in this video is go
through all of the changes and compare them
to the previous models so you know exactly
everything that changed and how much it actually
matters.
And if you’re as excited as I am, definitely
check out our Apple Product pattern t-shirt
right below this video in our merch shelf!
And PS, the iMac Pro got a tiny update, for
the same base price, you now get the 10-core
processor instead of the previous 8-core.
Getting into all of the changes, every single
iMac including the 21.5” model now comes
with an SSD at the base price, so no more
hard drives!
And that’s basically the only change for
the 21.5” iMac, which is really weird because
Apple basically always updates them at the
same time.
This shows that Apple is planning to replace
that smaller iMac model with their Apple Silicon
24” iMac either later this year in October
or they might wait until early 2021.
Now let’s get into the 27” 5K iMac, which
starts at the same base price of $1799, except
that we now get Intel’s latest 10th gen
chips on every configuration!
And now, you can get up to a 3.6GHz 10-core
i9 processor which is gonna be insane! Previously,
the best choice was an 8-core i9.
And based on Apple’s performance charts,
this new CPU is much more powerful than the
old 8-core!
As far as 
the display, it’s basically staying unchanged
except that you now have an option to pay
for the nano-texture glass which Apple offered
on their 6K Pro Display XDR, which basically
turns it into a high-quality matte display
without using a film that ruins colors and
contrast.
You can now configure the RAM up to 128GB
from Apple for a massive $2,600, but we do
not recommend doing so because you can buy
4 sticks of that RAM we linked to down below
and you’ll get 128GB for only around $464
instead of $2,600.
You can now also configure up to a massive
8TB SSD, which is a huge difference coming
from the previous maximum of 2TB.
Now there are three MAJOR features that matter
the most to us, as video editors, and one
of those is the new graphics.
The previous 5K iMac came with the Radeon
Pro 570X GPU, and the new one comes with the
Radeon Pro 5300, which is based on AMDs new
Navi-graphics architecture which has a number
of advantages.
The previous best GPU was the Vega 48, and
you can now get up to a 5700 XT which is our
favorite graphics card to use in a eGPU setup
because it’s just so dang fast.
But this isn’t like any other 5700XT, this
one is the only one that comes with 16GB of
VRAM, which you can’t get on a PC.
This is gonna be a really big deal for anyone
doing graphics rendering work.
AND FINALLY, the new iMac now gets a 1080P
FaceTime camera, which was only ever available
on the iMac Pro, so here’s a quick comparison
video showing the difference between the 720p
webcam and the iMac Pros 1080P webcam so you
can know what to expect.
Apple also added a new studio quality three-microphone
array with new features compared to a basic
microphone on the previous iMac, so if you
want to see us test that, definitely subscribe
right now so you don’t miss out!
Now the 2nd major feature that matters to
us is the fact that the 5K iMac now FINALLY
gets the T2 chip, which enables Hey Siri and
a bunch of other features.
This matters a lot to us because the MacBook
Pro used to outperform a much more powerful
5K iMac in terms of HEVC video export speed
simply because the iMac didn’t have a T2
chip which takes care of HEVC encoding and
decoding, so this change alone is HUGE for
video editors.
Another great feature is the fact that you
can now hook up not one, but two 6K displays
thanks to the new Navi graphics which support
the latest version of Display Stream compression.
The previous 5K iMac could only support one
5K display or two 4K displays. This is gonna
be a big deal for high-end editing studios.
Now as far as the ports, they’re basically
staying the same except for two of them, the
first being the SD card slot which now supports
UHS-II speeds.
The previous iMac limited transfer speed to
around 100MB/s, compared to the new SD card
slot which supports speeds up to around 280MB/s,
so editors can now rejoice!
But the third MAJOR feature that matters the
most to us is the fact that you now finally
have an option to get a 10gb ethernet port!
We here at Max Tech use a shared RAID server
that requires 10gb ethernet or Thunderbolt
3 to get the fastest transfer speeds for editing,
and since we already used up the two Thunderbolt
3 ports, my Mac has to connect using 10gb
ethernet.
That’s basically the only reason why I’m
currently using an iMac Pro instead of a 5K
iMac, and now that the new 5K iMac has a 10gb
ethernet option, we’re literally gonna sell
my iMac Pro and our editor Angelika’s 5K
iMac and keep the two new 5K iMacs that we
just ordered.
Because I am 100% confident that the new $3300
5K iMac is gonna destroy the $5000 iMac Pro
in terms of performance, and we’ll actually
be doing a comparison video before we sell
it.
And now finally, I want to mention the one
feature that I incorrectly predicted, and
that’s WiFi 6.
Unfortunately, the new iMac still has WiFi
5. Now to us, that’s not a big deal at all
because we don’t have internet fast enough
to really take advantage of WiFI 6.
But it’s definitely nice that the new 5K
iMac now gets Bluetooth 5 instead of bluetooth
4.2 on the previous models.
And there you guys have it, that’s basically
all of the features and changes, and I’m
extremely excited because Apple gave us everything
we asked for, and we know these new iMacs
are gonna absolutely destroy performance-wise,
and we’re definitely gonna compare it to
our $15,000 Mac Pro!
Now I want to let you know that as of right
now, I’m already working on the 2020 5K
iMac buyer’s guide, so if you’re not sure
which model or which upgrades to buy, click
that circle above right now so you don’t
miss out on that video, and be sure to check
out our new Merch! Thanks for watching, and
I’ll see you very soon in the buyer’s
guide video!
