After waiting for years for Apple to release a new iMac of sufficiently better spec than my current iMac the great day finally arrived!
Apple announced the mid-2017 iMac line up at the WWDC keynote on 5 June 2017. We took a cautious approach and debated the wisdom of waiting until Christmas to compare this iMac range with the iMac Pro range due out then. No seriously we did … we contemplated waiting! But then came the announcement of the exit poll for the June 2017 election – a hung parliament. Within seconds of the 10pm announcement the pound plummeted and we had visions of an almost immediate price hike by Apple.
By 10:05pm we had both placed an order for a full spec’d up iMac, except for the RAM. Nobody in their right mind buys RAM from Apple!
Move on a week and my iMac was out for delivery, here’s the story of my day …
This is the final setup but boy did it take a while to get there!
Delivery day is always a challenge as I collect all the additional toys needed to make the main toys work!
The first thing I always do with a new computer is remove the memory it shipped with and install the maximum memory the computer will take. You might be wondering why I don’t just buy the computer with the maximum memory from Apple. Simple answer to that is the price. By buying from a third party supplier and fitting it myself I saved £780 … seriously!
So back to fitting the RAM, it’s always an adventure and you never know what tools you’re going to need!
For the technical amongst you the RAM is DDR4 2400 and to take it to the max you’ll need 4 x 16GB sticks.
To access the memory bay you need to remove the power cable and find something suitable to push in the oval button above power socket … hence the kitchenalia and screwdrivers!
The clips allow the RAM to fold down and you extract the shipping memory and replace it with the new sticks.
Next job is to push the clips back in and put the cover back on. Notice the original sticks on the blue cloth.
After updating many of the cables and adaptors for the changed ports on the new iMac I was ready to go.
It didn’t take long to get it cabled up!
But I wasn’t done yet! My next job was to install a Twelve South BackPack shelf.
The shelf was to allow me to add a second hard drive to the system. A 1TB SSD for imaging the main SSD.
The case I bought was screw-less so a 2 second job to get the drive fitted into it.
Then a simple matter of plugging it in and placing it on the shelf.
Once I turned my baby back on again my first job was to check that the new RAM was recognized.
After that, mindful of the oppressive weather I did the honourable thing and gave over my desk fan to keep my new baby cool!!
