iMac Purchase Advice

[Gooseteeth]

Existing iMac user, looking to move from my late 2013 iMac 21.5 to a new retina one so I'm after some advice from you knowledgeable folks on which one.
My tasks generally are photography using Photos (it's okay for what I need), home video editing on iMovie, general browsing and work with some gaming for stuff like Elite Dangerous, Cities Skylines. Nothing major.
I have a bootcamp partition for Elite which works actually surprisingly well. Would be nice to have some reasonably smooth graphics but appreciate I'm not getting top quality all singing settings. Don't play enough to warranty it.

I'm mulling over the 21.5" 3.0ghz 6-core i5, 16gb RAM, 1tb fusion and Radeon Pro Vega 20.
So, I have a fusion drive already, which has been good.

Sticking point is on the graphics card, is the Vega an overkill??

Interested in your recommendations

Thanks in advance

 

[wmagnum1]

Budget?

 

[Gooseteeth]

Want to stay around the 2k mark, 2.5K max ideally. Thanks

 

[wmagnum1]

Want to stay around the 2k mark, 2.5K max ideally. Thanks

I'm going to do a typical American move and assume you are in the US... that being said... here's the config I picked out that is on it's way next week. My usage is like yours, sans a boot camp partition.

27" iMac. I know it's not 21, but I only recommend this for the upgradeable RAM
i5 9th gen processor (I chose this processor because the price difference to the 8th gen was negligible)
8GB RAM
Radeon 580x (w/8GB VRAM... should be more than adequate for photo/light vid and gaming)
512GB SSD

The graphics card is fine for these tasks. Video and gaming, you could justify the upgraded GPU, but at a much higher cost.

That config puts us at $2399... let's try to knock that down a bit...

Ordering same config through the education store, that comes down to $2189.
I also put this purchase on a US Bank Cash+ card. This quarter (April-June), you can select as your 5% cash back bonus "electronics", which includes the Apple Store. You can only put up to $2000 for the 5% bonus, and after that you get 1% back. So...

2189 x 7% sales tax (another assumption) puts you at $2342. Purchased with a cash back card, you get $103.42 off with the cash back from previously mentioned credit card.

That puts a final, after-tax price of $2239. Original price, with an assumptive sales tax of 7% is $2566. You save $327. Put that savings into purchasing more RAM for the computer.

Maybe this helps?

 

[AppleFan360]

Honestly the Vega might be overkill. Go with the lower graphics card and stay away from the Fusion Drive. Put an SSD in there. At least 500GB. The SSD will be the biggest improvement you could make on your budget.

 

[Gooseteeth]

I'm going to do a typical American move and assume you are in the US... that being said... here's the config I picked out that is on it's way next week. My usage is like yours, sans a boot camp partition.

27" iMac. I know it's not 21, but I only recommend this for the upgradeable RAM
i5 9th gen processor (I chose this processor because the price difference to the 8th gen was negligible)
8GB RAM
Radeon 580x (w/8GB VRAM... should be more than adequate for photo/light vid and gaming)
512GB SSD

The graphics card is fine for these tasks. Video and gaming, you could justify the upgraded GPU, but at a much higher cost.

That config puts us at $2399... let's try to knock that down a bit...

Ordering same config through the education store, that comes down to $2189.
I also put this purchase on a US Bank Cash+ card. This quarter (April-June), you can select as your 5% cash back bonus "electronics", which includes the Apple Store. You can only put up to $2000 for the 5% bonus, and after that you get 1% back. So...

2189 x 7% sales tax (another assumption) puts you at $2342. Purchased with a cash back card, you get $103.42 off with the cash back from previously mentioned credit card.

That puts a final, after-tax price of $2239. Original price, with an assumptive sales tax of 7% is $2566. You save $327. Put that savings into purchasing more RAM for the computer.

Maybe this helps?

Many thanks.
I'm in the UK though which is a shame but hey ho.
that's given me some additional thinking. Many thanks