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Model A1418 / Late 2013 / 2.7 & 2.9 GHz Core i5 or 3.1 GHz Core i7 Processor

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USB3.0 SSD or internal SATA SSD?

I’m trying to upgrade my late 2013 iMac (non fusion) from a mechanical HDD to SSD.

I have a Crucial MX500 SSD, now I’m wondering if it’s going to make a significant connecting this SSD as and internal one with SATA interface or will it not be that much a difference if I use a good USB 3.0 enclosure and boot off the SSD as an external one?

Update (06/15/2020)

Did a speed test on BlackMagic for the Crucial MX500. These seems to be orders greater than the mechanical HDD that came along with the iMac.

But the big question is, will I get better speeds if I use it internally with the SATA connect?

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Update (06/15/2020)

The verdict is out! My 1 TB Crucial MX 500 SSD connected to the internal SATA 3 interface is faster than the external USB 3.0 enclosure. Below is the speed test in Blackmagic before and after I attached the internal SSD.

Before:

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After:

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My biggest concern was whether it was really worth the trouble of opening up an iMac myself just to get a minor (or maybe no) difference in speed. But looking at the result I am definitely satisfied.

While I had opened it up I thought I might as well change the RAM modules, so I got a Kingston 16 GB (2x8GB) SO-DIMM kit and fit it into my Mac. My Mac is simply blazing now. I am so happy with the results. I normally run Machine Learning algorithms on my machine and some processes like the k-fold cross validation takes about 20 mins, but now it is hardly a minute.

Some pics of my PC Internals:

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Update (06/14/2020)

Did a speed test on BlackMagic for the Crucial MX500 (see below my update as a reply). These seems to be orders greater than the mechanical HDD that came along with the iMac.

But the big question is, will I get better speeds if I use it internally with the SATA connect?

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You should definitely put it into your iMac instead of a USB 3.0 external ssd. You won’t even need a cage adapter for your ssd just disassemble iMac (take off screen) then unplug SATA cables and put new ssd in.


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Internal SSD is better than USB3.0 external.

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You should definitely put it into your iMac instead of a USB 3.0 external ssd. You won’t even need a cage adapter for your ssd just disassemble iMac (take off screen) then unplug SATA cables and put new ssd in.

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Well it's my opinion that internal drive would be considerably better than external. Internally you're just about main lining the drive to the motherboard. Externally, even if you're using a great connection you still have a cable and booting off of that I think you'd experience a much slower boot. But it would be interesting to measure the two setups. Let me know what happens!

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Just recently had the original HDD fail, so I decided to upgrade to a SSD and max out the RAM while I was in there. Was astonished at basically having to gut the computer to get to the backside of the logic board to upgrade the RAM.

By comparison replacing the HDD was fairly easy and straightforward, the most time consuming part of the whole job was cleaning off the old adhesive from the foam seals. Once I got the drive restored I was astounded at the improved performance. The best bang for the buck I think is the upgrade to an SSD closely followed by bumping up the RAM to 16gb.

If you do them both at the same time you can get by with using only one seal kit. Removing the logic board can look a bit daunting but if you take your time and follow the instructions on this site, you have an excellent chance of success.

It’s well worth the $300.00 and time to do this as I figure I can get several more years of good service out of this machine. Then perhaps I’ll be ready for something with Apple silicon…

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Chiranthan Ram sera éternellement reconnaissant.
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