Think the old iMac has finally fuckin’ had it.

[The Question]

The internal HDD died about 2 years ago, have been running the machine from an external HDD since. But with macOS 10.14 Mohave, it’s not acting like its 8Gb of RAM is more like 512Mb. Nope. Not acceptable — and that’s before we take into account Apple deprecating OpenGL and OpenCL graphics frameworks.

Nope. The Mac is now even less suitable for gaming than it was before. Fortunately, the iPad Pro is a champ — not for gaming but rather for workflow-specific apps that Windows just doesn’t have like Ulysses.

So there we have it — and hate to say it — the desktop that replaces the late 2013 iMac is going to be an HP Omen.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

I've poked a lot of fun at Apple stuff over the years but until fairly recently they did put out a solid product. Something went off the rails there somewhere.

Are you actually going with Win 10 then?

 

[The Question]

Well, considering this old bastard was refurb when I got it, I'd say 5 years isn't a bad run. If Apple hadn't gone even further into software infrastructure isolation by pushing their own proprietary graphics framework to the exclusion of OpenGL, I'd get another. But all work and no play makes Jack take hatchets to bathroom doors.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!

 

[The Question]

Ain' dat da troof!

 

[The Question]

Of course, this means the return of some old favorite games I've missed:

-Fallout: New Vegas
-Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
-Grand Theft Auto IV (and its standalone DLC, Episodes From Liberty City)
-Borderlands 2
-Postal 2

As well as new shit I never had the hardware specs to run before, like

-Grand Theft Auto V
-Fallout 4

And who even knows what else. So much shit that's developed for Windows and only ever hit Mac as an afterthought, like Star Trek Online, etc.

One of the first upgrades for the Omen will be going from 8Gb of memory to 32Gb, then replacing the main HDD with an SSD (which will probably also mean buying a copy of Windows 10 Pro -- IF I even want to deal with Windows 10 as opposed to Windows 7. Next will be going from a GTX 1070 GPU to a GTX 1080 (I hear the RTX 2080 isn't even worth it.)

 

[The Question]

Of course, I'll also (eventually) get an iMac again anyway, but strictly as a work-only machine. I've been loyal to macOS as a creative professional for a long time, and there's a reason for that. When it comes to play-time, Windows might rule the roost. But when it comes to getting work done, macOS owns the throne.

 

[Colonel Kira's Left Tit]

Yeah, an SSD is imperative as a root/boot drive these days, keep the HDD around as a storage device though, either internal or external.

 

[The Question]

Well, one of the nice things about the Omen 880-110 is that it has a panel up top you can drop HDDs into. So the 1Tb HDD it comes with won't go to waste, it'll just get relocated. Or if that's too much of a pain, I might just slap in an SSD of the right size up top and tell the BIOS to use that as the boot disk.

 

[The Question]

It’s dead, Jim.

Not to the point of the frowny Finder face icon, or anything, but it’s locking up irrecoverably just from launching MS Word. So yeah, basically, it’s finito.

 

[The Question]

Its replacement will be here Saturday.

HP Omen 880-130
Liquid cooled
i7-8700K CPU
16GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM (to be upgraded to 32GB in a month or so)
512GB SSD + 2TB HDD
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GPU

Plus

HP 23.8" thin bezel 1080p display
(to be upgraded to Acer Predator 24" G-SYNC display in a month or so)

The worn-out old iMac will probably be sold off to the local Apple Xchange for whatever I can get for it, eventually to be replaced by a new MacBook Air.

 

[The Question]

Best laid plans of mice and men, yada fuckin' yada.

Amazon got the order for the above listed system (HP Omen) on Thursday, early afternoon. As of Saturday at a quarter to midnight, not only had they not delivered it, not even shipped it, they hadn't even taken the money for it.

Friday, the following machine will arrive, having already been paid for, processed, and shipped:

21.5" 4K Retina iMac
Intel Core i7 3.6Ghz CPU
16GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM
1TB Fusion Drive
Radeon Pro 560 4GB GPU

One thing Amazon did process and ship, however, was the HP 24" display listed in the previous post. I also got an HDMI to USB-C cable. So the new iMac will basically be 1000% better than this old dinosaur, it'll also be already kitted up for epic productivity. I'm not expecting much from it on the gaming front except that it be better than this aged POS with integrated graphics-on-a-chip.