iMac Late 2015 being extremely slow.

[aarya5p]

Hello,

I have an Apple iMac (Late 2015, Core i5 5575R, 8GB DDR3 Ram and 1TB Hard Drive), it is feeling too slow for me to use it as my daily driver, and the screen also flickers all the time, it goes black and it comes back to life in a second, I don't know what to do now as this is my first Apple Computer, it is so slow that if i CMD A and type something at the same time it will get the rainbow spinning wheel and it will take 6-7 seconds to process what i did and show on the screen, any recommendations and help are welcome.

Thank You.

[CommanderAlex]

Welcome to the forums!!!

 

The Core i5 5575R is a 4C/4T processor. This is going to a bottleneck holding you back in multi tasking and having windows open. The 1TB HDD will be a significant performance hit in how fast applications open and moving files around. An SSD will improve this but considering its an iMac, it'll be difficult to remove the screen as it's held in by adhesive strips that run around the edges of the screen. 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum and will also be limiting in your potential. If you plan on spending money on this machine, putting a higher end CPU, adding more RAM, and swapping out the HDD for a SSD will speed things up dramatically.

[aarya5p]

I do not have any experience on working on pcs so do you think apple will help me swap these things?

[8tg]

5575R is bga broadwell, non upgradable as the EFI for those machines is specific to the stock cpu configuration options from the factory.

Ram shouldn’t be too hard to upgrade. But the biggest performance change will be going from the hard drive to an SSD with a fresh install of OSX. Along the way cleaning out and re-pasting the cpu to potentially relieve any issues with thermals.

[8tg]

4 minutes ago, aarya5p said:

I do not have any experience on working on pcs so do you think apple will help me swap these things?

They won’t, you’ll need to look into 3rd party computer services to find someone who can do these things for you.

[CommanderAlex]

3 minutes ago, aarya5p said:

I do not have any experience on working on pcs so do you think apple will help me swap these things?

It'll be out of warranty at this point for an iMac at is ~6 years old. AppleCare usually goes up to a max of 3 years IIRC if you purchased this. If you were to bring this to Apple, they would advice you to buy a new iMac as that is all they do. 

[aarya5p]

1 hour ago, SpiderMan said:

It'll be out of warranty at this point for an iMac at is ~6 years old. AppleCare usually goes up to a max of 3 years IIRC if you purchased this. If you were to bring this to Apple, they would advice you to buy a new iMac as that is all they do. 

ohh so apple is basically useless now for me?

[aarya5p]

1 hour ago, 8tg said:

They won’t, you’ll need to look into 3rd party computer services to find someone who can do these things for you.

We don't have them here where I live as far as I know

[CommanderAlex]

2 minutes ago, aarya5p said:

ohh so apple is basically useless now for me?

Pretty much...Apple would rather charge you for a new iMac than fix it. User repair/upgrade will be the best option here for it. iFixit has guides on how to to service Macs. 

[aarya5p]

1 minute ago, SpiderMan said:

Pretty much...Apple would rather charge you for a new iMac than fix it. User repair/upgrade will be the best option here for it. iFixit has guides on how to to service Macs. 

but I don't think i"ll be able to do it on my own and take a risk of essentially bricking a working computer, do you think there are some other non hardware fixes??

[CommanderAlex]

2 minutes ago, aarya5p said:

but I don't think i"ll be able to do it on my own and take a risk of essentially bricking a working computer, do you think there are some other non hardware fixes??

You can clean up the drive of any unused files that you have laying around, otherwise can't really do anything else except back up any important files you have and reinstall macOS. The cleaners "work" but I wouldn't use them on a daily basis. 

[aarya5p]

Just now, SpiderMan said:

You can clean up the drive of any unused files that you have laying around, otherwise can't really do anything else except back up any important files you have and reinstall macOS. The cleaners "work" but I wouldn't use them on a daily basis. 

Do you think installing Windows 10 on a external SSD and running it through Thunderbolt will help this PC last 1-2 years?

Cause I really don't like macOS that much I've been using Windows since XP era.

[CommanderAlex]

Just now, aarya5p said:

Do you think installing Windows 10 on a external SSD and running it through Thunderbolt will help this PC last 1-2 years?

Cause I really don't like macOS that much I've been using Windows since XP era.

I'm not sure if you can get too far, without using Boot Camp to boot into Windows 10. @ProjectBox153 maybe has some ideas as I'm not too familiar with booting another OS on a Mac.

[ProjectBox153]

Your issue is basically guaranteed to be the slow hard drive. macOS performs terribly on mechanical drives these days. Personally I think Mavericks was the last version that ran acceptably well on mechanical drives, and Yosemite and newer should be on SSDs. 

You can upgrade the drive to an SSD, and it wouldn't cost a whole lot, but you'd have to pull the screen off of the iMac. If you've never worked on an iMac then I don't recommend going this route. 

Here's what I would do: 

• Get a nice SSD + external enclosure. You can get a Thunderbolt enclosure, but I wouldn't spend that kind of money for this machine. USB 3 is more than enough.
• Install your OS onto the external SSD. It's beyond easy to do this with macOS. Installing Windows onto an external drive for use with a Mac is a more involved process. If I were you I'd stick with macOS and use a Windows VM.
• Profit! The machine will be much faster, plus you'll have 1TB of storage (the internal drive) to use for whatever you'd like once you back it up.

The RAM is soldered to the logic board in your iMac, so an SSD is the only real upgrade you can do. 

[aarya5p]

On 3/20/2021 at 9:08 PM, ProjectBox153 said:

Your issue is basically guaranteed to be the slow hard drive. macOS performs terribly on mechanical drives these days. Personally I think Mavericks was the last version that ran acceptably well on mechanical drives, and Yosemite and newer should be on SSDs. 

You can upgrade the drive to an SSD, and it wouldn't cost a whole lot, but you'd have to pull the screen off of the iMac. If you've never worked on an iMac then I don't recommend going this route. 

Here's what I would do: 

• Get a nice SSD + external enclosure. You can get a Thunderbolt enclosure, but I wouldn't spend that kind of money for this machine. USB 3 is more than enough.
• Install your OS onto the external SSD. It's beyond easy to do this with macOS. Installing Windows onto an external drive for use with a Mac is a more involved process. If I were you I'd stick with macOS and use a Windows VM.
• Profit! The machine will be much faster, plus you'll have 1TB of storage (the internal drive) to use for whatever you'd like once you back it up.

The RAM is soldered to the logic board in your iMac, so an SSD is the only real upgrade you can do. 

Do you think this is a good option to consider?