New 2020 Apple iMac 27" with Retina 5K Display - $1099

[trs96]

These have gone extinct in the Apple Mac lineup. This is the August 2020 Intel i5 model with 512 GB SSD. Display by itself is worth the price of admission. The Apple Studio display sells for $1600 by itself, then you have to connect a Mac mini or Mac Studio to it.

Looks like Woot is closing these out via Amazon. Remember these still have the option for you to easily upgrade the Ram yourself. Up to 128GB ! Better yet, you don't have to buy the ram at Apple's inflated prices.

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Retina-Display-27-inch-Storage/dp/B08F8HK6KF/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

 

[trs96]

A little over $2 per GB. How much would Apple charge per GB ? $6.25 per GB for the Mac Studio currently.
That's $541 less to upgrade the iMac compared to a Mac Studio. I know, Mac studio ram is much faster but paying $800 to upgrade it to 128GB from 64GB is rather painful when the base price is already $4000.

https://www.amazon.com/Timetec-Compatible-2666MHz-27-inch-PC4-21300/dp/B084QL3FX3/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

RAM upgrade for the top tier Mac Studio with M2 Ultra.

 

[trs96]

Better yet, you don't have to buy the ram at Apple's inflated prices.

This is what actually got me into hackintoshing back in 2011. I had bought a $499 Mac mini G4 in 2005 that came with 512MB of ram and a single core CPU. By 2011 it was getting really slow, even for general use. So I checked what I could do to upgrade the ram. Max it could take was 1GB and there was only a single DIMM slot. What would it cost to upgrade it with genuine Apple ram ? Well over $400 !!!! Insane, I know. So I looked at other options and got a 1GB DIMM somewhere else for a fraction of the cost. IIRC it was about $100 to max out at 1GB. Today you can get a 64GB DDR4 kit for about $149.

The mini was still slow though. 2.5" Sata SSDs were still super expensive back in 2011. The other problem was that the mini's 4200 RPM HDD was PATA so that was out. I researched other options instead of buying another mini and found the wonderful world of hackintoshing. I got a Gigabyte mobo, 8GBs of DDR3 ram (for under $40) and a Crucial SSD. The performance was a quantum leap past what the old mini could provide and I was sold on hackintoshing.