I have a late 2015 21.5" 4K iMac that runs slow. It takes forever to open a web page and takes a long time to wake up from sleep. I ran Geekbench 5 report and the core test results for single core was 204 vs 902 average and multi core was 596 vs 3052. Any ideas if this is a hardware issue?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.1
Your Write speed is about half your Read speed--should be the same or at least close:
Performance:
System Load: 5.28 (1 min ago) 4.58 (5 min ago) 4.63 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O speed: 4.19 MB/s
File system: 120.24 seconds (timed out)
Write speed: 205 MB/s
Read speed: 513 MB/s
500MB/sec ± is normal for an SATA gGB/sec SSD. 200MB/se c± is not.
TRIM is not enabled. I do not know what Samsung recommends but, if the maker requires it and it's not engaged, that can cut speeds. So check with Samsung about TRIM if you can get them to respond to your inquiry. To engage TRIM, see:
https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/31619-how-to-execute-trimforce-command-with-your-owc-ssd/
Still, that is not enough slowdown to make you Mac feel slow. This may have something to do with it:
Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:
Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)
Other processes 113.46 % (?) 👈🏻
EtreCheck 74.58 % (App Store)
trustd 16.50 % (Apple)
CoreServicesUIAgent 0.83 % (Apple)
Dock 0.11 % (Apple)
We cannot see what that is without Etrecheck having Full Disk Access. See the EtreCheck Hlpe menu for how to turn that on. It is under the "more help" topic.
Your Write speed is about half your Read speed--should be the same or at least close:
Performance:
System Load: 5.28 (1 min ago) 4.58 (5 min ago) 4.63 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O speed: 4.19 MB/s
File system: 120.24 seconds (timed out)
Write speed: 205 MB/s
Read speed: 513 MB/s
500MB/sec ± is normal for an SATA gGB/sec SSD. 200MB/se c± is not.
TRIM is not enabled. I do not know what Samsung recommends but, if the maker requires it and it's not engaged, that can cut speeds. So check with Samsung about TRIM if you can get them to respond to your inquiry. To engage TRIM, see:
https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/31619-how-to-execute-trimforce-command-with-your-owc-ssd/
Still, that is not enough slowdown to make you Mac feel slow. This may have something to do with it:
Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:
Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)
Other processes 113.46 % (?) 👈🏻
EtreCheck 74.58 % (App Store)
trustd 16.50 % (Apple)
CoreServicesUIAgent 0.83 % (Apple)
Dock 0.11 % (Apple)
We cannot see what that is without Etrecheck having Full Disk Access. See the EtreCheck Hlpe menu for how to turn that on. It is under the "more help" topic.
One of the "high CPU use" offenders is this:
2020-12-27 01:20:56 photoanalysisd High CPU Use
Executable:
See this article for how to deal with it:
This one:
Diagnostics Information (past 7-30 days):
2020-12-31 09:25:41 com.apple.WebKit.WebContent High CPU Use (5 times)
may be due to leaving a badly-coded web page idling in the background or in an unused tab. You can use Activity Monitor's Memory or Energy tabs to see such offenders. This is from the "new" patient portal at our local medical center; the old one worked without issue on the same computer:
I will certainly defer to the experts on this site, but, from the reading I've done here and on other Apple/Mac sites, the issues with the Samsung SSDs seems to almost always be related to the portable units. The portable units seem to have software vendor installed that somehow facilitates the mounting of the drive, be it on a Windows machine or on an Apple product. I have three Samsung SSDs running with my 2017 iMac running the latest version of Catalina. A 250GB external that I boot from and two additional 500GB externals that I'm using for backups and clones. The internal 5400RPM HD is being used for Time Machine. I think the difference with what I'm doing is that all the SSDs I purchased were "internal" SSDs. I then purchased Sabrent enclosures on Amazon and just stuck the SSDs into those and connected them to my iMac's USB ports. Could not be more pleased with the performance and have yet to have a compatibility issue. Just my opinion.
I suspect it may be compatibility issues with the SSD you installed. Samsung SSD's have a history of problems with iMacs.
I ordered and installed a Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SDD from OWC and installed externally and installed the OS onto it. I still have poor performance running from this drive. I watched the Activity monitor while the test ran and didn't see anything that used a lot of CPU, so don't know what the runaway process could be. Also noticed it said the file system was over 120 seconds. Is this likely a hardware issue?
There is no evidence the OWC Mercury Elite Pro is even installed, you or someone else installed a disk0 - Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB 250.06 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes) that may be the cause of the problem.
I verified my start up disk and it is booting off an external SSD ( disk 2) which shows as ASMT 2115 480GB. This disk is connected with SATA to usb and is an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro. It runs slow. The Samsung Evo was also connected externally and now internally and all have the same slow performance. Original hard drive was also slow and even worse with a lot of beachballing
I tried in safe mode, turned off icloud and tested with brand new install of OS and no improvements.
I still have a 2007 iMac with a Samsung SSD that runs circles around this mac.
Thanks for the advice. Do you have any recommendations on a good SSD brand?
Yes, www.macsales.com
I set Etrecheck to have full disk access and attached report.
iMac runs extremely slow
