Slow 2015 iMac - EtreCheck Attached - Suggestions for a Non-Pro?

You hard drive speeds are within nominals for the slow, laptop-class drive Apple opted to use as the base storage in all 21.5-inch iMac models made between 2012 and 2019. Those drives were never fast, and account for most "slow" complaints here. On their best day, those drives' nominals were still glacially slow with newer macOS versions.

However, there is a far deeper root for your case of the "slows."

In 2015, Apple sold two versions of the 21.5-inch iMac:

• The standard consumer model, the iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015), shipped with a desktop-class, 4-core processor running at a minimum of 3.1 Ghz.
• The "educational/ institutional" model, the iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015), was designed and priced to appeal to bulk buyers for minimal work demands. It shipped with a LAPTOP-class, 2-core processor as slow as 1.6 Ghz, and sold for US$200 less than the standard consumer model.

You have the latter one.

This benchmark chart from the MacTracker database shows how much performance was lost for a $200 savings. Yours is on top:

That's less than half. Tesserax is absolutely correct about :hardware limitations."

—RAM: I am not too concerned with your RAM usage; a simple restart will zero the SWAP value. You shoukd be starting more oftern tah once in10 days:

Time since boot: About 10 days

—Also about RAM: RAM in 2015 iMac 21.5-inchers was soldered to the logic board, not slotted. Not even the minor deities on Mount Cupertino can upgrade it. Your 8GB RAM is your "forever RAM," or at least until you get a newer computer.

—Software: This:

2024-10-19 11:03:44 photoanalysisd High CPU Use (5 times)

is a real millstone around the neck for performance, but is easily addressed at home. Please see (link): What is photoanalysisd

I would not spend much money on a computer that was crippled from Day One by selling price decisions. However, the external SSD boot option is one that is practical, can cost under US$100, and is doable at home. The external drive will have retained value as extra storage for your next computer as well.

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

It would improve you user experience by speeding up boot times aa well as the launch times for big apps. Your current Write/Read speeds are about 70MB/sec; the cheapest incarnation of the external SD boot option will do 400MB/sec.

JonOls wrote:

Thank you Tesserax. I dislike Chrome but unfortunately the family needs it for gmail/Google Classroom/etc.

Just to let you know ... there is no hard requirement that you need to use Google Chrome to use any of the other Google products. For example, the university that I'm an alum, provides me a gMail account, but I don't need to access it with Google Chrome.

What do you think of the LaCie SSD route - is that a worthwhile expense/option?

If you are considering using this drive as an external bootable drive for your Mac, then that may be a worthy option, especially if you find your internal drive faulty.

Here are a couple of excellent references should you want to go that route:

• Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support
• Use an external SSD as your startup disk with your iMac or Mac mini - Jack-19 ASC

Tesserax wrote:

Alan Jones,

Thanks for jumping in, and especially, for the info about the two distinct 2015 iMac models. I learn something new every day.

You are most welcome!

I find the free Mactracker database in the App Store an invaluable tool for hanging out here. It's full of goodies like that. The benchmarks are available by clicking on the "Processor Speed" options:

Ok, I just went through your EtreCheck report, and fortunately, there wasn't a lot that I would consider problematic. However, I do have a few observations/suggestions, and they are as follows:

• The read/write speeds of your current HDD are low, but not necessarily outside of the range for a 5400 rpm HDD. However, this may indicate a potential failing drive. As such, I suggest that you add the DriveDx tool to your "troubleshooting" toolbox. This is an excellent app to really get a good picture of your Mac's drive health. If you need help interpreting its results, you can post them here as well.

Performance:

System Load: 2.04 (1 min ago) 1.88 (5 min ago) 1.82 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 3.28 MB/s

File system: 51.98 seconds

Write speed: 73 MB/s

Read speed: 69 MB/s

• Limited RAM effect: 8GBs of RAM, once considered adequate, it no longer that with today's apps. You can tell when your Mac does not have enough RAM when it has to "swap" out apps to the HDD. You can see this in the report as "Swap Used." It should be zero. Yours shows 10 MB. This isn't a lot, but does indicate swapping is occurring, and if used in conjuction with a "slow" HDD, does affect the Mac's overall performance ... aka, slow response, beach-balling, etc.

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 1.78 GB

Used RAM: 4.45 GB

Cached files: 1.78 GB

Available RAM: 3.55 GB

Swap Used: 10 MB

• Finally, you may want to consider another web browser other than Google Chrome. If Chrome is desirable, a very close Chrome-like version would be Brave. It is far less memory intrusive and significantly more secure than Chrome ... unless you like having all of your web browsing habits known by Google.

My responses are those in the "what would I do if it were me" category. As such, I'm going to answer your last question first.

• Q4. Or should I just limp along as is and start saving for a new iMac? Personally, I would not spend too much time or money with a Late 2015 Mac, for the following reasons: 1) Apple now designates this Mac model in the "Vintage" support category. That basically means, they may or may not have replacement parts should a repair be necessary, 2) The latest version of macOS supported it Monterey. Apple maintains security updates for their latest three macOS versions. Currently, starting from newest to oldest, that would be Sequoia, Sonoma, & Ventura. As you can see, Monterey, has dropped of the supported list. Continued use will subjugate your Mac to potential security risks (albeit, not as seldom or as serious as those that affect Windows PCs), and 3) You are never going to see stellar perfomance with 8 GBs of RAM and a 5400 rpm HDD.
• Q1. So does this look like the LaCie SSD is the most worthwhile expense/effort to improve performance? Yes. Worst case scenario: Should you get a new Mac, you can always repurpose this drive as needed.
• Q2. Will an SSD allow me to update my OS? (I get scolding popups telling me my Catalina is not supported) When using the SSD as your boot-up drive, you will have the choice to update/upgrade macOS on either or both the LaCie and the Mac's internal drive. As far as the popups, Catalina is now five version back. You can still upgrade to Monterey if you wish. Whether or not it will provide your Mac with an improvement in performance is hard to tell. Typically, when I come across a Mac that has been used for awhile with an older operating system, I do a complete erase and clean install of mac OS. This, of course, would rely on having recent backups should you need to restore your data.
• Q3. Any other easy clean-up I can do that will improve performance? None that jumps out at me from your EtreCheck report. It looks like your Mac is more hardware limited, not software limited.

Alan Jones,

Thanks for jumping in, and especially, for the info about the two distinct 2015 iMac models. I learn something new every day.

You're very welcome, but full credit should go to Allan Jones for pointing out the different 2015 iMac models.