I have never been a fan of Apple, but I always appreciated the innovations they've done in the IT sector. When the iPhone came out I said "Cool, let me buy a cheap touch-screen smartphone from another manufacturer" ... bought the
ZTE Racer II (~100USD) ... with the iPad I had the same reaction, I bought the cheapest Android tablet I could find (~25USD).
The new
4K iMAC Retina 2017
, revealed at the recent Apple event, has "80% more efficient cooling" and is configurable with some very impressive processors, while the GPUs won't be too powerful.
Aesthetically the new iMAC and iMAC PRO look incredible and their vent holes are very nicely hidden: the air intakes are spread out along the edges, while the exhaust is behind the leg.
It looks like the RAM and CPU socket are standard, but the CPU socket has a weird laptop-like mounting mechanism. After removing the screws you lift up the processor with the cooler, as they are stuck together with thermal paste.
The CPU can be removed relatively easy, and replaced with any superior model within the same TDP range. It seems that the thermal paste is quite standard, so it might help to replace it with slightly higher quality, as it can improve cooling by 1-5 degrees, enough to pull back the processor from the edge of thermal throttling or just to keep the fan more silent.
The 5K iMAC PRO will come later this year and it will have more or less the same structure, with a slightly improved cooling system based on two fans.
While the iMAC Retina has to handle roughly 120W of heat (65W procesor and 60W GPU), the iMAC PRO will have to deal with a 18 core 140W TDP processor and more powerful graphics chip, let's say another 150W TDP. Yes, the 5K iMAC PRO is bigger than the iMAC Retina, but I'm not sure about how it will cool such high end components with a laptop-like cooling system. The flow of air is more or less optimized, as the hottest air leaves the case ASAP, but it remains to be seen whether things will thermal throttle at full load or not.
