You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

iMac startup and other performance very slow

Not sure why but I had the following issues on my iMac since 1 day ago:

  1. Startup took longer than usual
  2. Spinning colored beach ball appearing quite often
  3. Am using graphic tools everyday, illustrator, photoshop, sketch.
  4. If using some times on those tools, computer will become very slow.


May I know, what shall I do?

Upgrade to more RAMs, or..?

Thanks.


iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 9, 2021 4:26 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 9, 2021 4:47 PM

using graphic tools can cause a burden on your RAM. and 8GB should be considered a minimum for running big sur. you would be well served by adding at least another 8GB, and possibly more. if you want to go that route, i would recommend shopping at OWC to buy the RAM. they test on macs so you know their hardware will work as expected.

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 9, 2021 4:47 PM in response to unite2020

using graphic tools can cause a burden on your RAM. and 8GB should be considered a minimum for running big sur. you would be well served by adding at least another 8GB, and possibly more. if you want to go that route, i would recommend shopping at OWC to buy the RAM. they test on macs so you know their hardware will work as expected.

Apr 9, 2021 7:53 PM in response to unite2020

i saw you responded which caused me to look here again. that's when i noticed something in your OP.


am i to understand that you have the 1TB fusion drive? if you do, that would explain the slowness issue. especially on boot up. when installing big sur on the 1TB fusion drive, due to free space requirements, the OS ends up on the HDD portion because the SSD portion is only 28GB. if it was me, i would open the iMac and replace the SSD blade with one with a capacity of at least 480GB. of course, it's not really a self install for most people, but you could farm it out. if you buy the SSD upgrade kit from OWC you could probably find someone that can install it for you.


OWC Aura Pro X2 480GB NVMe SSD Upgrade Solution


and you could also look at an external SSD and install big sur on it and boot from that.

iMac startup and other performance very slow

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.