[masraum]

I'm probably going to be buying an iMac to replace my current PC soon. I want it to last a while.

My current PC is from 2011. It's a quad core i5 @ 3.1GHz, 16GB RAM and 1 TB HDD running Win 7 and is on 24x7. It runs really well. I can decode video while surfing the web in Firefox with nearly 1000 tabs open. (yeah, that's not a typo) You open a link and think "I'll read that later". Eventually, I mostly start over.

I do manipulate some digital photos, but nothing huge or crazy. I backup/transcode DVD and/or Bluray disks. Surf the web, excel, word, email, etc..., nothing crazy, no CAD or crazy image stuff.

I'm planning to get a 27" iMac.
How much of an upgrade is it from a 3.7GHz 6 core i5 to a 3.6GHz 8 core i9? (for $400 more). I know that a lot of time, reviews indicate that just going up in speed is often a marginal upgrade, but 33% more cores and a more advanced processor?

Then my thoughts on RAM (they come with 8GB) but I'm thinking at least 16GB( $200), maybe 32GB ($600).

My dilemna is that I don't think I want to spend the money to get the processor upgrade AND the 32GB RAM upgrade. So I would probably go with the 8 core i9 and 16GB RAM or 6 core i5 and 32GB RAM. Does that seem reasonable or do you have another recommendation?

Then just FYI, I'll probably spend the $300 to upgrade from a 2TB fusion drive to a 1TB SSD.

Any other thoughts (other than how cool the iMac Pro is, if I had a couple extra grand to spend).