The cool cats at OWC have performed a full teardown of the new 2020 27-inch iMac and found some very cool things.
In addition to the 10th-generation Intel Core processors, AMD Radeon Pro 5000 series graphics, up to 128GB of RAM, up to 8TB of storage, a 1080p front-facing FaceTime camera, a True Tone display with a nano-texture glass option, higher fidelity speakers, and studio-quality microphones, the other changes were noted:
– Camera is attached to the LCD, so have to take extra care to remove a third cable when opening up the iMac.
– Lack of mechanical HDD (and SATA connectors on logicboard) – but this was obvious.
– Extra microphone(s) stuck to the case, notably an extra cable made connecting into the logic board close to the backlight. Other connects around the same position as the 2017/19 models.
– Solder joints for the 4 & 8TB model iMacs.
The 2020 27-inch iMac no longer arrives with a mechanical hard drive, and all models feature solid state drives by default. As such, there are no SATA connectors, and a small SSD is soldered directly to the logic board. There are new solder joints for an expansion board to hold additional SSDs in the 4TB and 8TB configurations. In the 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations, the expansion board is not present.
The lack of a mechanical hard drive has freed up a large amount of space within the machine, and Apple has left this space empty, instead of installing an additional cooling unit, as seen in the iMac Pro.
Beyond these minor changes, the internals are much the same as previous models, with the same power supply, cooling, socketed CPU, and headphone jack. Although the speakers are purportedly upgraded, they do not appear to be any visually different within the machine.
Given that the 2020 iMac shares almost all of its internal components with previous iMac models, it should be no more expensive or difficult to repair than its predecessors.
Finally, the RAM on the 2020 iMac remains readily upgradeable, and can be accessed via a small door at the back of the computer.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.