Is it time to throw in the towel and upgrade to a new iMac?

That’s a middling i5 and is probably mostly slow here because of the 8 GB of memory, though internal memory is expandable in this iMac 27” model.

It is also slow because it is a 2017 iMac Intel i5, and i5 runs at a fraction of recent M-class processors. (~1400 and ~4000 single- and multi-core, versus ~3800 and ~15000 for iMac M4)

OWC / MacSales memory tends to have a good reputation for memory compatibility and support.

• Install memory in an iMac - Apple Support
• https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/imac-2017-27-inch

Google apps tend to be resource intensive, and doing who-knows-what else. Remove the Google apps pending a memory upgrade. Or pending Mac replacement.

I agree with MrHoffman ... the main issue is that there is not enough RAM to support running Ventura or much of anything else. If you want to invest in additional RAM, you can upgrade this iMac all the way to 64GB.

Although older and certainly not comparable to the performance of current M-series Macs, an i5 suitably configured is still a worthy machine. (Although it tops out at Ventura, so you should keep that in mind.)

I'd suggest upgrading to 24GB. You can add 16GB (two 8-GB modules) for about $110 resulting in 24GB RAM total. You should see a decent improvement in performance. (Recent lookup at OWC.)

I also advocate getting rid of the Google browser; it is a known resource hog and is undoubtedly affecting performance (even when not running because it has background processes). Use Safari or Firefox instead.

3xclusive_jr wrote:

I mainly want to video edit and kinda transfer all my work to a MacBook or something similar that is designed for heavy work to be done

In that case, a new Mac would be a better idea than trying to beef up the old i5.

Nothing against the i5 per se, it's just that for those stated uses an M-series Mac with an appropriate amount of RAM would be significantly better, more satisfactory to use and have a longer forward life.

Ventura is already off the list of supported versions of macOS, as are many apps that follow Apple's lead of only supporting the current version (Tahoe) and the previous two versions (Sequoia & Sonoma); the list will change again next fall.

3xclusive_jr wrote:

I mainly want to video edit and kinda transfer all my work to a MacBook or something similar that is designed for heavy work…

Video editing is well past what I’d suggest here, atop the more-than-three-versions-back mire.

One consideration is then how much portability matters to your requirements. Desktops such as mini, Studio, and iMac 24” tend to cost less for similar thermals and similar or better performance, where portability adds costs.

And laptops that are seldom or never carried might be a poor choice, on the other side of this same trade-off.

One other subtlety in the Apple pricing can be model overlap, as a mid- or upper-range mini might be better as a Studio.

Note that photo-related processes were taking up nearly 58% of the CPU time.

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

photoanalysisd 38.00 % (Apple)

nsurlsessiond (2) 34.12 % (Apple)

kernel_task 21.62 % (Apple)

cloudd (2) 20.22 % (Apple)

photolibraryd 19.82 % (Apple)

My guess is that the Mac was spending a lot of time analyzing the Photos database – whether new photos had just been loaded onto the machine locally, or had been loaded through synchronization against iCloud Photos.

Like Spotlight indexing, this will presumably resolve itself, given time. But in the meantime, the analysis task may be hitting up both the CPU and the drive where the Photos library is located (i.e., the slow mechanical hard drive). That may be contributing to slowdowns independent of whatever Chrome might be doing.

nsurlsessiond was another CPU hog, accounting for 34.12% of CPU time. The name of this process indicates that it is involved with Internet access, so perhaps there was a lot of that going on when the report was generated.

If you do decide to get a new Mac consider the following: a 10 Core Mac Mini M4 with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD ($1084) with a 32" LG 4k monitor ($331) from Amazon.com)  is $1415 which is $541 less than a similarly configured new 24" iMac ($1956)  re 07/2025. Keep your keyboard and mouse from your current Mac for use with the Mini. 

I got the above Mini with a 32" LG 4K monitor w/speakers for only $60 more than the 27" (didn't know the Mini had a speaker).  There are many monitors available in 27" size on up for $100 to $500 depending on what features you want.  The monitor prices are before tariffs.

Just some food for thought.

The memory system was not under a lot of stress at the time this report was generated.

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 52 MB

Used RAM: 4.49 GB

Cached files: 3.46 GB

Available RAM: 3.51 GB

Swap Used: 0 B

3.46 GB out of 8 GB of RAM was available for allocation on demand. Most of the "idle" RAM was being put to use holding "Cached files" – an optimization that would help the Mac to run faster if the cached data was needed before the RAM was. Only 52 MB was completely idle.

Swap used was 0 bytes – indicating that even if the Mac had swapped out some data to "compressed RAM", it had not been forced to swap out any data to the much slower mechanical hard drive.

3xclusive_jr wrote:

I probably will just upgrade so I will keep this in mind when I'm searching for my new Mac