iFixit

We like hard drives and devices that support dual hard drives, so naturally we start by examining the new iMac's 1 TB drive.

By switching from a traditional 3.5" desktop hard drive to a 2.5" laptop drive, Apple designers were able to clear a lot of real estate inside the iMac.

• Smaller laptop hard drives are also often quieter, thanks to smaller moving parts than their big brothers.

Apple turned to HGST—Western Digital's acquisition of Hitachi—to manage the iMac's spinning storage.

A rubbery housing is lightly adhered to the edges of the hard drive beneath the upper and lower hard plastic bezels.

This design is far different from what we've seen before. Since the internal components are more tightly packed than before, small vibrations may carry through more components. The rubber housing dampens the vibrations from the spinning hard drive so they are not perpetuated throughout the device.

You might already know that we carry a 54-bit driver kit to handle any of your mechanical fastener needs. What you might not know, however, is that the included extender can be used to provide extra torque to remove tough screws—such as those holding down the power supply board inside the iMac.

This board takes the readily available AC voltage from your wall socket and converts it to tasty DC voltage for the iMac to consume.

• The specified output is 12.1 V, 15.4 A.

A new fan layout! We are fans.

Apple is changing things up quite a bit and has moved from multiple small fans to a single centralized fan.

"1" may be the loneliest number, but removing 2/3 of the fans goes a long way towards saving space.

Judging by the orientation of the squirrel cage fan, we gather that it draws cool air from the bottom vents, then blows hot air out of the grating in the back of the iMac.

• We were right.

The webcams in iMacs of yesteryear have always been connected to the logic board with long snaking cables that were relatively fragile; that is no longer the case.

A ribbon cable we can only describe as "beefy" keeps the FaceTime HD camera in touch with the logic board.

As we mentioned earlier, the newest iMac features not one, but two microphones.

Dual microphone technology has been utilized in mobile devices for years to cut out background noise during phone calls. Now, the same idea is being applied here to improve sound quality during intimate FaceTime chats with your mother.

It's not often that we see the microphone(s) and webcam for a computer disconnected from each other. That modularity means positive points towards repairability.

Three gold bars antennas come out next with a few spudger flicks.

Even though the main Wi-Fi antenna is hidden behind the big Apple logo on the rear case as usual, these three antennas split up Bluetooth and secondary Wi-Fi duties.

Stop—speaker time!

The speakers may look simple, but removing them is nerve-wracking. For seemingly no reason other than to push our buttons, Apple has added a barb to the bottom of the speaker assemblies that makes them harder-than-necessary to remove.

After sufficiently wracking all of our nerves, the speaker assemblies allow us to remove them from their sick beat dropping enclosure.