Can I upgrade a 2015 27" iMac to meet 2025 usage demands?

You cannot upgrade the processor in your iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015).

You can upgrade the RAM. The official limit is 32 GB, and the actual limit is 64 GB. Macs can be picky about RAM, so if you get more, I would suggest purchasing it only from Other World Computing. (The other "go to" vendor for Mac RAM, Crucial, is no longer in that business.)

Other World Computing – OWC Memory Upgrades For 27" iMac with Retina 5K Display (Late 2015)

Even though the Thunderbolt ports are old-style Thunderbolt 2 ports, the machine does have four USB-A (USB 3.0) ports that you can use to connect drives and other stuff.

The maximum supported OS is Monterey. Monterey is no longer one of the "most recent three" which vendors such as Adobe and Microsoft support. Monterey is good enough to run current versions of

• Third-party Web browsers such as Firefox
• The LibreOffice office suite
• The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
• Other Open Source photo applications (darktable, RawTherapee)
• The commercial Affinity V2 applications (Photo, Designer, Publisher)

One question I might have is "how intensive is the stuff that you are doing in Photoshop Elements 2022"?

Unless you are doing very intensive stuff, I would think that photo editing might be a bit slower than on a new Mac, but I would not expect photo editing sessions to routinely "slow down fairly quickly" and "crash". My old desktop Mac was a 27" Late 2009 iMac with 8 GB of RAM, and photo editing didn't usually give me trouble on it.

So are we talking about

• A Mac that has a failing drive?
• A Mac that has insufficient RAM for a very heavy workload?
• A Mac that is running "cleaning", "anti-virus", or "security" programs?
• Some bug in Photoshop Elements 2022 that you might be able to avoid by switching to another reasonably full-featured editor like GIMP (free) or Affinity Photo V2 (low cost)? Or by following the tips in Adobe – Troubleshoot system errors, freezes, and crashes in Photoshop Elements?

Sorry to burst your bubble but in a word no. Your 2015 iMac is obsolete and is also considered vintage. These machine only had user upgradeable RAM, nothing else is user upgradeable. In addition it will not run current version of Mac OS and parts are largely not available. If the computer still works for your needs then continue using for a couple of more years until you cannot get any third party installed on it to run.

If it does not work for your current needs, then it’s time for a new Mac, it’s as simple as that.

marcihoward wrote:

Really a Mac from 2015 can not be updated?

That iMac did not run Monterey when it first came out. It ran El Capitan. That means that it received five major updates (Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, and Monterey), for a total of six major versions of macOS.

Really a Mac from 2015 can not be updated?

I’m trying right now if I could stoped being hacked by my x bf!!! Errrrrr once he’s got a passkey on my stuff how do I combat that change emails constantly nothing works

That is correct, it cannot be upgraded. It's 10 (almost 11) years old, its had its day.