The 2017 iteration of the iMac has been floating around the rumor mill for a long time. Despite multiple sources indicating that Apple is in no mood to introduce a new iMac, the Cupertino-based tech titan has made known that an update is indeed in the offing in near future.

A slew of other reports has been pointing to Q3 2017 launch for the new iMacs. Also, Apple is reportedly hard at works on two iMac 2017 iterations; one being a premium desktop, while the other intended to target higher-end market.

If rumors running rampant online proved to be true, the high-end variants of the new iMacs could come bearing "server-grade" internal components such as ECC RAM (error correcting code memory). ECC RAM is devised to keep single-bit memory errors at bay. One of the primary reasons that give rise to these errors is cosmic rays as noted in a post on Ksplice Blog.

Aside from that, electrical interference and radioactive decay can also lead to single-bit memory errors, which are quite problematic especially for those handling sensitive data such as financial records, scientific data et al.

The high-end server-grade iMac might pack an Intel Xeon E3-1285 v6 processor, coupled with 16 to 64 GB of the aforesaid ECC RAM, and a 2TB PCIe SSD, according to a report from DigiTimes (via DigitalTrends). The website cited sources from Taiwan-based supply chain makers, who suggest the upcoming desktop's main competitor could be Microsoft's recently launched Surface Studio.

Another report from MacRumors implies the 21-inch iMacs are likely to retain onboard Iris or Iris Pro graphics. It can be recalled that Apple included mobile-grade graphics chips in the previously rolled out iMac update.

The new 27-inch iMacs, on the other hand, will come equipped with high-end AMD graphics cards -- probably slimmer mobile versions; however, the new Radeon GPUs will boast AMD's latest Polaris architecture, meaning consumers are likely to get a lot more bang for their buck. Aside from featuring the highly capable new GPUs, the upcoming iMac lineup will be powered by lntel's latest 7th-generation Kaby Lake processors.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but if this comes to fruition, the iMacs might even surpass their mobile counterparts i.e. MacBooks Pro, which features 6th-generation Skylake chips, under the hood.