How do you herd together 14.7 million pixels? You can ask nicely, or you can brandish some heavy-duty hardware. Inside the Retina 5K iMac:

3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, with Turbo Boost up to 3.9 GHz

8 GB (2x4 GB) of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM

AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics processor with 2 GB of GDDR5 video memory

802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0

PCIe-based SSD storage and SATA hard drive

Not one to waste a good model number on just a single device, Apple again recycles A1419.

At the rear of the iMac, we find a plethora of I/O ports and a lone SDXC card slot:

Headphone jack / Optical digital audio output

SDXC card slot

Four USB 3.0 ports

Two Thunderbolt 2.0 ports

Gigabit ethernet port

Fixers rejoice! The iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display retains the familiar, easily accessible RAM upgrade slot from iMacs of yore.

For those who require assistance replacing their RAM modules, Apple has attempted to provide some direction—that you get to see after you're halfway through the process.

We're pretty adept at slicing open iMacs with our ever-so-fancy pizza cutter iMac Opening Tool and our noble Plastic Card.

While the procedure still requires a steady hand and a willingness to replace the custom-cut, two-sided adhesive tape when you're done, it's otherwise pretty straightforward, and unchanged from previous models.

With the adhesive tape gone, we get our first peek at the hardware inside the Retina 5K iMac.

The first order of business is finding out whether this 5K display runs on actual magic, or something more susceptible to dissection.

With a few twists of our screwdriver, a very long, very thin display board is revealed.

Let's take a look at the hardware that allows 14.7 million pixels with a resolution of 5120 x 2880 on a 27-inch display:

Texas Instruments NH245 8-Bit Dual-Supply Bus Transceiver

Texas Instruments BUF16821 Programmable Gamma-Voltage Generator and Vcom Calibrator

Parade Technologies DP665 LCD Timing Controller

Texas Instruments TPS65270 Monolithic Dual Synchronous Buck Regulator

Texas Instruments TPS65168 High Resolution Fully Programmable LCD Bias IC for TV

Barring the new display, the hardware inside the iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display looks much the same as last year's 27" iMac.

In fact, as we dive in deeper, we realize it is very nearly exactly the same.

And after following the guide to the letter, we've got our findings on the differences inside:

The Retina 5K's display data cable is slightly wider—to support those extra pixels.

Let's see what ICs this unsurprisingly familiar logic board is packing:

AMD Radeon R9 M290X GPU

Intel Core i5-4690 Processor

SK Hynix H5GC2H24BFR 256 MB GDDR5 SGRAM (256 MB x 8 modules = 2 GB total)

Delta Electronics 8904CF 143003

Intel DH82Z87 (Z87) Platform Controller Hub

Fairchild Semiconductor DE32GV

Front side of logic board:

Broadcom BCM5776 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Cirrus Logic 4206BCNZ Audio Controller

Intel DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Controller

LMF4S1EH 5BBCIG 47A6HPW

Microchip Technology 1428-7 420BE5A BMY System Management Bus (SMBus) Temperature Sensor

Intersil ISL6327 Enhanced 6-Phase PWM Controller

This looks to be the exact same SanDisk PCIe SSD as the one found in the MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Late 2013.

Unsurprisingly, we find the exact same ICs:

SanDisk 05131 016G 16 GB NAND Flash (four on each side, total of 8 x 16 GB = 128 GB)

SK Hynix H5TQ2G63DFR 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM

Marvell 88SS91383 PCIe SSD Controller

The AirPort/Bluetooth card, identified by its model number BCM94360CD, is exactly the same as the one we encountered in last year's iMac Intel 27 inch:

Broadcom BCM4360KML1G 5G WiFi 3-Stream 802.11ac Gigabit Transceiver

Skyworks SE5516 Dual-Band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WLAN Front-End Module

Broadcom BCM20702 Single-Chip Bluetooth 4.0 HCI Solution with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Support

iMac 27" Retina 5K Display Repairability Score: 5 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)

RAM is user-replaceable without opening the case, thanks to the rear access door.

You can still replace the hard drive and CPU inside this machine, albeit with some adhesive cutting.

Components are modular and fairly easy to remove.

The glass and LCD are fused together, and there are no more magnets holding the glass in place.

You'll have to masterfully peel off the old double-sided sticky tape and apply new tape in order to reseal this iMac into original condition.