Fix Tech Stuff
Hello and welcome to another video.
A few months ago I bought a secondhand mid 2010 iMac 21.5” for $100,
it’s an 11 year old computer so was in need of some serious upgrades.
What I’m going to do today will make it possible to run Mac OS Big Sur and potentially Monterey at a later stage.
This model iMac has excellent upgradability with an MXM 3.0a Laptop GPU card,
Desktop LGA1156 CPU socket and 4 DDR3 laptop RAM sockets.
The Mac Rumours forum has an excellent post on upgrading the GPU in late 2009 to mid 2011 iMacs.
First thing it outlines major problems you will encounter.
The 2 real killers for me are the loss of EFI boot screen and the loss of backlight control.
Further down there is a list of tested GPU’s,
of note the 21.5” iMacs will not have native brightness control.
You can alter the brightness by software,
I’m using Alexandre Truppel’s Brightness Slider,
this works perfectly however the physical backlight is still running at full power which generates excess heat.
A 2nd option is a clever PWM brightness mod using an ESP32,
it’s spliced in between the GPU and the backlight controller using the internal IR USB port.
I will be covering this in a later video.
Now let’s get stuck into the upgrade.
First off I am upgrading the GPU from a Geforce 9400 to a Quadro K2000M,
this Metal capable video card will help me run Big Sur and modern apps.
The GPU in question came out of a Dell Precision M4700, it was AUD$80 on eBay,
there were cheaper options on AliExpress but now the price has gone up.
The original iMac GPU is on the left, the K2000M is the green one on the right.
As you can see the dimensions are the same, however the ram layout and brackets are different.
The iMac heatsink needs to be transferred over to the K2000M.
Some people drill out the rear bracket, I opted for removing and swapping them over.
I can’t say which method would be safer, it took a bit of effort removing the Dell bracket.
It seems to clear all the components, so I’m happy with that.
Next we need to put thermal pads in the right place on the iMac heatsink.
I purchased a sheet of 10cm by 10cm thermal pad from eBay for about $7,
a link is in the description.
Make sure you remove the plastic layer from both sides before you bolt on your heatsink.
My thermal paste compound of choice (Unick - Zinc paste).
I’m putting on a fair amount just to be sure.
The end result.
Not perfect, those coils are a bit too thick, but we’ll see how it goes.
Now it’s time for reassembly.
It’s quite a task getting the mainboard in and out of here,
but definitely gets easier each time… especially when you leave out half of the screws.
These post LED’s tell you what’s functioning,
The LCD and backlight are disconnected so obviously they won’t all light up, but that 1 LED is all I need to see.
Can you spot the ingenious SSD mount?
Now I’ve put the LCD on, we can try booting.
It booted up, but with a black screen until the user login prompt.
To solve this issue we can flash the GPU BIOS.
I used the bootable USB built by Xanderon.
The process involves connecting the Mac to a router via an ethernet cable,
identifying it’s IP address and shelling in to flash the (GPU) bios using nvflash_linux
You’ll want to test this is going to work before you upgrade the GPU.
We’re now able to see the screen at boot, that’s an excellent outcome.
I won’t go further into what I had to do to install Big Sur,
but I basically used Patched Sur and OpenCore to get it booting.
After testing that the GPU was working properly and not crashing,
I went on to upgrade the CPU from a 3.06Ghz Dual Core Intel i3 to an i7-860S,
low power 2.53Ghz Quad Core with 8M cache
It cost me AUD$57 with free postage on eBay from China,
but again the price has gone up to about AUD$80 now.
I chose the i7-860S for economical reasons, rather than 870S or other potentially more powerful chip.
I also kept in mind the power draw of both the GPU and the CPU upgrades,
both of which draw way more current than the iMac was designed for.
Next I upgraded the RAM with 2 8GB Samsung chips, totalling 16GB.
I ordered these 6 months earlier for my 2011 MacBook Pro,
it was the most expensive part besides the SSD at $156, almost double what it costs now.
So with everything said and done, what have I got?
I have an Apple iMac that run’s the latest operating system and apps with the aid of OpenCore and Patched Sur.
It’s upgraded and patched but it works.
The only real negative is it runs hot,
I’m using Macs Fan Control to monitor temperatures and control the fans, but it’s not enough.
The fans are loud, but bearable. The temperatures do get high, right now some of the temps are at about 70 degrees Celsius.
We’ve had enough hot days so far this year that I know it will overheat and shut down this summer,
so I have plans to improve the cooling, starting with the backlight PWM hack in a future video.
So how about costs?
The iMac, GPU and processor upgrade came in at AUD$244 total which is excellent value.
Keep in mind the prices fluctuate, I made those purchases a few months ago in June 2021.
Next the Samsung SSD and RAM. Both of these I carried over from my broken 2011 MacBook Pro.
I purchased the SSD in June 2020 and the RAM in December 2020 for a total of AUD$339.
The prices today are AUD$90 cheaper.
16GB over 8GB RAM is optional, if you want to keep costs down.
I prefer 16GB as I can disable virtual memory which will help my SSD last longer.
A Solid State Drive upgrade is a no brainer,
in this day and age I would not use a conventional hard drive for anything, not even a backup drive.
So AUD$583 I have an expensive old computer?
Ruling out a Windows PC because I prefer a more user friendly OS,
could I have bought something better with that money?
Let’s have a look on eBay.com.au
I’ve sorted by cheapest price plus postage.
I don’t know about you, but nothing here catches my eye.
It’s not until we reach the 2017 models where I see something significantly better than what I have at $850.
Beyond that the prices get ridiculous, $1400 for a 2019 iMac,
you might as well spend the extra and get the new M1 iMac.
My pick? A base model M1 Mac mini, add extra storage with an external SSD as you can afford it.
Well that’s it for today, see you in another video soon. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, it really helps my channel.
Thanks for watching.