hello everybody and welcome to bull technology last week i traded my trusty 2009 27-inch imac
for this 2012 21.5 inch imac over facebook marketplace so today we'll be exploring
upgrading and testing this mysterious and beautiful 2012 imac let's get started
i've been downsizing my computer collection recently and last week it was time for my 2009
imac to find a new home here to replace it is this 2012 imac when i traded machines the seller didn't
tell me much about this imac other than that it was a 2012 model after getting this computer into
my studio and booting it up i discovered that this was a base model imac from 2012 featuring
a quad core third generation core i5 8 gigabytes of ram nvidia 650 graphics and a painfully slow
one terabyte mechanical hard drive overall not bad what was terrible though was the seller
didn't remove any of his personal information from the machine before handing it over to me
i made a separate video regarding what i found on this computer and the risks of data theft that you
are free to check out if you'd like so given the amount of personal information left on the
hard drive and given how painfully slow the hard drive is i decided to upgrade this imac to a 500
gigabyte sandisk ssd this is an upgrade i would definitely recommend to viewers that have an older
mac unfortunately getting into this imac is a bit trickier than getting into other older aluminum
imacs you'll first need to purchase an adhesive kit such as this one that i purchased on amazon
for about eight dollars this kit will allow you to cut away the adhesive holding on the imax display
as well as provide you with adhesive strips to re-adhere the display when you put the imac back
together using the provided cutting tool we can cut the adhesive around the display after the
adhesive is fully removed the display can be tilted forward and you'll want to disconnect
the display and power connectors this will allow you to fully remove the display panel and here
is our hard drive unscrewing and removing these two brackets will allow you to remove the rubber
hard drive enclosure and replace the hard drive with your ssd then it's as simple as reconnecting
the enclosure and screwing the holding brackets back in place and then you'll want to apply the
adhesive strips and remount the display panel and then of course it's time to see if it still works
this imac supports up to mac os catalina and we'll do a full upgrade to catalina but first
we'll install mac os high sierra because i don't have a bootable catalina thumb drive
with mac os high sierra installed we can do our full upgrade to mac os catalina
and we're finished so what can this old imac do let's find out of course lighter tasks such as
typing documents and pages works like a charm web browsing also works like a charm and this includes
4k youtube video playback listening to itunes music also worked with no issues but enough of
simple tasks what about say video editing well using final cut pro this imac was able to edit
and export a 1080p project with multiple streams of 1080p video and export times are actually much
shorter than on my 2009 mac pro so if you're doing lighter video editing this imac has got
you covered but what about say gaming well this is where the imac's gpu is definitely going to show
its age minecraft at 8 chunks ran at a respectable 55 frames per second but sadly this is where
the good news ends the long dark at the lowest settings and at 768p ran at about 20 frames per
second which is definitely not very playable and the last game i tested city's skylines ran at a
super choppy 15 frames per second yeah not exactly impressive but this machine would
have been a poor gaming machine when it was brand new so not too surprising so there you have it
my new 2012 imac i decided to replace my 2009 mac pro with this imac in my computer room
and honestly i'm very happy with this adorable computer is this machine as powerful as my m1 imac
no is it as capable no but what this imac is is surprising for its age so be sure
to leave a like a comment and definitely subscribe and thank you all for watching
you