Resolved Upgrading the 2011 imac to ivy bridge final results

mrsavage1 · May 7, 2012

Has anyone been successful in trying to put an ivy bridge in the 2011 imac?

updated: ROG has reported this is not possible because no one else can verify hackerywayne's results the final final word is that no its not possible to put ivy bridge in the 2011 imac.

I am gonna wait till someone posts a vid of an install of an ivy into a 2011 imac till I conclude it works. ROG has posted pics of his install. so I am believing him till someone posts pics of a successful ivy install.

Just a heads up for ppl thinking of upgrading. A 2600 is the only cpu that can work in ml. if you want to use the others 2600 i7 k or 2700 i7k you won't be able to boot up to ml but you can boot to lion.

I just noticed that hackerwayne is using the 3770s not the 3770. Can we have confirmation that the 3770s can work? but even then the specs his showing should be 3.4 the 3770s is 3.1 ghz so it doesn't still match up. hmmm i'll take it with a pinch of salt.
http://ark.intel.com/products/65524/Intel-Core-i7-3770S-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

still waiting for a brave soul to try using the firmware of the new imacs on the 2011 though it probably won't work z68 to z77 chipset.

Also if your looking to upgrade becareful you can potentially break your imac.
a report of someone who did the cpu change and failed: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1497867/

it dustbined his entire imac. So be aware there is a potential for failure and upgrading is not a 100% success rate.

leman · May 7, 2012

mrsavage1 said:
Has anyone been successful in trying to put an ivy bridge in the 2011 imac?

It won't work. You'll need a BIOS/EFI whatever upgrade + updated kernel.

hackerwayne · Jul 30, 2012

leman said:
It won't work. You'll need a BIOS/EFI whatever upgrade + updated kernel.

Please confirm your source before saying anything. Ive tried it, and i can confirm it works. I discovered that Apple uses the same logic board for the stock i5 and the CTO i7 model. i5 2500S uses 65W TDP where as the i7 2700 uses 95W TDP. i7 3770 only requires 77W, and that the iMac also uses generic Z68 chipset thats supported by Ivy Bridge. Since Apple used the same board, i decided to upgrade my iMac. Everything went on smoothly, but few things to note here:

1. Intel HD 3000 is gone and Intel HD 4000 don't work for some reason

2. About This Mac shows: Processor: 3.5GHz Unknown I fixed that by modifying System Profiler, so now it shows Processor: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7

----------

mrsavage1 said:
Has anyone been successful in trying to put an ivy bridge in the 2011 imac?

It works. And I've tried it.

Djerzprod · Jul 30, 2012

leman said:
It won't work. You'll need a BIOS/EFI whatever upgrade + updated kernel.

THANK YOU hackerwayne for putting this nasty rumor to bed.

kennyap · Jul 30, 2012

hackerwayne said:
Please confirm your source before saying anything. Ive tried it, and i can confirm it works.
----------

[/COLOR]

It works. And I've tried it.

Great Job, congrats. Have you tried installing Mountain Lion yet? I upgraded my 2011 iMac to the 2700K (3.5ghz) everything just fine, except having issues with ML; cannot upgrade or clean install. Others confirm same issue with ML.

leman · Jul 30, 2012

hackerwayne said:
Please confirm your source before saying anything. Ive tried it, and i can confirm it works.

...

1. Intel HD 3000 is gone and Intel HD 4000 don't work for some reason

2. About This Mac shows: Processor: 3.5GHz Unknown I fixed that by modifying System Profiler, so now it shows Processor: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7

I am rather sure that ivy bridge support only appeared in 10.7.4 lion kernel, which has not been released in may when I wrote my post. And clearly your machine is missing the required Firmware info if the hd4000 and CPU detection does not work. Are you sure that the power management (CPU multipliers) are working correctly? Are benchmark scores what they should be?

Btw, congratulations on at least partial success in your experiment!

xiaomei · Jul 30, 2012

@hackerwayne

Are you running mountain lion currently?
Can you do some benchmarks?

Thanks

hackerwayne · Jul 30, 2012

kennyap said:
Great Job, congrats. Have you tried installing Mountain Lion yet? I upgraded my 2011 iMac to the 2700K (3.5ghz) everything just fine, except having issues with ML; cannot upgrade or clean install. Others confirm same issue with ML.

I upgraded to ML before swapping lol, so no issues. What i can say is that After Effects rendering time was at least 40% faster.

----------

xiaomei said:
@hackerwayne

Are you running mountain lion currently?
Can you do some benchmarks?

Thanks

Yes I'm running ML currently, will do benchmark tmr.

----------

leman said:
I am rather sure that ivy bridge support only appeared in 10.7.4 lion kernel, which has not been released in may when I wrote my post. And clearly your machine is missing the required Firmware info if the hd4000 and CPU detection does not work. Are you sure that the power management (CPU multipliers) are working correctly? Are benchmark scores what they should be?

Btw, congratulations on at least partial success in your experiment!

No one cares whether CPU detection works, pretty sure it worked before 10.7.4 because Ivy Bridge does not require an EFI update, it support Z68 chipsets by default. CPU detects just fine in Windows 7 (boot camp) and Windows 8 (Parallels 7 *<lots of issues in ML btw*), All 4 physical and 4 virtual cores are properly detected. Intel HD 4000 does not work because the required kexts just isn't there.

mrsavage1 · Jul 30, 2012

Yeah , i didn't want to argue with the 2nd guy when i wrote the thread. But i knew someone would at least try it out. Kudos to you. I knew it would work deep down. Seems to me that the 2011 imac was huge value for money.

leman · Jul 31, 2012

hackerwayne said:
No one cares whether CPU detection works, pretty sure it worked before 10.7.4 because Ivy Bridge does not require an EFI update, it support Z68 chipsets by default.

I am not talking about EFI update here, I am talking about kernel support. Hackintosh community were not able to boot Ivy Bridge prior 10.7.4 (unless with a modded kernel). You yourself say that you didn't try it with a kernel prior to 10.7.4, so why do you insist that it would work?

hackerwayne said:
Intel HD 4000 does not work because the required kexts just isn't there.

Mountain Lion includes all the required HD4000 kexts, check your /S/L/E kext folder (at least I have them on my 2009 MBP installation).

Anyway, the real indication whether things worked out fine would be the benchmarks. Looking forward to them.

Djerzprod · Jul 31, 2012

leman said:
I am not talking about EFI update here, I am talking about kernel support. Hackintosh community were not able to boot Ivy Bridge prior 10.7.4 (unless with a modded kernel). You yourself say that you didn't try it with a kernel prior to 10.7.4, so why do you insist that it would work?

Mountain Lion includes all the required HD4000 kexts, check your /S/L/E kext folder (at least I have them on my 2009 MBP installation).

Anyway, the real indication whether things worked out fine would be the benchmarks. Looking forward to them.

So now it's not "No, will not work without EFI update" Why can't people just congratulate others without coming on here and trying to pick every little thing apart. (Boo yo you sir)

Ummm, if hackerwayne proves you wrong with the benchmarks, will you stop being a jerk and just admit that you were wrong?

leman · Jul 31, 2012

Djerzprod said:
So now it's not "No, will not work without EFI update" Why can't people just congratulate others without coming on here and trying to pick every little thing apart. (Boo yo you sir)

Ummm, if hackerwayne proves you wrong with the benchmarks, will you stop being a jerk and just admit that you were wrong?

Hey, I don't want to sound self-righteous and I also don't want it to seem like I am bickering (btw, I did congratulate him/her). But I think that I have the right to defend myself is someone comes and claims me be to be a liar quoting on a post I wrote several month ago (before any Mac native Ivy Bridge hardware was released). If the question were asked last week I would have answered something like 'ML has native Ivy Bridge support but it may be that an EFI upgrade is needed for it to work properly'. Anyway, I apologise if I sounded like a jerk, this was never my intention. BTW, I was wrong about IB support being included in 10.7.4 kernel, it only came later, with the rMBP update.

As far as the EFI update thing goes, I admit that I am surprised that it booted without it. Still, as hackerwayne points out himself/herself, there are still some issues with the detection of CPU features (like iGPU support). I asked for benchmarks because I am worried that the clock multiplier might be not detected correctly. I simply want to make sure that this really works before other people do this upgrade and find out that their system might be unstable. I don't have any problems admitting that I am wrong, but only if I am really wrong. So far, I am still sceptical that the upgrade was 100% successful.

Again, it is in no way my intension to belittle the effort of hackerwayne or others in this matter, I simply want to warn from making premature conclusions.

iSayuSay · Jul 31, 2012

Main concern is:

Why did the upgrade at all?

Especially since you did it on a 2011 iMac? With which you still can get AppleCare and enjoy 3 years of manufacturing warranty?

Replacing the CPU means you potentially screw up the installation, or the machine itself. If something go sideways, I'm not sure Apple gonna take care about your machine. It's easy to identify that CPU has been DIY-replaced, and you lose excellent Apple support by doing so?

I thought the main reason of getting an AIO desktop is simplicity and much less involving tidbits upgrade like a regular tower would? You knew the risk and you bought it anyway.
I think if one still love tinkering, he should get regular tower instead? With which one can do those in much safer, easier and cheaper methods?

Sure, it's your machine, it's up to you what to do about it. But it's just quite strange to me to get an AIO and then do some essential upgrade at all (CPU or GPU)?

philipma1957 · Jul 31, 2012

as I read it if you have the i5 2500 and go to the i7 3770 your speed goes up 40% if you do multl thread tasks. If I had a 2011 i5 2500s I would be inclined to drop in the i7 2600s you still get hyper thread and low power

http://ark.intel.com/products/52215/Intel-Core-i7-2600S-Processor-(8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz)

kfscoll · Jul 31, 2012

I'm lost. How did you ever access or use the integrated GPU on your iMac when you were running the i5-2500? I have a mid-2011 iMac with the i7-2600 and there's no way (at least in OS X) to access the integrated GPU. In fact, if you look at this webpage, you'll see that no iMac is listed as having an HD 3000. Now, I know the iGPU is on the silicon, but this page strongly implies that Apple's disabled the iGPU, or at least given you no way to use it. As far as the OS is concerned, the only GPU the iMac contains is the AMD Radeon HD 6970M.

In other words, how can you say that the i7-3770's iGPU doesn't work if the i5-2500's iGPU never worked either (at least in OS X)? What are you comparing the non-working i7-3770 iGPU to?

Djerzprod · Jul 31, 2012

philipma1957 said:
as I read it if you have the i5 2500 and go to the i7 3770 your speed goes up 40% if you do multl thread tasks. If I had a 2011 i5 2500s I would be inclined to drop in the i7 2600s you still get hyper thread and low power

http://ark.intel.com/products/52215/Intel-Core-i7-2600S-Processor-(8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz)

From a CPU spec perspective, the 2600 can only handle ram up to 1333MHz; whereas the 3770 can handle ram up to 1600MHz. Now don't get me wrong, but my preliminary research finds that z68 can handle 1600MHz, so it shouldn't be a problem to get those ram speeds if you were to use the 3770...but that's something that needs to be tested yet.

AppleDApp · Jul 31, 2012

Let's see some benchmarks.

mmomega · Jul 31, 2012

I would be willing to do this swap myself.

I would also love to see a quick video of the about Mac window and the Hardware info screen, not so worried about benchmarks.

I would most likely go with the i7-3770S chip myself.

That and a Thunderbolt+USB3 hub and I still come out A LOT cheaper than buying a new desktop.

kennyap · Jul 31, 2012

iSayuSay said:
Main concern is:

Why did the upgrade at all?

Especially since you did it on a 2011 iMac? With which you still can get AppleCare and enjoy 3 years of manufacturing warranty?

Replacing the CPU means you potentially screw up the installation, or the machine itself. If something go sideways, I'm not sure Apple gonna take care about your machine. It's easy to identify that CPU has been DIY-replaced, and you lose excellent Apple support by doing so?

I thought the main reason of getting an AIO desktop is simplicity and much less involving tidbits upgrade like a regular tower would? You knew the risk and you bought it anyway.
I think if one still love tinkering, he should get regular tower instead? With which one can do those in much safer, easier and cheaper methods?

Sure, it's your machine, it's up to you what to do about it. But it's just quite strange to me to get an AIO and then do some essential upgrade at all (CPU or GPU)?

I think it was fantastic work he did, even groundbreaking. You should congratulate him instead of trying to discourage what he's done. I'm sure he's very well aware of the Apple Warranty, just like any reasonably intelligent mac owner - and I think it's safe to say he's of above average intelligence. Maybe you should try it yourself, upgrade your machine. Feels pretty good after I can tell you.
peace

leman · Jul 31, 2012

kfscoll said:
I'm lost. How did you ever access or use the integrated GPU on your iMac when you were running the i5-2500? I have a mid-2011 iMac with the i7-2600 and there's no way (at least in OS X) to access the integrated GPU. In fact, if you look at this webpage, you'll see that no iMac is listed as having an HD 3000. Now, I know the iGPU is on the silicon, but this page strongly implies that Apple's disabled the iGPU, or at least given you no way to use it. As far as the OS is concerned, the only GPU the iMac contains is the AMD Radeon HD 6970M.

In other words, how can you say that the i7-3770's iGPU doesn't work if the i5-2500's iGPU never worked either (at least in OS X)? What are you comparing the non-working i7-3770 iGPU to?

Oh, this a very good point! It would actually make perfect sense, given that Apple uses their own solution to manage GPU switching, which requires special hardware. I am stupid, I should have thought about it :/

mmomega · Jul 31, 2012

iSayuSay said:
Main concern is:

Why did the upgrade at all?

Especially since you did it on a 2011 iMac? With which you still can get AppleCare and enjoy 3 years of manufacturing warranty?

Replacing the CPU means you potentially screw up the installation, or the machine itself. If something go sideways, I'm not sure Apple gonna take care about your machine. It's easy to identify that CPU has been DIY-replaced, and you lose excellent Apple support by doing so?

I thought the main reason of getting an AIO desktop is simplicity and much less involving tidbits upgrade like a regular tower would? You knew the risk and you bought it anyway.
I think if one still love tinkering, he should get regular tower instead? With which one can do those in much safer, easier and cheaper methods?

Sure, it's your machine, it's up to you what to do about it. But it's just quite strange to me to get an AIO and then do some essential upgrade at all (CPU or GPU)?

It is not much different than someone building their own computer or even modifying their vehicle. (Take a $60,000 vehicle and add a programmer and risk complete warranty denial for some added horsepower)

Most know the risk of modding anything, it may or may not work afterwards, it most likely will not be covered by any warranties.

No one else has to pay for their mistakes but them so let them play.

Orlandoech · Jul 31, 2012

Im thinking of adding an i7-2700k to my 2011 iMac, but Im not sure I wanna drop the $ or just wait for a refresh.

iSayuSay · Jul 31, 2012

kennyap said:
I think it was fantastic work he did, even groundbreaking. You should congratulate him instead of trying to discourage what he's done. I'm sure he's very well aware of the Apple Warranty, just like any reasonably intelligent mac owner - and I think it's safe to say he's of above average intelligence. Maybe you should try it yourself, upgrade your machine. Feels pretty good after I can tell you.
peace

I didn't mean to offend or doubt his intelligence, I'm sure he's capable enough. But rather asking the motive.

One could build a regular desktop today, and easily hackintosh it. It's easier to build, mod, maintain, upgrade. Could be potentially cheaper, and you could have a lot of powerful desktop GPU options instead of limited to 6970M. In short, it's tinkering haven.
For example it's posssible to easily replace CPU on my PC box with bare hands. No need for special tools or be concerned about broken flex cable, sensors, fans and all.

And if you care about legal or license agreement thing, replacing CPU on your iMac is no less harder nor illegal than building a Hackintosh.

dmax35 · Jul 31, 2012

kennyap said:
I think it was fantastic work he did, even groundbreaking. You should congratulate him instead of trying to discourage what he's done. I'm sure he's very well aware of the Apple Warranty, just like any reasonably intelligent mac owner - and I think it's safe to say he's of above average intelligence. Maybe you should try it yourself, upgrade your machine. Feels pretty good after I can tell you.
peace

He's quite notorius for giving his under educated opionion towards others upgrades as if it's his own $$ that did it.

You'd think he would learn to shut up!

iSayuSay · Aug 1, 2012

dmax35 said:
He's quite notorius for giving his under educated opionion towards others upgrades as if it's his own $$ that did it.

You'd think he would learn to shut up!

Knock it off, old man! Man up a little, will ya? Anyone here asking for your opinion? Or more importantly, anyone giving you the rights to be a forum cop here?

I can't imagine any more pathetic life than keeping an eye on a random person in forum every single day of your life.

One advice, little man, let it off and get a life

Resolved Upgrading the 2011 imac to ivy bridge final results

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