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2010 iMac I upgraded :)

I

Ibbanez

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 25, 2011
10
0
Hello everyone this is my first post, but I just wanted to say hello and let everyone know what I just did... I had a 2010 27" iMac with a dual core 3.2 i3 with 2 gb of ram and a 5770 radeon card in it.... Well I just finished installing a quad core 870 2.93 i7, owc 240 gb ssd drive, 16 gb ram, and installed te radeon 6970 w/ 2gb of video ram and let me tell u, wow..... I'm redownloading lion now to burn to a USB drive to reinstall onto the ssd drive, but so far everything working like a champ.... And everything loaded up perfect on the first try..... I was a little nervous, but hey if anything went wrong perfect excuse to buy a new Mac pro or something right. :) anybody else go this route or this far on upgrading??? I've seen a few people do the CPU, but not a lot about the video card.... Well let me know what y'all think
 
Ibbanez said:
Hello everyone this is my first post, but I just wanted to say hello and let everyone know what I just did... I had a 2010 27" iMac with a dual core 3.2 i3 with 2 gb of ram and a 5770 radeon card in it.... Well I just finished installing a quad core 870 2.93 i7, owc 240 gb ssd drive, 16 gb ram, and installed te radeon 6970 w/ 2gb of video ram and let me tell u, wow..... I'm redownloading lion now to burn to a USB drive to reinstall onto the ssd drive, but so far everything working like a champ.... And everything loaded up perfect on the first try..... I was a little nervous, but hey if anything went wrong perfect excuse to buy a new Mac pro or something right. :) anybody else go this route or this far on upgrading??? I've seen a few people do the CPU, but not a lot about the video card.... Well let me know what y'all think
Click to expand...

Nice! Where did you get the vid card?
 
Honestly I have noticed no extra heat at all... The radeon 6970 2gb cards' size is the same overall size.... The cooler piping has three pipes instead of two like the 5770, and the actual graphics chip is a little longer, but the piping is shorter.... I just made sure to use the 2010 bracket and not the 2011 one... I wasn't sure which bracket to use at first so I bought both, but u don't need it...I'm installing lion now before I goto work and will play with it more when I get home...
 
Ibbanez said:
Honestly I have noticed no extra heat at all... The radeon 6970 2gb cards' size is the same overall size.... The cooler piping has three pipes instead of two like the 5770, and the actual graphics chip is a little longer, but the piping is shorter.... I just made sure to use the 2010 bracket and not the 2011 one... I wasn't sure which bracket to use at first so I bought both, but u don't need it...I'm installing lion now before I goto work and will play with it more when I get home...
Click to expand...

This is awesome! Did you buy a generic video card from amazon or some other source? Where did you order the brackets from? I ask because I'm thinking of getting an iMac soon and may opt to get the 2010 model and do this myself to save some money while retaining the latest graphics. Any advice you could give on the subject would be very much appreciated. :)

Regards,
Luvin :apple:
 
I wish you would have pics or maybe a video! I love this kind of mac modding (its not very crazy but its the most Macs will allow lol).
 
I bought genuine apple products so the video card was like 560 ish... I got everything from applecomponents.com.... As far as the bracket I reused the stock 2010 one...
 
And I would think to have to have the apple iMac video cards because of the custom cooling system they use....

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My next thing is I may take out the stock 1 tb hard drive and use it for the external esata cables..... Cuz I use my 6tb raided external enclosure for most of my storage.... And then I'm starting to realize I dot really need a DVD drive really do I can add one more ssd also.... But we will see..... One thing I have noticed which is an annoyance, is that I get a white screen for about 2 mins before it tries to goto the apple logo, but once it does it hauls ass and boots in no time flat.... I think I need to do the pram reset...
 
Is there a good how to video on doing this? Also, the site you listed had the CPU at $1200? Can I just buy the processor off amazon for 350 and be ok?

Thanks and congrats!
 
No video that I know of, but honestly, as long as you are confident in your skills you should be fine.... This is my first Mac and I've never opened one until last night, just a lot of research..... And the 1200 thing was the whole logic board I believe.... Don't buy that, I purchased the 870 i7 intel CPU for a 1156 chipset CPU and used that, it's about $330 or so on amazon.....
 
Anyone know if you can upgrade the video card in a 2011 iMac? Does it have to be pulled from an original iMac? I plan on doing some upgrades to my iMac this year (adding an SSD for sure, maybe CPU next year, already at 12GB RAM though).
 
As far as upgrading the 2011 iMac, that's where I'm not to sure about cpu's or not as far as which ones will work with it... U basically have to make sure it was one offered by apple and make sure it's compatible socket wise... As far as the video card that would depend on what you currently have and what is offered... Basically for video cards, if they make it and it's the same size and style it should fit fine.... I took a $600 gamble on wether it would actually fit or not, but it turns out I was right :)

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Ohh and hey everybody, I finally figured out why my Mac was taking so long to boot, apparently it has something to do with the 10.7.3 update and my daisy chained FireWire drives... Go figure.... But now everything boots up under 20 secs :)
 
Ibbanez said:
No video that I know of, but honestly, as long as you are confident in your skills you should be fine.... This is my first Mac and I've never opened one until last night, just a lot of research..... And the 1200 thing was the whole logic board I believe.... Don't buy that, I purchased the 870 i7 intel CPU for a 1156 chipset CPU and used that, it's about $330 or so on amazon.....
Click to expand...

Ok, I was wondering since you mentioned that other site and I couldn't find it on there. Can you give me the links you have read? I've looked but I can't find anything on the 2010 model cpu change out. How long did it take to change out?
 
I'm working a double today so it'll have to be when I get home later tonight before I post any links..... As far as how long it took me, it was my first Mac and my first time ever doing this so I took my time... All in all from start to finish on all of it, maybe 3 hours just cuz I wanted to make sure i done it right....
 
Very nice...

Ibbanez said:
I took a $600 gamble on wether it would actually fit or not,
Click to expand...
but I'd rather sell my mid 2011 and add my $600.00 gamble to a new 2012 imac machine. I'm fine with my 2011 atm, it's only 4 months old purchase. I rather build a custom powered pc rig.
 
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Yeah I understand that, but I just built a custom pc rig and figured why not.... A lot of people said it couldn't be done because they just assumed rather than research, and from what I could tell it seemed it was possible so I said why not..... I just like doing things that others say can't or is harder than usual, idk y, I just do...:p and if you have a 2011 iMac, if u bought the best card, there wasn't much of a reason for u to upgrade unless u bought the cheaper video card, which I wouldn't have cuz I think it was only a $90 difference between the two..... The other reason I did all this was cuz I bought the 27" iMac with an i3 for only $300 off craigslist if you can believe that, and for all my photography stuff I just needed more power for all the layers and actions do I said y not.....
 
Did you ever find the links you used as reference for the tear down?

I am running vm ware fusion all day at work with my i3. When I am running iMovie or other software with hd movies it seems to be pushing it as one core is tied to fusion all the time. I went to 12gb of ram which is plenty on the ram side for my purpose. I'm just concerned about the processor.

How much better does the new processor work?
 
It is amazingly better, but that coupled with the ssd makes it hard to figure which is more.... I think everyday operations are a benefit of the ssd drive, but the extra processor is great for encoding or ur iMovie applications. Just search for iMac processor upgrade ... I think it was showing the i5 to i7 upgrade but it works as long as its a 27" iMac and u use the correct processor....
 
Ibbanez said:
And I would think to have to have the apple iMac video cards because of the custom cooling system they use....

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My next thing is I may take out the stock 1 tb hard drive and use it for the external esata cables..... Cuz I use my 6tb raided external enclosure for most of my storage.... And then I'm starting to realize I dot really need a DVD drive really do I can add one more ssd also.... But we will see..... One thing I have noticed which is an annoyance, is that I get a white screen for about 2 mins before it tries to goto the apple logo, but once it does it hauls ass and boots in no time flat.... I think I need to do the pram reset...
Click to expand...



Set startup disk in system prefs. that'll fix it
 
Unfortunately, I've done that several times with another fresh install and still happens....
 
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