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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
nitro1337 said:
i diassembled the iMac again und flashed the card on my windows pc. Back into my iMac the Card appears as before with the odd naming.
My thesis is that the hdd osx running in my iMac was previously installed on an old 2009 iMac. Maybe thats the problem.

But I don't have a boot screen - maybe you have an idea what to do?
Click to expand...
You have to hold alt before the chime. It doesn't show up on normal boots. Maybe you are using the wrong chip definition to flash? I don't own a k1100m to know the exact chip model.
 
nitro1337 said:
i diassembled the iMac again und flashed the card on my windows pc. Back into my iMac the Card appears as before with the odd naming.
My thesis is that the hdd osx running in my iMac was previously installed on an old 2009 iMac. Maybe thats the problem.

But I don't have a boot screen - maybe you have an idea what to do?
Click to expand...
I have flashed several Kx100M cards and all came up in the system with this "Quadro Kx100M by Nick[D]vB 2 GB" message.

Something is wrong with your rom, I guess. You may load it on your Mac and run the following terminal command "strings K1000 | more". Within the first page you will see the name. If you cannot see the Nick string you got the wrong file or messed them up. pressing q in terminal ends the dump of readable strings.
 
highvoltage12v said:
Hello please do a fresh of install of High Sierra. No kext mods need on HS. I notice you Have 3 "HDD" connected. Please just use the 860evo if possible for the install. I'm worried there are too many devices on the 12v/5v rails. I had issues with 3 SSDs on my iMac and playing music at full volume, and those SSDs ran on only the 5v rail.

I have been trying to keep my iMacs at 2 SSDs and the optical drive from now on.
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Hi @highvoltage12v I took your advice for a single ssd boot and clean install. iMac seems to be working just fine without any sleep wake failure. Thank you! 🙂 I do wanted to know your suggestion on drive configuration on those rails. Just 2 drives running on 5v? Also, I’ve notice that the 12v sata cable seems to have worn out a bit. Could a bad sata cable cause the sleep wake failure? I did not spot any CRC errors on the drive.
 
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man1sshhh said:
Hi @highvoltage12v I took your advice for a single ssd boot and clean install. iMac seems to be working just fine without any sleep wake failure. Thank you! 🙂 I do wanted to know your suggestion on drive configuration on those rails. Just 2 drives running on 5v? Also, I’ve notice that the 12v sata cable seems to have worn out a bit. Could a bad sata cable cause the sleep wake failure? I did not spot any CRC errors on the drive.
Click to expand...
No I haven't seen a Sata cable before cause sleep wake failure, but if you have any old dells laying around (the BTX style) they have the right Sata cable with the "L" facing the right direction, just have to snip the blue pull strap off. I use this Cable for a second drive in my 27" iMac. I then use this Bracket with the PCB installed the SSD's are taped to each other using packing tape. (nothing fancyl lol)
 
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highvoltage12v said:
You have to hold alt before the chime. It doesn't show up on normal boots. Maybe you are using the wrong chip definition to flash? I don't own a k1100m to know the exact chip model.
Click to expand...
I used flashrom on windows to flash the card. Cannot enter the boot menu - the screen wont turn on and stays black.
 
Again, please check the rom file you used to flash before pulling the card another time. Even on the Windows system you can load the file in some HEX editor and search for the "Nick" - or better download the files again. I would say you never really flashed the card, whatever the software made you to believe so. I use the clip method directly from my Mac and read the flashed file back from the card. The I compared the files using unix "diff" command available in the terminal on every Mac. Another option is to calculate a HASH sum of both files and compare these - there are a lot of ways to reach Rom(e).
 
Ausdauersportler said:
First package from mid-2010 - just to confuse you I added the DSDT from this machine an the output of system_profiler SPHardwareDataType to this package. Take care of it... Output of the script was "Patched AppleBacklight.kext for DisplayID: F10T9cd7"

Second from mid-2011 with result "Patched AppleBacklight.kext for DisplayID: F10Ta007" - you did not ask for this 😎 - same content including DSDT and SysInfo.txt.

Third from late-2009 with result "Patched AppleBacklight.kext for DisplayID: F10T921e".

Hope this will work for you!
Click to expand...

Sorry, I probably missed something. What are these patches for?
 
Ausdauersportler said:
Again, please check the rom file you used to flash before pulling the card another time. Even on the Windows system you can load the file in some HEX editor and search for the "Nick" - or better download the files again. I would say you never really flashed the card, whatever the software made you to believe so. I use the clip method directly from my Mac and read the flashed file back from the card. The I compared the files using unix "diff" command available in the terminal on every Mac. Another option is to calculate a HASH sum of both files and compare these - there are a lot of ways to reach Rom(e).
Click to expand...

Using the Read Command of flashrom, I have read the current rom of the graphics card. I opened the loaded .bin file with an editor - there I find the correct name "Quadro Kx100M by Nick[D]vB 2 GB". Therefore I assume that the flashrom was correct.

The chip itself is also recognized correctly in flashrom - of course I checked the roms of Nick several times and downloaded them again.

Currently I don't know what to do, maybe the graphics card is defective?
 
xanderon said:
@highvoltage12v

I killed my iMac Catalina installation today because I tried to use the Kexts to fix sleep and the GVA stuff from here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1596614/page-131?post=27899047#post-27899047

after reboot I had the round "No entry sign on boot" sign. couldn't use cmd+alt+p+r , or cmd+f or cmd+v nothing…

had to boot Catalina SD card an install OVER the broken installation, that fixed it of course

any ideas?
Click to expand...
I need a few hours to get my 2011 iMac back together, ill do a fresh install. I think ZSH (what replaced bash) it doesn't like the "&&" and the two commands should just be entered separately. Did you have a Finder error 5508 copying the file over to private frameworks?
 
Borak said:
I need to install Mojave. How should I do? There is no boot menu. Any step by step?
Click to expand...

See the dosdud1 site - in lieu of a boot menu, you can use the "Startup Disk" option in System Preferences to change your boot disk. http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Please! Note that you will NOT want to select the "Legacy Video Card Patch" in the Post-Install as you now have a Metal video card. Check out the first post here for more post-installation goodies like sleep fix, etc.
 
NOTNlCE said:
See the dosdud1 site - in lieu of a boot menu, you can use the "Startup Disk" option in System Preferences to change your boot disk. http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Please! Note that you will NOT want to select the "Legacy Video Card Patch" in the Post-Install as you now have a Metal video card. Check out the first post here for more post-installation goodies like sleep fix, etc.
Click to expand...
Thank's!

I'm downloading Mojave and Catalina from Dosdude. Which one should I install? My iMac 27 "- 3.4GHz i7 - 16Gb Ram - 256Gb SSD + 1Tb HD - Nvidia GTX 770m - 3Gb. What is your suggestion?
 
Hello everyone,
I'm swapping my k2000m for a k2100m here are some pictures of how things sould look during the install. That might look like a lot of k5-pro but that is the necessary amount to keep the VRAM cool. I also have pictures of what my X-bracket should look like after it is drilled out. And how to remove the X-bracket without damaging the card.i don't actually push on the card with a hard surface, but I needed a hand to hold the phone to take the picture.
 

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Got a new 780M and it's working now! Took me a bit of tinkering.

Worked under Windows (even though Device Manager couldn't see the card, just installed the Nvidia drivers) all through TeamViewer.

Flashed Nick's Bios, booted into OSX (Just a grey/white screen?) but I didn't have internal display which I think won't display boot screen on the external display? but it eventually got to OSX, can't do more testing atm but will pick it up more this afternoon.

First 780M I had was def faulty.

If anyone's wondering where I got my 780M, Bought it from here > https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000480658883.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.5d0e4c4djoozBR
 
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Terros said:
Got a new 780M and it's working now! Took me a bit of tinkering.

Worked under Windows (even though Device Manager couldn't see the card, just installed the Nvidia drivers) all through TeamViewer.

Flashed Nick's Bios, booted into OSX (Just a green/white screen?) but I didn't have internal display which I think won't display boot screen on the external display? but it eventually got to OSX, can't do more testing atm but will pick it up more this afternoon.

First 780M I had was def faulty.

If anyone's wondering where I got my 780M, Bought it from here > https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000480658883.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.5d0e4c4djoozBR
Click to expand...
I hope it's working properly, and for future reference (my post above LOL) you always could test for boot screen on an external display by using the thunderbolt port closet to the FW 800 port. Never seen a solid green screen before with my 780M hopefully that sorted itself out.
 
highvoltage12v said:
I hope it's working properly, and for future reference (my post above LOL) you always could test for boot screen on an external display by using the thunderbolt port closet to the FW 800 port. Never seen a solid green screen before with my 780M hopefully that sorted itself out.
Click to expand...


Haha I just noticed your post with boot screen. Will check it out shortly.

Grey screen* typo lol super glad it wasn't green.

@highvoltage12v after 3 reboots I have full bootscreen 😀

This is so freakin' awesome seen this old i7/16gb/1Tb & 256Gb (original iMac SSD) from 2011 alive and kicking well

Kinda wish I had gone for that RX580 now, hopefully by time I upgrade again a lot of new improvements will be out

Next up....WiFi AC card upgrade
 
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For those of you who have done many of these - how's your luck been with these greymarket cards? So far, I've purchased two K2000Ms and three K1100Ms and 3 of 5 have been DOA. (Short on the MXM board or damaged resistors/caps.)
 
NOTNlCE said:
For those of you who have done many of these - how's your luck been with these greymarket cards? So far, I've purchased two K2000Ms and three K1100Ms and 3 of 5 have been DOA. (Short on the MXM board or damaged resistors/caps.)
Click to expand...
I have had okay results other than the first 765m I have gotten. But these eBay sellers don't give a f**k about properly packaging the cards. Today's k2100m was just thrown in a bubble envelope and mailed away. Nothing stiff to help keep the card from flexing while with USPS. The card came a bit bowed in the center, kind of made it hard to insert into the MXM slot.

You can tell by looking at the shadows at the bottom of the card that it's not sitting straight, and this is with the X-bracket removed.
 

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