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

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I am using the Late 2009 27" iMac.

I'm not sure what you're asking the post above. Target Display Mode is working perfectly for both Mac and PC source computers using the connection method I described.

I asked MrZupp. Sorry for the misled quote.

 

[MrZupp]

Some motherboard makers (HP, Asus, Gigabyte, Asrock) also manufacture a PCIe add-in-card that provide the thunderbolt connections. It will loop 1 DP port from the graphic card and convert to thunderbolt output. From there, you would need a thunderbolt-2 cable .

Refer to the following link for such devices, if you insisted on using the 2011 iMac as monitor.

testing TB3 AIC with MP 5,1

The good folks at egpu.io have had some encouraging results with the latest Gigabyte TB3 add-in card and will be testing in MP 5,1. Will be very interesting to see the results. Hat tip to @itsage. [edit] to correct link

forums.macrumors.com

Some Intel NUC models have a built-in thunderbolt-2 port, which is convenient.
You can also use the thunderbolt-3 port on recent PCs motherboard, with an Apple genuine TB-3 to Tb-2 adapter as well.

Oh, that's nice, I have a X370 motherboard, do you think that a GC Titan Ridge would work with my setup?

 

[m0bil]

I would go with the (smaller and slower) K610M because it offerers native backlight control. Your LCD will heat up to 60C all the time not having control.

You will need a 15mm x 15mm x 1mm copper plate to install the K610M in any Apple iMac sink to provide contact of GPU and heat sink. The 2 pipe sink is sufficient with 15W TDP.

The GTX 765 will need a modified a 3pipe sink and does not provide the brightness control.

Take a deeper look at post #1 to investigate all your options.

Are you sure about needing a copper plate for the K610M ?

I installed mine without it, on visual inspection it looked like it made good contact with the heatsink. Running Valley non stop will get the GPU die to around 53 degrees and GPU heatsink usually 3 degrees lower...

I just used MX-4 thermal compound on the GPU and 1mm thermal pads for the memory chips

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Are you sure about needing a copper plate for the K610M ?

I installed mine without it, on visual inspection it looked like it made good contact with the heatsink. Running Valley non stop will get the GPU die to around 53 degrees and GPU heatsink usually 3 degrees lower...

I just used MX-4 thermal compound on the GPU and 1mm thermal pads for the memory chips

Yes, I am sure. We have about 5-10 different heat sinks for the 5 "supported" machines. Even if your installation and your specific heat sink works without a plate please do not make general assumption. There are other sharing the same observation.

This plate is more important with the WX4130/WX4150/WX4170 as these use 40-60W on average under load.

 

[m0bil]

Yes, I am sure. We have about 5-10 different heat sinks for the 5 "supported" machines. Even if your installation and your specific heat sink works without a plate please do not make general assumption. There are other sharing the same observation.

This plate is more important with the WX4130/WX4150/WX4170 as these use 40-60W on average under load.

Good to know, now you got me worried about my installation 🙂

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Good to know, now you got me worried about my installation 🙂

Your card uses 15W on average under load. The WX4170 and WX7100 have idle values in the same range. Currently I have no system using the K610M so I cannot provide you with real date from measurements. In general these iMac sinks are not made for those cards AMD and NVIDIA and need adjustments...

 

[BertHiddink]

Hello,
I searched carefully but I could not find any photos about how and where exactly apply the copper plate.
If I position the K610M on the 2-pipe heatsink I am quite sure the copper section of the heatsink is "almost" in contact with the card. See pictures...
So the plate needs to be placed in the square, adding also some thermal paste?

Thanks again!
Bert

 

[ezugaru]

Hello,
I searched carefully but I could not find any photos about how and where exactly apply the copper plate.
If I position the K610M on the 2-pipe heatsink I am quite sure the copper section of the heatsink is "almost" in contact with the card. See pictures...
So the plate needs to be placed in the square, adding also some thermal paste?

Thanks again!
Bert

Yeah, You apply thermal paste to the chip, then place the plate on the chip, apply thermal paste to the plate and then You put the heatsink in place.

 

[BertHiddink]

Yeah, You apply thermal paste to the chip, then place the plate on the chip, apply thermal paste to the plate and then You put the heatsink in place.

Thanks!

 

[lee5434]

I have a 2011 27" iMac. I recently upgrade the video card to Nvidia Quadro K4100M. I have also upgraded the MacOS from High Sierra to Catalina using the Catalina Patcher. I also fixed the brightness control and sleep issue based on the post in the thread. Everything runs great. However, I noticed that I can no longer cmd+R to boot into the Recovery mode and the target display mode is no longer working. When I use cmd+R to boot up the system, the screen just goes to a white screen then nothing happens. When I use cmd+F2 to start the target display, the target monitor goes into a black screen. Is there a fix for these two issues? Thanks.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I have a 2011 27" iMac. I recently upgrade the video card to Nvidia Quadro K4100M. I have also upgraded the MacOS from High Sierra to Catalina using the Catalina Patcher. I also fixed the brightness control and sleep issue based on the post in the thread. Everything runs great. However, I noticed that I can no longer cmd+R to boot into the Recovery mode and the target display mode is no longer working. When I use cmd+R to boot up the system, the screen just goes to a white screen then nothing happens. When I use cmd+F2 to start the target display, the target monitor goes into a black screen. Is there a fix for these two issues? Thanks.

Read first post about Target Display mode with Catalina and check the Catalina on unsupported Macs thread out for the recovery issue.

 

[Allistah]

I have a 2011 27" iMac. I recently upgrade the video card to Nvidia Quadro K4100M. I have also upgraded the MacOS from High Sierra to Catalina using the Catalina Patcher. I also fixed the brightness control and sleep issue based on the post in the thread. Everything runs great. However, I noticed that I can no longer cmd+R to boot into the Recovery mode and the target display mode is no longer working. When I use cmd+R to boot up the system, the screen just goes to a white screen then nothing happens. When I use cmd+F2 to start the target display, the target monitor goes into a black screen. Is there a fix for these two issues? Thanks.

You have to use the USB installer as the Recovery Drive for Catalina. I ran into the same problems trying to get into the recovery partition while the startup drive is set to Catalina. I did however find out that if I have Mojave set as my startup drive, I can use the recovery partition there and it works fine to do the csrutil disable/enable just fine for Catalina. I also have a 2011 27" iMac with a K4100M. Pretty happy with it.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Big Sur on iMacs Late 2009 and Mid 2010 and Mid 2011
(out of date - please check OCLP)​

Last night the first official release 11.0.1 (20B2029) of Big Sur has been published. This MacOS can be installed and will run with graphics acceleration on every iMac model listed here.

Having a Metal GPU makes your iMac Late 2009, Mid 2010, Mid 2011 Big Sur compatible. To make the package perfect and nearly fully compatible you could have installed an WiFi/BT upgrade, but it is not necessary to install and run Big Sur. The stock old Atheros WiFi card will be working, too.

We managed to get all necessary patches for all iMac hardware to be included in the current state of the art Big Sur patcher (the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher). There will be no manually adding of extensions as with Mojave and Catalina, before. To understand the installation and patching process please follow the instructions provided on the Github download page step by step! The patcher will auto detect the installed GPU, although it cannot currently know if you are using an OC installation with your Kepler (K610M, K1100M or K2100M) card. In this case please use the --useOC when calling the patch.kext.sh script.

To avoid a kernel panic on boot of the Big Sur installer all users of the 2009 and 2010 iMac systems will have to use a special OpenCore based solution, to understanding the reason please read this post. This applies to all Kepler cards used, too. The most easy way will be to use the Catalina Loader provided here. There is an update to the Catalina Loader using OC 0.6.3 including this patch, too. Check this post about the process of installation and normal boot of Big Sur using OpenCore.

The OpenCore 0.6.3 update for the Catalina Loader has been released, too. It includes the config files needed for the iMac Late 2009 and Mid 2010 systems, now.

Please keep in mind that the development is still ongoing and the developers on the thread cannot really support you with installation issues right now. You need MacOS and UNIX experience with the Terminal app and the command line to accomplish this task.

Notes:

1. The stock WiFi and BT works properly patched, too. No HandOff and no Continuity, of course.
2. AMD based systems offer 4K H.264 and 4K HEVC with Big Sur, again. After patching you have to boot OpenCore to get video output!! During and after basic installation you do not need it, weird....
3. Nvidia based systems lack currently of iGPU based H.264 acceleration. No solution available!
4. I have tested installing Big Sur over an existing Catalina installation. Right now everything looks fine. Possibly you wait with this approach unless you have known to be good backup and a working restore, too.
5. The patcher assumes that owners of AMD cards and Kepler K610M, K1100M or K2100M use OpenCore to inject Whatevergreen, Lilu and the BacklightFixup. All these extensions will not be installed by the patcher automatically.
6. Users of the ++ NVIDIA Kepler cards (like a K4100) get all these files installed automatically (namely Whatevergreen, Lilu and the BacklightFixup and the patched AppleGraphicsControl).

FAQ:

Q1: Where do I get the Big Sur patcher?
A: Download here the the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher! Read the instructions there and follow step by step!

Q2: Where is the @dosdude1 Big Sur patcher?
A: There is no! And there will be likely no one in near future.

Q3: Where do I find the Catalina Loader with OC 0.6.3?
A: Check the first post or go straight here.

Q4: Do I have to make a clean install?
A: Depends on your backup/restore! Today I upgraded on a second system my existing Catalina installation to Big Sur and patched it. Right now I do not miss a thing, but you will know after a while if everything is working as expected. Please keep a backup to be able to go back if your most favourite application does not work on this new MacOS.

 

[tuzmaster]

Hi everyone! After updating to the current Big Sur build I still have a backlight control but not a maximum level on iMac 2011. Is there any solution to fix this?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi everyone! After updating to the current Big Sur build I still have a backlight control but not a maximum level on iMac 2011. Is there any solution to fix this?

How did you install it?

If you do not provide any details no one will be able to help. I cannot confirm your problem having installed more than 20 versions of Big Sur this summer on a 780M based system. The BacklightFixup has been included to the patches....

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Oh, that's nice, I have a X370 motherboard, do you think that a GC Titan Ridge would work with my setup?

I don't know. It's advisable to use the AIC of the same brand. (Dell, HP, Gigabyte, Asus, Asrock, MSI all make their own TB3 AIC)
Cable connection is also anothe issue. You will need a cable to connect the card to the motherboard internally.
Check the card manual for that.

 

[pappl]

Nvidia GTX 860M installation on 27" iMac 2011​

Part 1/2​

What works:
Everything: Native brightness control / 100% brighness / 4K Video playback / Bootscreen / Normal boot speed / fan control (Macs Fan Control)....

What i needed:
- iMac 27" 2011, already has the 3pipe Heat-Sink
- GTX 860M 2GB Kepler (GK104) N15P-GX-B-A2 (from aliexpress)
- SSD with Ubuntu installed
- nikey22 ROM (unzipped, i used 860M_2GB_UGA.zip)
- nvflash tool for Linux ( from here -> unzip)
- Macs Fan Control app
- Tools to disassemble the iMac and unplug the mainboard and graphics card
- Thermal Paste (i used Gelid GC-Extreme, but any will do)
- 3mm drill
- Dremel to modify the 3pipe-heatsink of the graphics card
- vacuum cleaner
- Cleaning equipment: wipes and dust removal air-spray to clean the display
- Time (2 hours without reading these 400+ pages here first)

How i made it:

1. Disassembled iMac
Made photos of every cable and screw to have a documentation where the parts need to be placed again. The display cables are very fragile, had to unplug them carefully by only tilting the display a bit upwards while still in place.
Removing the mainboard with the old graphics card and unplugging the AMD card with the heatsink.

2. The X-holder is different on the original card.
Tried to replace the original X-holder of the chip on the new card. But it doesn't fit. No problem, the original X-holder with the ram-cooling plate is fine. No replacement needed, but a small modification, see next step.

3. After removing the X-holder from the GTX 860M card carefully, i drilled the small screw holders away with a 3 or 4mm drill.
This was easy, because the inserts are very soft metal.
Then cleaned well to avoid metal particles getting on electronic components.

4. The heat-sink holder on the mainboard needed a little tweak.
There is a screw on the top of the mainboard which holds the heat-sink holder.
There is a second mounting point not far away without a screw (in my case), i moved the screw to the other mounting point to avoid the screw making contact with the GTX 860M. The top screw hole stayed empty, it's stable enough. (See green arrow)

5. Heat Sink Mod: Removed old AMD card and cleaned the heat-sink with a paper towel.
Without modification the GPU chip doesn't sit flat on the heat sink and will overheat or break when installing!
Used a Dremel with drum sanding bands and modified on two spots. No further modification required.
Checked several times, if the GPU chip sits flat on the heatsink and no electronic components have direct contact to the aluminium heat-sink causing a short.

6. Put thermal paste on GPU / RAM / three VRMs. Mounted GTX 860M onto the modified heat-sink.

7. Reinstalled the new combo to the main-board carefully. In my case the GTX 860M fits.

8. Reinstalled everything except the display and made a first boot. Two leds are green on the mainboard, and the startup-chime sounded. Good, no smoke, no fire. 😀

9. Installed display (without screws) and let the iMac sit horizontally on the table, because i needed to exchange the SSD later for bios flashing.
First boot after 30 seconds black display (no bootscreen with original bios):

Original 860M BIOS. Fans are at 100%, because the GTX 860M temp sensor is not recognized by MacOS. Can by set manually with Macs Fan Control to stay quiet again.

10. Preparation: Flashing BIOS in Linux on this iMac without SSH.
Made a Ubuntu SSD by installing Ubuntu on another SSD. (this is easy)
Exchanged internal MacOS SSD with Ubuntu Linux SSD and booted into Linux.

- In Ubuntu Linux i connected to my Wifi-Network for security reasons if anything goes wrong and i would need SSH (incl. Ubuntu root username and password).
- Copied nvflash_linux, the ROM 860M_2GB_UGA.rom to the Ubuntu Home directory

See Part 2/2 for next steps (-> Posting #10,845 )

 

[KennyW]

Big Sur on iMacs Late 2009 and Mid 2010 and Mid 2011​

Last night the the first official release 11.0.1 (20B2029) of Big Sur has been published. This MacOS can be installed and will run with graphics acceleration on every iMac model listed here.

Having a Metal GPU makes your iMac Late 2009, Mid 2010, Mid 2011 Big Sur compatible. To make the package perfect and nearly fully compatible you could have installed an WiFi/BT upgrade, but it is not necessary to install and run Big Sur. The stock old Atheros WiFi card will be working, too.

We managed to get all necessary patches for all iMac hardware to be included in the current state of the art Big Sur patcher (the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher). There will be no manually adding of extensions as with Mojave and Catalina, before. To understand the installation and patching process please follow the instructions provided on the Github download page step by step! The patcher will auto detect the installed GPU, although it cannot currently know if you are using an OC installation with your Kepler (K610M, K1100M or K2100M) card. In this case please use the --useOC when calling the patch.kext.sh script.

To avoid a kernel panic on boot of the Big Sur installer all users of the 2009 and 2010 iMac systems will have to use a special OpenCore based solution, to understanding the reason please read this post. This applies to all Kepler cards used, too. The most easy way will be to use the Catalina Loader provided here. There is an update to the Catalina Loader using OC 0.6.3 including this patch, too. Check this post about the process of installation and normal boot of Big Sur using OpenCore.

The OpenCore 0.6.3 update for the Catalina Loader has been released, too. It includes the config files needed for the iMac Late 2009 and Mid 2010 systems, now.

Please keep in mind that the development is still ongoing and the developers on the thread cannot really support you with installation issues right now. You need MacOS and UNIX experience with the Terminal app and the command line to accomplish this task.

Notes:

1. The stock WiFi and BT works properly patched, too. No HandOff and no Continuity, of course.
2. AMD based systems offer 4K H.264 and 4K HEVC with Big Sur, again.
3. Nvidia based systems lack currently of iGPU based H.264 acceleration. No solution available!
4. I have not tested installing Big Sur over an existing Catalina installation. Backup is running, will report later. Possibly you wait with this approach unless you have known to be good backup and a working restore, too.
5. The patcher assumes that owners of AMD cards and Kepler K610M, K1100M or K2100M use OpenCore to inject Whatevergreen, Lilu and the BacklightFixup. All these extensions will not be installed by the patcher automatically.
6. Users of the ++ NVIDIA Kepler cards (like a K4100) get all these files installed automatically (namely Whatevergreen, Lilu and the BacklightFixup and the patched AppleGraphicsControl).

FAQ:

Q1: Where do I get the Big Sur patcher?
A: Download here the the @Barry K. Nathan micro patcher! Read the instructions there and follow step by step!

Q2: Where is the @dosdude1 Big Sur patcher?
A: There is no! And there will be likely no one in near future.

Q3: Where do I find the Catalina Loader with OC 0.6.3?
A: Check the first post or go straight here.

Which Config file should be used with RX480 ?

 

[pappl]

Nvidia GTX 860M installation on 27" iMac 2011​

Part 2/2​

11. Flashing BIOS in Linux on this iMac without SSH.
- Opened Terminal in Ubuntu and swithed to home directory to my flash files.

- Made nvflash_linux executable: sudo chmod +x nvflash_linux, or it will not run.

- Saved original ROM from GTX 860M: sudo nvflash_linux --save Original.rom

- Flashed 860M BIOS: sudo nvflash_linux -6 860M_2GB_UGA.rom

- (Only in case the display would have gone black or something wrong i would SSH to the Ubuntu-System with my second machine and run the commands from there to repair the failed flash).

- Pressed y and let the process finish. Poweroff the iMac.

Switched back MacOS SSD and removed Ubuntu SSD. Completely reassebled my iMac. and

12. First boot with Apple bootscreen / brightness control:
DO A PRAM RESET ON FIRST BOOT (with Key-Combo)

Brightness control works, but maximum brightness is ~75% of original brighness. This can be fixed in next step easily.

Fans are quiet again with nikey22 BIOS, but i wanted control of fan speed.
Installed Macs Fan Control (optional). It shows all temperature sensors and lets me enable fan speed at certain temperatur levels.

My center HDD fan is not attached to the mainboard with the fan cable, because i use SSD and no HDD. So there is less noise and the SSD needs no extra cooling. HDD fan rpm value = 0 when disconnecting the HDD fan.

I set the ODD fan (=GPU-side fan) to "GPU Heatsink" and 58/68°C. Will set it higher after test period, maybe to 68/80°C, so it will be at minimum fan rpm until 68°C and start max rpm at 80°C.
I set the CPU fan (=CPU-side fan) to "CPU Heatsink" and 70/90°C.


13. To get 100% display brighness:
Follow nikey22 guide (where the ROM download is linked). Done in 10 minutes.
You need to disable System Integrity Protection first!
Can be enabled again after brightness mod applied.

Thanks nikey22 and all who have made this possible.

DONE
😎

pappl

 

[iPlasm]

New 12 November 2020 "Security Update 2020-006" for MacOS High Sierra 10.13 and Mojave 10.14 updates computer systems. just for report.
well done pappl, this guide should be in wiki page too!

 

[Allistah]

For those that have also upgraded their BT/WiFi modules, does Apple Watch System Unlock work in Big Sur? That is the one thing that nobody could get to work in Catalina (but works great in Mojave).

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Which Config file should be used with RX480 ?

Do you have a guess? I wrote a lot about 2009 and 2010 machines....

 

[astuermer]

Finally I succeeded in installing Catalina to my iMac 🙂
Until that I had permanent reboots and panics.
That was until I used version 10.15.7 19H4 (not *H2) - so far so good 🙂

Once a day it still has a panic, but I can't really interpret it.
May someone be so kind and help me read the essential parts and how to fix it?

kernel-panic.log

Kind regards

 

[herrdude]

Finally I succeeded in installing Catalina to my iMac 🙂
Until that I had permanent reboots and panics.
That was until I used version 10.15.7 19H4 (not *H2) - so far so good 🙂

Once a day it still has a panic, but I can't really interpret it.
May someone be so kind and help me read the essential parts and how to fix it?

kernel-panic.log

Kind regards

DId you update the kexts as per the first page? Also, just put the log into code box in the post. Nobody, is going to download that file because it keeps asking to install flash or some other nonsense.

 

[KennyW]

Do you have a guess? I wrote a lot about 2009 and 2010 machines....

That why I am asking the knowledgeable expert 🤗
In the post it appears that RX480 is flashed and recognised as RX580.
That is the same as WX7100 which is also listed as RX580 in the About box, but WX7100 has 8GB VRAM.
The RX480 has only 4GB VRAM. I am not so sure whether it would work with the WX7100 config, or the generic AMD config would suffice.
There is also a RX580 4GB MXM version. But don't dare to try with the RX480 ROM as it is too expensive to experiment. Up till now luck isn't on my side 😉