Hi. I upgraded my iMac 27. I installed NVIDIA Quadro K3100M graphics card and an i7 2600 processor. I bought the graphics card on AliExpress, and the seller said it was flashed for the iMac 27. Now I have two problems: after turning the iMac off and then back on, the wired mouse and keyboard don't work. I have to unplug the iMac several times and turn it on and off before the keyboard and mouse work. The second problem is that it won't wake up from sleep mode. How can I fix this?
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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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Not sure about the Chinese seller and the quality of his particular card, but I bought three used K2100m cards which came from Dell/Alienware Laptops and it was a good experience all in all. They work very well for both office work and light gaming! Regarding your questions:Hi everyone, I'm a newcomer to the forum and a bit of a novice in the world of iMac MXM modding, so please bear with me
I’m planning to upgrade the GPU of my iMac 12,1 (Mid 2011, 21.5") which currently has an i7-2600S and 16GB RAM. I recently had a bad experience trying to install an AMD WX4150 (Black screen, no boot), and I want to make sure I’m making the right choice this time.
I am looking at a Quadro K2100M pre-flashed with Nick [D]vB's VBIOS (or at least one review from the vendor on eBay said that). My main goal is to use the iMac as a gaming/study station running Windows 10 (UEFI).
Could you please confirm the following?
Is the K2100M truly "plug and play" regarding the original heatsink? (No grinding/modding required?)
Will I get the native EFI Boot Screen (Apple logo) with the flashed VBIOS?
I am currently facing the "No internal audio" issue on Windows 10 UEFI. Will using OCLP (OpenCore) with this card fix both the internal audio and the brightness control in Windows?
Are the official NVIDIA Quadro laptop drivers stable for this setup on Win 10?
I just want a reliable system for light gaming and studing without the headaches I had with the AMD card.
The card is coming from a Chinese seller from eBay. The reviews from the seller claim it’s "Plug & Play" for iMac, but I’ve seen some forum posts saying Chinese VBIOS might differ from the ones developed here. If I upload the pictures from the listing, could you tell if the hardware layout (resistors/EEPROM) looks correct for a 2011 21.5" iMac?
Thanks in advance for your help! And sorry if my english is not the best, i am from Spain.
These photos are from the seller on eBay:
- Is the K2100M truly "plug and play" regarding the original heatsink? (No grinding/modding required?)
Yes, no physical modifications are needed. You should get some thermal pads which are a bit thicker though for the RAM chips. Works in both 27" and 21,5" 2011 machines!
- Will I get the native EFI Boot Screen (Apple logo) with the flashed VBIOS?
Yes, with Ausdauersportler's/Nick D[v]B's VBIOS you get the boot screen and menu back as well as brightness control. For the latter, Windows needs a registry entry (can be found somewhere in this thread, I think).
- I am currently facing the "No internal audio" issue on Windows 10 UEFI. Will using OCLP (OpenCore) with this card fix both the internal audio and the brightness control in Windows?
From my experience this is not related to the GPU but if you install Open Core with OCLP and EFI boot Windows 10/11 through it, internal audio works fine (with Bootcamp drivers).
- Are the official NVIDIA Quadro laptop drivers stable for this setup on Win 10?
Yes, the drivers work fine, also for gaming. My version is 426.78 WHQL.
If you get this card at a reasonable price, go for it! The 2011 iMac is a good machine for studying, especially with the i7 and 16GB of RAM. It runs well with Win10/11 as well as with Sequoia (which will still get 1,5 years of security updates).
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Just a question: what did you do with the wx4150? was it DOA? Or did it just not work in your Mac?Hi everyone, I'm a newcomer to the forum and a bit of a novice in the world of iMac MXM modding, so please bear with me
I’m planning to upgrade the GPU of my iMac 12,1 (Mid 2011, 21.5") which currently has an i7-2600S and 16GB RAM. I recently had a bad experience trying to install an AMD WX4150 (Black screen, no boot), and I want to make sure I’m making the right choice this time.
I am looking at a Quadro K2100M pre-flashed with Nick [D]vB's VBIOS (or at least one review from the vendor on eBay said that). My main goal is to use the iMac as a gaming/study station running Windows 10 (UEFI).
Could you please confirm the following?
Is the K2100M truly "plug and play" regarding the original heatsink? (No grinding/modding required?)
Will I get the native EFI Boot Screen (Apple logo) with the flashed VBIOS?
I am currently facing the "No internal audio" issue on Windows 10 UEFI. Will using OCLP (OpenCore) with this card fix both the internal audio and the brightness control in Windows?
Are the official NVIDIA Quadro laptop drivers stable for this setup on Win 10?
I just want a reliable system for light gaming and studing without the headaches I had with the AMD card.
The card is coming from a Chinese seller from eBay. The reviews from the seller claim it’s "Plug & Play" for iMac, but I’ve seen some forum posts saying Chinese VBIOS might differ from the ones developed here. If I upload the pictures from the listing, could you tell if the hardware layout (resistors/EEPROM) looks correct for a 2011 21.5" iMac?
Thanks in advance for your help! And sorry if my english is not the best, i am from Spain.
These photos are from the seller on eBay:
I installed 2 WX4150 in iMacs and they work fine.
I was in fact also thinking about this. Sequoia will stop getting security updates in autumn 2027. If we are lucky, at this point OCLP might support Tahoe & Kepler. But eventually, support for Tahoe by Apple will most probably also be dropped in 2028. The common assumption is that afterwards our hardware will be supported by Linux. But recently I discovered that the final NVIDIA driver 470 does not support the new Linux kernel and also not Wayland – which will be the standard by then. Nouveau might be sufficient for desktop use but not for e.g. light gaming.
In this reddit post I spotted a comment saying Arch Linux has patches for the 470 drivers, which make it run with the new kernel. Is anyone knowledgeable about this? Does it extend to Wayland support as well?
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Hello, I do have a problem with an 2011 iMac 21,5" inch model. I recently tried to install an Amd radeon pro wx 4150 card in it. Everything went smootly until the booting. The system boots normally, but the card doesn't show anything, only a black screen. I've tried forcebooting it to a linux usb, but the system doesn't want to boot into it. All tho the iMac isn't my main machine, I will need to do some stuff, and the situation currently is critical. I really would appriciate if someone would help me in this situation. The current specs of the machine are Intel Core i7 2600s and 32gb of ram
The normal procedure includes disconnecting all internal HDDs/SSDs and booting from a Linux USB stick to flash the new ROM onto the GPU. You can find the image here along with instructions
No but the thing is the usb with linux is the only one that is connected to the iMac, so it should boo into it, but it doesn't. I have checked it with othee machines and they boot into it, but this iMac just doesn't
I have, plenty of times, but nothing seems to work.. Of course I could try that again and hope for the best
So, all internal storage devices are disconnected? Do you see the boot menu? Because, if you don't see it, you can't properly select the USB stick, which is why it is recommended to disconnect HDDs/SSDs. You might want to try a different USB stick. iMacs can sometimes be a bit picky.
Yes, all the internal drives are disconnected, and I don't see the boot menu.. This is the second usb drive that I have tried, and it still doesn't boot. Ofc I could make another one just to try it
It can sometimes take a while until the stick is found.
You could install Open Core to a USB drive and try booting from it. Open Core inserts GOP drivers which enable display output even without a flashed ROM...although I am not sure if this works with every GPU.
If the Mac boots from your internal system drive, you might try holding down Shift while booting to enter safe mode and reinstall Open Core root patches.
You could install Open Core to a USB drive and try booting from it. Open Core inserts GOP drivers which enable display output even without a flashed ROM...although I am not sure if this works with every GPU.
If the Mac boots from your internal system drive, you might try holding down Shift while booting to enter safe mode and reinstall Open Core root patches.
I've tried with Open Core also, but that doesn't seem to work either.. At this point I'm just considering to buy an 2015-2017 or even 2019 iMac, because I want to have a working intel mac with my m-series mac
Unfortunately I don't have en external display with me right now, but well I've tried everything, but it seems that it's just time to give up with this project
Well, now that you have done the hard part of dis- and reassembling the entire machine, it might be worth it to troubleshoot a bit more. I remember one time I also had a black screen after installing a K2100m. My mistake was to forget about a firmware password that was set on the machine...very annoying, but in the end I managed to blindly type the characters and finally got into the OCLP boot menu...without flash. Then I could proceed to Linux flashing, which also worked fine.
I don't have a firmmware password on this, but the thing is that the iMac has booted only once to the usb stick and after that it hasn't anymore.. I have tried everything possible and literally search everywhere
That sounds strange. But did you get a picture when it booted this one time?
No, because it still had a black screen.. that time I managed too ssh into it, but after that it hasn't booted into it anymore
If you have a spare SSD or even HDD or MMC flash card, you could try putting the Linux image onto that. I mean, if you got to ssh'ing into the machine it rather seems to be a USB problem.
Good luck. Here in Germany it's around midnight, so I have to go. But looking forward to reading if you succeeded tomorrow.
Yeah I'm based in Finland, so it's on tomorrow's to do list
tensixturtle
macrumors 6502
Hi, I had a quick question. I read the Wiki but couldn’t find an answer and wanted to confirm. With the mid 2011 iMac, after the graphics card is changed, even if Thunderbolt still works, will my Thunderbolt Cinema display no longer be able to connect? Thanks!
Il y a ce post pour Linux Mint. Je n'ai pas essayé mais ça vaut peut-être la peine.
There is this post for Linux Mint. I haven't tried it, but it might be worth a shot.