Advice needed: iMac 12,2 worth it?

[Ctrlos]

I've bee offered an older iMac 12,2 with the following spec for £75:

3Ghz i5
12gb RAM (User upgradeable to 16gb)
1Tb HDD
512mb AMD Radeon
High Sierra OS

I have plenty of experience with older macs, having a similar era 2011 11" Macbook Air I still make use of. I'm not worried about setting it up and using it; I know the caveats and so on.

My question is regards to OS patching. Would that spec be ok for something like Big Sur or Monterey? I'm comfortable upgrading the HDD to a new SSD and chucking more RAM in if it will help.

 

[PaulD-UK]

If it only has 512MB VRAM then it should have a 2.7Ghz i5 CPU, in EveryMac’s listings.
It’s the lowest spec model.

All the 2011 iMac’s GPUs have a high failure rate as they get older - big MR thread on this.

When the GPU failed in 2021 on the one I used I moved on….

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I've bee offered an older iMac 12,2 with the following spec for £75:

3Ghz i5
12gb RAM (User upgradeable to 16gb)
1Tb HDD
512mb AMD Radeon
High Sierra OS

I have plenty of experience with older macs, having a similar era 2011 11" Macbook Air I still make use of. I'm not worried about setting it up and using it; I know the caveats and so on.

My question is regards to OS patching. Would that spec be ok for something like Big Sur or Monterey? I'm comfortable upgrading the HDD to a new SSD and chucking more RAM in if it will help.

OS patching has already been done with OCLP, fully automatic process.
IMO, 512MB VRAM of 2011's GPU is not enough for anything else than the OS GUI itself. Consider upgrade the GPU.