Chance of getting iMac fixed (faulty logic board) for free?

6 year old model. No way you're getting that free. But a used (like yours or a little newer) iMac on eBay could probably be had for much less than paying for full service to repair yours.

 

I had a MBA 2011 that was 11 days out of warranty, and the SSD died because I did what the "genius" told me to do the day before (reinstall Mt. Lion). Cost me $300.

 

No, probably not as I had the same graphics card in my MBP, apple told me it was a legacy machine and they didn't have the parts for it, as they stopped making them. If there was a chance they could get me parts, it would cost me upwards $500 to get it fixed!

 

Your "SSD" didn't die because of what the Genius told you to do... It died because it had a problem, an OS reinstall or major system update will often flush a failing drive out, but it certainly didn't cause the failure! Lol!!

(BTW, I don't know how you approached the situation, but Apple almost always honours warranty issues within 14 days of expiry... if your statement above is indicative of how you dealt with the matter, perhaps that explains why you paid!)

 

If you get a free repair, please post back. I definitely would like to know

 

Sorry to hear it died.

Try looking into "baking" the logic board (google iMac reflow logic board). You have nothing to lose anyway.

$500 is a lot to put into old machine, you could get refurbished base iMac (the newest model) for $1000 I think.

However, you could get a base Mac mini for $599 and utilize your iMac as a monitor for the mini, it will be much faster than your old Mac. But I am not sure if this would work since the board is gone, others might fill me in.

 

I don't think a iMac that old was capable of Target Display mode. That's only been around since the mini display port.

 

Oh, didn't know that. It wouldn't probably work anyway since the GPU is done.