I just saw a local ad for a 2010 iMac 27 for $35. I'd go and get it but it's 80 miles away. The seller is basically giving it away. I run into great deals for old iMacs regularly on Craigslist in my area and they are usually snatched up pretty quickly. iMacs are usually way overpriced for the market or people basically just want you to take it out of their house.
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Cheap iMac 27s
- Thread starter pshufd
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Was getting rid of my Dads stuff back in 1998 after he passed away, one of the last things was a Macintosh SE which would have been about 11 years old just like that iMac. Set it out front on a milk crate with a sign that said "Free". Came home from work, the Mac was sitting on the grass and the milk crate was gone! Made me mad - I wanted to *keep* that milk crate. ?
That's definitely going to be a slow machine by modern standards. Might be worth the drive, though, if your needs are simple and you want a big screen. If it has any issues though, the "worth it" will break down pretty quickly.
At least it's from the era that had target display mode, so if you're happy with the 2560x1440 panel it could be used that way
Oh man that's a great point. $35 (plus that hefty drive lol) could well be worth it for a good monitor.
I paid 35$ just to buy the protection glass.
35$ for the whole machine is a steal to me.
The thing was gone in an hour. Shops will buy those up and resell them for $1,000. I saw a private seller trying to sell one of these old systems for $900. She said that she paid $1,000 for it from a store. These old systems may be slow but they are really useful if it’s next to a faster system. I have a powerful Windows system for heavy tasks and use the old iMac for appropriate tasks.
I still use a 27" 2010 iMac as my main machine in my classroom; it works amazingly well and packed with a cheap SSD and 32GB of RAM, it flies through everything I throw at it with ease
Most iMacs that I see for private sale have the original amount of RAM and HDD so you can imagine why people dump them - they run slowly. Add some RAM and maybe an SSD and you have a new machine. This is true of Windows PCs as well. Though in many cases, performance problems are caused by malware. The approach there is to toss out the PC and buy a new one.
1000$ for an iMac 27" 2010?
What part of the world are you living in?
1000$ can buy an iMac 21.5" 2017 in pristine condition where I live.
Eh...unless you have a need to run OSes that are unsupported or Linux, I'd say it's not worth it in 2021. Hell, I'm not sure that I'd bother with a 27" iMac earlier than 2015 at this point. Though, certainly 2012 through 2015 will still make decent Windows 10 boxes.
For what it's worth, using the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, a 2010 iMac can run Big Sur quite well. I'm running it on mine at the moment
Just spotted a 2013 iMac 27 for $200 locally. I'm going to make an offer tonight. I have a Mini M1 16/500 on order, due to arrive late next week but I'll cancel the order if I can get this. The Mini M1 order is only a stopgap for the M1X which is what I really want. Part of this is due to my son borrowing one of my laptops because his work laptop has bulging battery. He's going to get a new system from work, likely a MacBook Pro 16, but it could take a while to get it provisioned. Fixing a corporate laptop problem has always been an imperfect process.
I would put Monterey on it of course.
I would put Monterey on it of course.
Why are people calling these machines slow?
My original 2010 27" i7 that I bought on release is still going great. As soon as the HD started to bog down I installed a SSD as my boot drive and left the 1TB platter as storage.
I also maxed the ram to 32gb
It boots to login in 18 seconds and away you go apps pretty much open instantly.
The mac is 11 years old and I have used 4yr old windows machines that are slower.
If you find them cheap grab them.
My original 2010 27" i7 that I bought on release is still going great. As soon as the HD started to bog down I installed a SSD as my boot drive and left the 1TB platter as storage.
I also maxed the ram to 32gb
It boots to login in 18 seconds and away you go apps pretty much open instantly.
The mac is 11 years old and I have used 4yr old windows machines that are slower.
If you find them cheap grab them.
That system was gone before I could make an offer. No surprise. My M1 Mini arrives on Thursday but I'll return it if something pops up.
I could use my Late 2009 iMac for more if it had an i7 back at that time. The Core 2 Duo is pretty lethargic for some of the things that I do though it handles all of my office stuff. A 2010 27 i7 with 32 GB of RAM would be great for what I need. This 2013 was nice - I was going to throw in 32 GB of RAM and attach an external SSD as it has USB 3.0.
I maintain a table of Geekbench 5 numbers for all of the systems in my house and generally have a good feel for Intel CPUs for the past decade so I can look at an ad to see whether or not I'm interested. Most of the stuff posted is from stores and they have ridiculous asks. My guess is that they are the ones buying up the used systems when they show up on Craigslist. They add RAM or an SSD and charge ridiculous prices.
On the subject of cheap iMacs, just picked up a 2011 i5 for 70 AUD on Facebook marketplace. Dead GPU
It was so crusty but it cleaned up great no scratches on the glass or body and the screen is nice bright white.
Imagine my surprise when i opened it up to find a 120gb SSD and 16gb of RAM.
?
What a score. Will put the heat gun on the GPU and see if I can Kickstart it back to life.
![IMG20210630162421.jpg]( "IMG20210630162421.jpg")
It was so crusty but it cleaned up great no scratches on the glass or body and the screen is nice bright white.
Imagine my surprise when i opened it up to find a 120gb SSD and 16gb of RAM.
?
What a score. Will put the heat gun on the GPU and see if I can Kickstart it back to life.
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Go gently with the GPU. a cheap K1100m or K2100m is enough.
Cool it lives
Audio wasn't working until I blew into the headphone jack.
I never knew there was a little red light in the jack if it detects something plugged in?
I should have taken a photo before blowing in it ?
17 seconds to login from chime ?
Cost the same as 2 packs of cigarettes in Australia ?
![IMG20210630171123.jpg]( "IMG20210630171123.jpg")
Audio wasn't working until I blew into the headphone jack.
I never knew there was a little red light in the jack if it detects something plugged in?
I should have taken a photo before blowing in it ?
17 seconds to login from chime ?
Cost the same as 2 packs of cigarettes in Australia ?
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At $70 you could get an HDMI adapter and have a really inexpensive QHD monitor too.
There were four 27 inch iMacs listed on Craigslist last night - the hard disk and caddys were removed. They were asking best offer. It would be tempting if I didn't have a new Mini arriving tomorrow but I'll still look out for the old iMacs.
There were four 27 inch iMacs listed on Craigslist last night - the hard disk and caddys were removed. They were asking best offer. It would be tempting if I didn't have a new Mini arriving tomorrow but I'll still look out for the old iMacs.
A 2012 showed up over the weekend asking $450 for a base model. I'd guess that it would clear around $200. Price lowered to $375 this morning. A 2017 Quad Core showed up a few days ago for $1,700. The main problem with that is that a brand new iMac base model has six cores and costs $1,799 though I've seen it with up to $200 off on sale. I guess that I know the market too well. Stores trying to sell stuff is ridiculous. They repost their items every other day to get attention.
Good to hear you got your iMac working again. Please eventually post again with an update as I'll be interested to hear what thermal paste you used, and how long the 'heat-gun fix' lasts.
For a GPU fix of this nature I'd advise anyone to perform an 'oven GPU bake' fix, as imho the chances are it will give a longer lease of life, especially if the following tips are observed:
i) Use an excellent non-conductive K4-Pro thermal paste for the gpu chip.
ii) Use really generous amounts of K5-Pro for the other 11 chips on the card.
iii) Install & set up Macs Fan Control app.
iv) Scale down the screen resolution from 2560x1440 to 1920x1080.
HERE's a link to my second attempt at reviving a defective GPU, and so far this 2009 iMac 27" has been functioning flawlessly for the last 6 months - web browsing is very rapid, and performs adequately for photo editing and other tasks I require, but obviously these tasks have been aided by the SSD I installed.
The 1st baking fix attempt I referred to in the link and which lasted 8months, may have died prematurely because the owner had de-installed Macs Fan Control and reverted to 2560x1440 screen resolution. (I minor correction to that linked post is that High Sierra was installed and not Mojave).
I'll also eventually provide an update to this to advise of continued serviceability or otherwise.
Purchased as a non-functioning unit, this iMac was very cheap. Two photos follow of this same iMac now performing admirably!
