Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Cheap iMac 27s

The_Croupier said:
Why are people calling these machines slow?
Click to expand...
Probably because they are from the HDD by default era. It can be difficult to determine where a bottleneck is even if you're the type to run Activity Monitor or run system monitoring tools regularly. People are used to the idea that new system = faster and that it's the overall hardware, so the assumption is that you need to junk the whole thing to improve performance, particularly since newer software and operating systems generally have higher hardware requirements. As you mentioned, SSDs really do wonders for system responsiveness.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CooperBox
CooperBox said:
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!
View attachment 1800073View attachment 1800078
Click to expand...
As this iMac will be flipped with 3 months warranty I didn't bother to fully tear down the gpu, i just removed the gpu from the logic board and put heat on the backside of the card in the area of the Xbracket 420' for 5 minutes. Cleaned all the dust out and reassembled.

Buyers will be informed that the gpu will eventually need to be replaced and I'm happy to provide this service if the buyer requests.

Temps look good. 👍
 
  • Like
Reactions: CooperBox and Nguyen Duc Hieu
Something interesting, this iMac with the Kingston SSD doesn't require a fan controller app, the HDD fan is not loud and spinning at 1100rpm when temps are normal.
 
The_Croupier said:
Something interesting, this iMac with the Kingston SSD doesn't require a fan controller app, the HDD fan is not loud and spinning at 1100rpm when temps are normal.
Click to expand...

I have not heard of that generation of iMac where an app or thermal sensor wasn't required so it's possible that something about the SSD or your system is a bit different from most of the others.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The_Croupier
pshufd said:
I have not heard of that generation of iMac where an app or thermal sensor wasn't required so it's possible that something about the SSD or your system is a bit different from most of the others.
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm quite stumped, previous gens have a cable but as I understand it the 2011's have firmware in the original HDDs that are necessary to control the fan.
Strange that a Kingston SSD seems to report like a OEM drive, this SSD gas also been deep formatted to remove the stubborn efi partition, i could only get rid of the 200mb efi in terminal.
 
The_Croupier said:
Yeah I'm quite stumped, previous gens have a cable but as I understand it the 2011's have firmware in the original HDDs that are necessary to control the fan.
Strange that a Kingston SSD seems to report like a OEM drive, this SSD gas also been deep formatted to remove the stubborn efi partition, i could only get rid of the 200mb efi in terminal.
Click to expand...

I just did some looking around and found that the Kingston A400 240 GB has a thermal sensor. So there are SSDs with built-in thermal sensors. I read that Apple has taken advantage of these in later models. It's possible that a later version of the operating system can get the temperature from the internal SSD temperature sensor for SSDs that have that feature.

Which SSD model are you using and which operating system? This would make for a nice solution where you don't need the OWC sensor.
 
pshufd said:
I just did some looking around and found that the Kingston A400 240 GB has a thermal sensor. So there are SSDs with built-in thermal sensors. I read that Apple has taken advantage of these in later models. It's possible that a later version of the operating system can get the temperature from the internal SSD temperature sensor for SSDs that have that feature.

Which SSD model are you using and which operating system? This would make for a nice solution where you don't need the OWC sensor.
Click to expand...
High Sierra, and yes it displays in Mac fans control the temp.

I can check later but about a hour ago i sealed the mac up and honestly don't feel like opening it again right now. I can say it is probably a early model SSD as seen in the pic, Snow Leopard was installed on it originally which is interesting as when I tried to reinstall Snow leopard after loosing the SD card reader to a botched HS update that included the boot rom update it would not install Snow Leopard, internet recovery revealed that Lion shipped with the Mac however that hung and was incomplete but fixed the SD card reader. I posted on iFixit if your interested.

The crazy nonsensical world of macs???

About to open my mums imac and finally fix the burn mark shown in the pic.
IMG_20210705_204117.jpg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Nguyen Duc Hieu
Opps double post again again what is wrong with me!!!!

Anyways perhaps someone can help me source a backlight power board cap, mums mac also would randomly shutdown the backlight, I swapped the board and have been blasting YouTube on full brightness for 4 hours now and no black screen, closely looking at the board I think one of the T1105 105 deg c P E T caps is slightly bulged. I want to replace the cap, a quick google can find them but not rated to 105c degrees?

And I swear im not tripping but i was sure I saw burn residue near the cap on the edge of the board but i rubbed it and there didn't seem to be much and now disappeared, and look at that fat ass funky solder joint.....

IMG20210705205924.jpg
 
Last edited:
The_Croupier said:
High Sierra, and yes it displays in Mac fans control the temp.

I can check later but about a hour ago i sealed the mac up and honestly don't feel like opening it again right now. I can say it is probably a early model SSD as seen in the pic, Snow Leopard was installed on it originally which is interesting as when I tried to reinstall Snow leopard after loosing the SD card reader to a botched HS update that included the boot rom update it would not install Snow Leopard, internet recovery revealed that Lion shipped with the Mac however that hung and was incomplete but fixed the SD card reader. I posted on iFixit if your interested.

The crazy nonsensical world of macs???

About to open my mums imac and finally fix the burn mark shown in the pic.
View attachment 1802257
Click to expand...

I was just curious in case I do this in the future. The iMac is back on the floor as my M1 mini arrived and that's my macOS daily driver since last Thursday. The Late 2009 iMac is now a backup system.
 
pshufd said:
At $70 you could get an HDMI adapter and have a really inexpensive QHD monitor too.
Click to expand...
You cannot use a 2011 iMac as a monitor via HDMI or Displayport (unless you totally gut it so it's just a monitor). Target Display Mode only works via Thunderbolt on these and the other machine also needs to be running macOS FWIW.
 
Yeah, that allows driving the iMac's LCD from external sources. But the iMac will no longer function as a stand-alone computer then, will it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back