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mpe

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 3, 2010
334
205
Anyone successfully upgraded CPU in 2015 5k iMac to 7-series CPU?
 
Thanks. I know how to do it. I just want to know if anyone actually installed the Kaby Lake CPU in 2015 iMac as it is hassle to disassemble/assemble everything.
 
Thanks. I know how to do it. I just want to know if anyone actually installed the Kaby Lake CPU in 2015 iMac as it is hassle to disassemble/assemble everything.


I would like to know too. drop in a kaby lake 7700k
 
Wouldn't macOS have to have a drive to support it?

If this is possible that would be awesome though. While I'm at it I'd buy the cable for the second SATA port and throw in a 1TB SSD in the SATA3 drive slot.
 
Wouldn't macOS have to have a drive to support it?

If this is possible that would be awesome though. While I'm at it I'd buy the cable for the second SATA port and throw in a 1TB SSD in the SATA3 drive slot.
As far as I am aware there are no drivers needed for a CPU to work with any system. I think it would not work though because of the iMacs motherboard socket might be different from the Skylake to Kaby Lake.
 
As far as I am aware there are no drivers needed for a CPU to work with any system. I think it would not work though because of the iMacs motherboard socket might be different from the Skylake to Kaby Lake.


same socket design
 
As far as I am aware there are no drivers needed for a CPU to work with any system. I think it would not work though because of the iMacs motherboard socket might be different from the Skylake to Kaby Lake.

After doing some research it sounds like this would be more of a BIOS issue. In terms of the chipset itself the processor is compatible with the Z170.
 
As far as I am aware there are no drivers needed for a CPU to work with any system.
Agreed, OS X would need the kexts for that CPU and at the moment, I don't believe Apple supports that CPU.

What about the chipset, i.e., supporting the kaby lake processor, I think you'd run into incompatibilities at the board level, even if the socket is the same
 
The skylark and Kaby lake CPU use the same cpu's and chipsets u can use skylark in the 270 chipset and the Kaby in the 170 it's the bios/ firmware that has to be updated for the 170 chipsets to use Kaby as of right now Kaby won't work as there is no firmware update for it from apple
 
The skylark and Kaby lake CPU use the same cpu's and chipsets u can use skylark in the 270 chipset and the Kaby in the 170 it's the bios/ firmware that has to be updated for the 170 chipsets to use Kaby as of right now Kaby won't work as there is no firmware update for it from apple
This is exactly right. Getting it to work in an iMac would be similar to getting it to work in a hackintosh. That requires a firmware update, and an updated kext. On an iMac you could install the necessary kext, but the firmware update would need to come from Apple which I don't see them doing.

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...cpus-200-series-motherboards-in-macos.211743/

It may be possible once an iMac 2016 is released with an i7-7700k depending upon how apple manages the firmware differences between 2015 and 2017 versions.
 
This is likely to never work. You'd need firmware upgrades for the motherboard/logic board along with updated drivers in for the OS.

Plus, the difference between the 6700K and 7700K is very minor. Like ~10% in best case scenarios.
 
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