iMac Pro 2017 expensive to repair

[AnakChan]

I picked up the iMac Pro in 2017 - 64GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, Vega 64, 18-core Xeon and paid a pretty penny for it. Over the years it served me well...the only slight issues were the magenta fringing, and the weak screws for the VESA adapter but for the most part it worked.

Last year I bought some memory to upgrade it to 256GB and earlier this month I tried to upgrade the memory myself. Not being careful I damaged one of display sockets on the main board (all else worked fine - I could remote display and see my full 256GB RAM, etc).

Apple authorised is going to charge USD$2016 for the motherboard replacement (and if I want to replace the display to fix the magenta fringing, an additional USD$807). Sadly as I've already bought the 256GB RAM and to make use of it, fixing the iMac Pro is the only way forward. Looking at the M-Si options, most of my apps aren't ported yet and will still depend on Rosetta, and not to mention no 256GB version of any M-Si based Apple Macs.

Thought I'd share my iMac Pro journey so far.

 

[velocityg4]

If it's just the socket that is damaged. A non-authorized shop which does motherboard repairs could likely replace the display socket. I don't know how bad the damage on yours is. I damaged the socket on my 2009 iMac for the internal display. I was able to reseat it, solder back some broken pins and epoxy it back in place.

You can get working iMac Pro Vega 64 motherboards off ebay for $900. Then just pay some shop to swap them and pop in your higher end CPU and RAM.

If everything works except the internal display. I'd say put that money into a nice external monitor. Then whenever you upgrade to something like the Mac Studio. You'll be ready to go.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I picked up the iMac Pro in 2017 - 64GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, Vega 64, 18-core Xeon and paid a pretty penny for it. Over the years it served me well...the only slight issues were the magenta fringing, and the weak screws for the VESA adapter but for the most part it worked.

Last year I bought some memory to upgrade it to 256GB and earlier this month I tried to upgrade the memory myself. Not being careful I damaged one of display sockets on the main board (all else worked fine - I could remote display and see my full 256GB RAM, etc).

Apple authorised is going to charge USD$2016 for the motherboard replacement (and if I want to replace the display to fix the magenta fringing, an additional USD$807). Sadly as I've already bought the 256GB RAM and to make use of it, fixing the iMac Pro is the only way forward. Looking at the M-Si options, most of my apps aren't ported yet and will still depend on Rosetta, and not to mention no 256GB version of any M-Si based Apple Macs.

Thought I'd share my iMac Pro journey so far.

If you live in the US, check up with your local repair shop.
I know 2 shops in the US from their Youtube channels.
Northridge Fix is quite busy as it's a family shop
Luis Rossmann in NY has bigger capacity.
You can search with some smart keyword and find the shop that near you. Basically any shop with proper micro-soldering skills and devices can do this fix.

 

[AnakChan]

I actually did mail rossmanngroup (Louis Rossmann from his YT) & they recommended me an Australian rep since I’m located here. Unfortunately he repairs mainly iPhones & Macbooks but can’t repair iMac Pro as I guess it’s somewhat rare & socket components are hard to come by.

I did consider buying a board from eBay however since I messed up something simple like reassembling a display myself, I thought moving CPUs would be more challenging & I’d end up breaking even more components.