Hey there!
I am currently in the process to upgrade my Mid 2011 27" iMac (12,2) to make it a little bit more modern - also because my kid loves this thing - and while it's a pretty capable machine, especially considering I picked this thing up for $300 (CAD) from an auction back in 2022, it could always be better!
This was much better, apps opened faster, but it still always kind of hung on things. My child, who used this computer exclusive to play Roblox and make games on Roblox Studio, loved the machine. When the inevitable happened and they had to patch their programs to support the newer OS's, I believe for Big Sur, we were no longer able to develop using Xcode and Roblox Studio would no longer run on this Mac. Bummer.
I began to research upgrades and see if it was possible to go higher, but, the dosdude patcher told me it would be unusable on Catalina on this machine due to my GPU. I all but gave up on the prospect of upgrading.
I finally decided to do an SSD upgrade as my Mac was randomly shutting off and turning back on. Sometimes it would be stable, other times it would do it constantly. I assumed it was related to the HDD failing as it was also getting slower and decided to go ahead and purchase the parts to upgrade.
I swapped out the standard 1TB HDD to a Crucial 512GB SSD - while I was in there I found someone else had been in there before me and had swapped the original drive with this Hitatchi drive as it already had a temp sensor mod added to it - I purchased a new one for the SSD mod anyways.
I researched newer versions of MacOS as it had been a while and found the OCLP project. It seemed like I could go to Catalina now, or maybe even newer! But, my GPU was listed as unstable. I downloaded the OCLP and decided to send it with Monterey and see what would happen. I have a USB to SSD plug which I used to get MacOS installed onto the drive using my machine without having to swap the drives first, that way I could have it "ready to go" before it went in.
I dedicated 200GB to a partition for a linux boot (for myself to game with as my Runescape won't run on MacOS but I can play on Linux - running Ubuntu 24 as 25 won't run on these chipsets yet - found that out the hard way), setup the EFI partition and cloned the original Mac HDD using command line. Then made and HSF+ partition and installed MacOS Monterey 12.7.3 onto it.
I was able to boot into it, install the system, and patch it using the OCLP Patcher. It worked but had some graphical issues with menus flashing. I thought meh, I can live with it. While testing it (booting off the SSD through USB), it was still randomly turning off. This led me to believe I was wrong about my HDD failure being the culprit and I researched some more. I found that this could be a sign of the GPU failing so, while I was in there to swap the drive, I pulled the stock graphics card (the 6970m) out, tore it apart, and threw it in my oven for 9 minutes at 200 degrees (400 farenheit). I then redid the thermal paste and tossed it back into the system with the new drive.
I reassembled everything and booted. Oh boy does she fly. It booted in 14 seconds (including log in and desktop loading) where my previous HDD was around 4 minutes. I did not have the glitches on the menus anymore and everything is stable. I can run Roblox Studio which my kid is so happy for. It's like a new machine! Still can't run my Word, Excel, etc on this version, but whatever, I can boot into my windows and do that.
So, I still want to push this thing further and I would love to have Metal support. Additionally, having better performance on games, native support for Monterey and whatever else will be nice, SOOOOO, I have recently purchased a new RX5500XT 8GB card off eBay and I am currently waiting for it to arrive. I paid about $230 CAD for this unit (taxes and shipping were about $50 of the cost of course).
I also purchased 32 GB of Ram (4 x 8GB OWC sticks).
I am however wondering on the following items:
I am currently in the process to upgrade my Mid 2011 27" iMac (12,2) to make it a little bit more modern - also because my kid loves this thing - and while it's a pretty capable machine, especially considering I picked this thing up for $300 (CAD) from an auction back in 2022, it could always be better!
How it started
When I purchased this machine, it had the following specs:- MacOS El Capitan (10.11.6)
- 8 GB of RAM (2 x 4 GB sticks)
- 3.1 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
- AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1 GB
- Hitachi 1TB HDD
This was much better, apps opened faster, but it still always kind of hung on things. My child, who used this computer exclusive to play Roblox and make games on Roblox Studio, loved the machine. When the inevitable happened and they had to patch their programs to support the newer OS's, I believe for Big Sur, we were no longer able to develop using Xcode and Roblox Studio would no longer run on this Mac. Bummer.
I began to research upgrades and see if it was possible to go higher, but, the dosdude patcher told me it would be unusable on Catalina on this machine due to my GPU. I all but gave up on the prospect of upgrading.
What changed
I finally decided to do an SSD upgrade as my Mac was randomly shutting off and turning back on. Sometimes it would be stable, other times it would do it constantly. I assumed it was related to the HDD failing as it was also getting slower and decided to go ahead and purchase the parts to upgrade.
I swapped out the standard 1TB HDD to a Crucial 512GB SSD - while I was in there I found someone else had been in there before me and had swapped the original drive with this Hitatchi drive as it already had a temp sensor mod added to it - I purchased a new one for the SSD mod anyways.
I researched newer versions of MacOS as it had been a while and found the OCLP project. It seemed like I could go to Catalina now, or maybe even newer! But, my GPU was listed as unstable. I downloaded the OCLP and decided to send it with Monterey and see what would happen. I have a USB to SSD plug which I used to get MacOS installed onto the drive using my machine without having to swap the drives first, that way I could have it "ready to go" before it went in.
I dedicated 200GB to a partition for a linux boot (for myself to game with as my Runescape won't run on MacOS but I can play on Linux - running Ubuntu 24 as 25 won't run on these chipsets yet - found that out the hard way), setup the EFI partition and cloned the original Mac HDD using command line. Then made and HSF+ partition and installed MacOS Monterey 12.7.3 onto it.
I was able to boot into it, install the system, and patch it using the OCLP Patcher. It worked but had some graphical issues with menus flashing. I thought meh, I can live with it. While testing it (booting off the SSD through USB), it was still randomly turning off. This led me to believe I was wrong about my HDD failure being the culprit and I researched some more. I found that this could be a sign of the GPU failing so, while I was in there to swap the drive, I pulled the stock graphics card (the 6970m) out, tore it apart, and threw it in my oven for 9 minutes at 200 degrees (400 farenheit). I then redid the thermal paste and tossed it back into the system with the new drive.
I reassembled everything and booted. Oh boy does she fly. It booted in 14 seconds (including log in and desktop loading) where my previous HDD was around 4 minutes. I did not have the glitches on the menus anymore and everything is stable. I can run Roblox Studio which my kid is so happy for. It's like a new machine! Still can't run my Word, Excel, etc on this version, but whatever, I can boot into my windows and do that.
Going further - What now?
So, I still want to push this thing further and I would love to have Metal support. Additionally, having better performance on games, native support for Monterey and whatever else will be nice, SOOOOO, I have recently purchased a new RX5500XT 8GB card off eBay and I am currently waiting for it to arrive. I paid about $230 CAD for this unit (taxes and shipping were about $50 of the cost of course).
I also purchased 32 GB of Ram (4 x 8GB OWC sticks).
Now, onto the part where I need YOUR help
So I was reading the upgrades guide and to install my card I looked at this page from the team doing the iMac EFI bootscreen stuff. I am comfortable with a dremmel, and they have been kind enough to show me what needs to be removed, so I am confident I can modify my 3 Pipe cooler to fit the card with no issue.I am however wondering on the following items:
- Can I reuse the x bracket from the 6970m for this new card? Does it need to be modified in some way? They don't come with them so I am not sure what to do and I want everything ready to go before I start messing with this as I only have one Mac and dont want to do this wrong.
- Do I need to flash this card before I install it? I downloaded the RX5500XT-EnableGop.rom.zip package from the repository but the notes on that page make it sound like OCLP will do it for me so I don't want to mess with it if I don't have too. If I do have to modify the vBios, is there a USB programmer I can get to load the bios onto the chip that you recommend before I put this in. Do I just install the card and boot up and hope my patcher catches the change from the 6970 to the 5500xt?
- Do I need to make the monitor PCB cable and/or does someone sell these? On the documentation they state the following: "Neither OpenCore using the GOP driver nor an EG2 version using a MacPro7,1 EFI firmware driver is able to enable the LCD backlight on boot. Therefore all installations of the RX5500XT family need the PCB described in great detail by @dfranetic.". They have a schematic but I can't exactly print out my own PCB at my house and build this cable. I found one on Aliexpress here, but they are out of stock and it's $75 for this cable. I'll buy one, but they're not available anywhere I can find, so how do I get this? And are they required, or does OCLP patching actually fix this issue so we don't need it?
