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Would a future i7-9700 DIY upgrade be possible for the 27 inch iMac?

J

JacobHarvey

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 2, 2019
119
108
Somewhere
I have been seeing quite a few deals for the i7-9700 most likely due to competition from AMD's excellent Ryzen 3000 (Zen 2) chips which are dominating in the desktop space.

This has made me wonder whether it would be possible for iMac users to one day replace the 6 core i5 processors (the 3.0/3.1 8th Gens or 3.7GHz 9th Gens) with the i7-9700 as a future upgrade path to 8 cores .

The i9-9900K will likely retain a significant price premium over the i7 well into the future, as the 'top' Intel chip of a generation usually remains in demand from windows desktop users who desperately want a cpu upgrade without having to change their entire motherboard platform. Just look at ridiculous i7-6700K prices compare to non-K edition i5s of that generation on eBay as evidence of this. Therefore the i7 might be a far better buy in the future (price-wise) compared to the top i9-9900K.

iMac CPUs are socketed so there should be no barrier to a CPU swap from a physical standpoint (which has allowed past iMacs to have DIY CPU upgrades). However, Apple never offered the i7-9700 in any of its computers so would it be recognized correctly in the iMac?

I am more interested in whether it may be possible to do this one day rather than getting into a debate as to whether this makes financial sense (it does not currently - but some day in the future it may be worthwhile for some).
 
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It seems like there is some uncertainty regarding this. I've seen many hackintosh builds where the i7-9700K runs well (and shows up as an 'Unknown 3.6GHz Processor' in About this Mac - which can easily be edited). From a power delivery and physical standpoint there are no barriers but the iMac's firmware could potentially present a barrier.

Does anyone know of any past examples of iMacs being upgraded successfully with CPUs that were never put in any mac (but were closely related to CPUs that did ship in Macs - maybe during the Core 2 Duo era)?
 
I can confirm that the i7 9700 works in my imac19,2 (21.5 2019 imac)
No software adjustments needed. CPU recognized and identified in system info without need for any manual adjustments
 
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Marquis84 said:
I can confirm that the i7 9700 works in my imac19,2 (21.5 2019 imac)
No software adjustments needed. CPU recognized and identified in system info without need for any manual adjustments
Click to expand...
Hi Marquis. I saw your last message and I'm also willing to do the same update, but I'm still concerned that the base model with the i3 processor might not be able to sustain the updgrade with a 9700. Which model did you use? And is everything working fine or do you experience some troubles (e.g. shutdowns etc.)?

Thanks !
 
Marquis84 said:
I can confirm that the i7 9700 works in my imac19,2 (21.5 2019 imac)
No software adjustments needed. CPU recognized and identified in system info without need for any manual adjustments
Click to expand...
Hello Marcus. have same iMac 21.5 2019 and want put i7 9700. so please answer do you have any problems after long time usage such as iMac restarting or something else? few month ago put 2x16gb RAM from eBay A-TECH and after macOS update system blocked this ram and never worked after this. put back iMacs base 2x4gb Rame and works fine so do you have any same problem after this cpu update?
 
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