I've heard that the 27" iMacs from 2011 are prone to GPU issues. I just picked one up, and I'm only now hearing that this could be a potential problem in the future. I heard that GPU issues with 2006 iMacs and 2011 MacBook Pros are fairly prevalent, but I can't seem to figure out so much with the iMac. The one that I grabbed is working fine, and has no problems whatsoever. The hard drive was replaced with an SSD, and I intend on upgrading the CPU to the 3.4GHz Core i7 (no other reason than I can), as well as repasting both the CPU and GPU and dusting out the insides while I'm at it.
My question is how prevalent these GPU issues really are. I had a 2006 iMac that had GPU issues and I'd rather not have a repeat of that, especially since I spent a chunk of change on the machine. Nothing crazy, but not a trivial purchase either. Before you ask, I very intentionally stayed away from buying a brand new machine, since my intended usage is to basically just watch YouTube and movies on it (hence why it's an older model). I didn't like the idea of buying a new machine and spending the money - not just a new iMac, but even Windows all-in-one machines with questionable Linux support - just for the basic tasks I had in mind for it.
I have found that replacement GPUs can be purchased fairly easily but that comes with its own set of risks too, least of which purchasing another dead GPU.
To be clear, the machine I picked up has no problems at all. It works exactly as I'd expect it to, though to be fair I haven't tested any particularly GPU-intense tasks beyond 4K streaming (which the machine performs wonderfully). I don't expect it to have any problems with that, though.
My question is how prevalent these GPU issues really are. I had a 2006 iMac that had GPU issues and I'd rather not have a repeat of that, especially since I spent a chunk of change on the machine. Nothing crazy, but not a trivial purchase either. Before you ask, I very intentionally stayed away from buying a brand new machine, since my intended usage is to basically just watch YouTube and movies on it (hence why it's an older model). I didn't like the idea of buying a new machine and spending the money - not just a new iMac, but even Windows all-in-one machines with questionable Linux support - just for the basic tasks I had in mind for it.
I have found that replacement GPUs can be purchased fairly easily but that comes with its own set of risks too, least of which purchasing another dead GPU.
To be clear, the machine I picked up has no problems at all. It works exactly as I'd expect it to, though to be fair I haven't tested any particularly GPU-intense tasks beyond 4K streaming (which the machine performs wonderfully). I don't expect it to have any problems with that, though.