iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Okay. what can i do?
i have the sd card installed and ctrl boot from this

Do you have another EFI folder with opencore on a EFI partition?

 

[herrdude]

There is more gone than the 3rd pin, a little ?coil? I.9000 is missing, too. I assume I means inductivity and it is a coil?

I am just wondering what the third pin does. Given that the LCD doesn't light up, it must be sending some volts. Anyone with a multimeter able to see how many?
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Okay. what can i do?
i have the sd card installed and ctrl boot from this

When you choose OpenCore, it gives you all the boot options including OpenCore. So, the first time you choose OpenCore, the second time you select your MacOS partition.

 

[ich558]

Do you have another EFI folder with opencore on a EFI partition?

no just the sd card. I just did the whole thing again but i always geht this message. Than i hit enter and have to chose my startvolume

 

[Aesthetica]

Hey everyone, I think I'm going to get going with this upgrade today.

Is the photo above from the 1st post a good example of applying thermal paste on these cards? It seems like a hell of a lot!

I have 3.5g of Arctic Silver - not sure if that's even going to be enough by the looks of it

 

[ich558]

I am just wondering what the third pin does. Given that the LCD doesn't light up, it must be sending some volts. Anyone with a multimeter able to see how many?
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When you choose OpenCore, it gives you all the boot options including OpenCore. So, the first time you choose OpenCore, the second time you select your MacOS partition.

As in the guide described i unchecked the bootpicker. Then i restart the imac, chose the Catalina Loader and select "Boot macos from macOS". Brigtness Control workes fine so i make new restard. After that i get the Error "Already started returned from Opencore"and have to hit a key to continue

 

[herrdude]

As in the guide described i unchecked the bootpicker. Then i restart the imac, chose the Catalina Loader and select "Boot macos from macOS". Brigtness Control workes fine so i make new restard. After that i get the Error "Already started returned from Opencore"and have to hit a key to continue

Not sure what bootpicker is. Anyways, go back to your OpenCore settings and make sure Show Picker is selected. Reboot your computer. Then select Catalina Loader (in fact here do CTRL + Enter). Then when it boots into OpenCore, make sure that your MacOS is selected then again do CTRL + Enter. If you don't do this, it will go to the first item on the list. Let us know!

EDIT: After you finish these steps, reboot again. Don't touch any keys and pay attention to see if Mac is selecting OpenCore when it is booting and that OpenCore is choosing your MacOS partition.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

View attachment 911409


Hey everyone, I think I'm going to get going with this upgrade today.

Is the photo above from the 1st post a good example of applying thermal paste on these cards? It seems like a hell of a lot!

I have 3.5g of Arctic Silver - not sure if that's even going to be enough by the looks of it

First page, first post, last question: Read the answer, get the (K5 pro) paste.

 

[herrdude]

View attachment 911409


Hey everyone, I think I'm going to get going with this upgrade today.

Is the photo above from the 1st post a good example of applying thermal paste on these cards? It seems like a hell of a lot!

I have 3.5g of Arctic Silver - not sure if that's even going to be enough by the looks of it

Dang, dude you aren't icing a cake. Check here at 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Dang, dude you aren't icing a cake. Check here at 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

This is showing the easy part, the GPU, only. It does not cover how to avoid contact of the other components when installing the card. The K5 has been used by Apple, too. I have seen now about 20 original Apple cards installed exactly the way on the picture. Since everything is written down more than once and there is a search button on top of this window there is no need to discuss this, again.

 

[herrdude]

I am just wondering what the third pin does. Given that the LCD doesn't light up, it must be sending some volts. Anyone with a multimeter able to see how many?

So, I dug out my multimeter. There is no voltage coming through that pin. It measures about 40 ohms when tested with ground. Can I possibly run another ground to this wire going to the LCD?

 

[fabienpascal]

@Nick [D]vB
Do you want to Unigine Heaven Benchmark from macOS and/or Windows?
The difference is significant.

On macOS 10.15.4 with OpenGL at 1080p native/medium:
Scored 251 and 10.0 fps.

On Windows 10 Pro UEFI with DX11 at 1080p native/medium:
Scored 611 and 24.3 fps.

 

[ich558]

Not sure what bootpicker is. Anyways, go back to your OpenCore settings and make sure Show Picker is selected. Reboot your computer. Then select Catalina Loader (in fact here do CTRL + Enter). Then when it boots into OpenCore, make sure that your MacOS is selected then again do CTRL + Enter. If you don't do this, it will go to the first item on the list. Let us know!

EDIT: After you finish these steps, reboot again. Don't touch any keys and pay attention to see if Mac is selecting OpenCore when it is booting and that OpenCore is choosing your MacOS partition.

Thank you! The Picker was disabled as actually described in the guide. So i enabled it and could chose booting to macOS and disabled the picker after that again

Last problem, my flashed k2100m shows only 1 GB Vram and i have no idear why. But at least it workes

edit: brightness control workes sometimes and sometimes not after a restart :/

 

[stephengrenfell]

780M: Currently the fastest one and only a good choice if you add a hardware mod to control the brightness. Otherwise gaming will fry the display...

I have an iMac 2011 too, which has again fried the graphic card (changed by Apple free in 2014) but has gone again.

I am willing to spend on a 780M but lack of brightness worries me. But a HW brightness mod in the interim until SW brightnes control is possible could be a way forward.

Where can I find details of the HW mod ?. I couldn't see any details at the begining of the thread.

Thanks.

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Backlight Control

Background:
The 2011 iMac display backlight system uses pulse-width-modulation (PWM) to control backlight intensity. A PWM control signal is generated within the logic board-video card circuit and routed to the PWM input on the backlight board. The PWM frequency is 13KHz and the pulse height is 3.25V. The duty cycle is varied from 0 to 100% to adjust backlight intensity from minimum to maximum. When a non-Apple video card is installed that lacks a proper EFI, the logic board-video card circuit outputs a duty cycle of 100% resulting in maximum backlight intensity which reduces contrast and generates extra heat. The solution is to isolate the logic board-video card and backlight board circuits from one another (cut the wire that connects them) and feed a desired duty cycle PWM signal into the backlight board PWM input using a low-cost PWM module based upon the Texas Instruments TL494 IC.

You will need the following supplies:
1. TL494 PWM module (purchase from Amazon)
2. Wire (black for ground, red for 12V power, and 3rd color for PWM signal)
3. 1/4W Resistors – 1 x 1.8K and 1 x 6.8K

You will need the following tools:
1. Oscilloscope that has a bandwidth of 15KHz or greater and can measure frequency
2. Multimeter
3. Soldering iron and solder
4. 12V DC power supply

Step 1:
Solder the 1.8K resistor to the “OUT” pin, solder the 6.8K resistor to the “GND” pin adjacent to the “OUT” pin. Solder the other end of each resistor together. Note: This creates a voltage divider that reduces the output of the PWM module from 5V peak-peak to the backlight board required 3.25V peak to peak. The PWM output will be the connection between the two resistors and this will be fed to the PWM input on the backlight board.
View attachment 809421

Step 2:
Connect the positive power supply lead to the “VCC” pin and the negative power supply lead to the to the “GND” pin adjacent to the “VCC” pin. Connect your oscilloscope to the PWM output and it’s adjacent “GND” pin. Adjust the two potentiometers on the PWM unit to achieve a frequency of 13KHz and duty cycle of 50%. Note: This will achieve a backlight intensity of 50%. If you want higher or lower backlight level adjust duty cycle accordingly.
View attachment 809422

Step 3:
Remove backlight board and disconnect all connectors. Solder wires onto the board as pictured. Note:Red wire is 12V DC power, black wire is ground, and blue wire is PWM signal.
View attachment 809423
View attachment 809424

Step 4:
Identify which wire is carrying PWM signal from logic board to backlight board and cut this wire on the wiring harness: Look at the female connector on the backlight board and identify the pin on the connector that is soldered to the blue wire. Look at the male connector on the wiring harness that connects to the backlight board to the power supply and identify the corresponding pin. Locate this wire and pull it through the sleeve on the wiring harness to identify which wire needs to be cut. Once cut, use multimeter on ohms setting to confirm the correct wire is cut. Note: Where the backlight board wiring harness connects to the power supply you will see two wires that don’t connect to the power supply but travel onward in the harness to the logic board. One of these is the “PWM signal” wire and the other is the “Backlight ON” wire.
View attachment 809425
View attachment 809426

Step 5:
Install PWM module, route wires, and solder wires to PWM module as pictured. Note: The red wire goes to the “VCC” pin, the black wire to the “GND” pin, and the blue wire to the PWM output lead between the two resistors created in step 1.
View attachment 809427
View attachment 809428
View attachment 809429

Step 6:
Reinstall LCD screen but do not yet install the LCD screws. Power on and boot iMac into macOS and adjust brightness with Brightness Slider App to determine if the range of brightness adjustability is where you want it. You can adjust potentiometer labeled D to increase or decrease the duty cycle to adjust the maximum backlight level to your liking (the potentiometer labeled “F” adjusts the PWM frequency – be careful not to change it). Reinstall LCD screws and screen glass. Congratulations - you’re done!

DyingLight - DosLab Electronics

Software and hardware to bring back the brightness functionality of MacBooks which have their dedicated gpu disabled.

doslabelectronics.com

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Well there are at least 4 versions of the Apple 6770 bios, and the Dell cards come with several different memory types, so a lot of variables. Glad to hear one combination worked in your 21”, they didn’t with the 27" 2011 iMac. There was nothing wrong with the card, the modified 1GB bios worked fine, except for BootCamp. Nice of that guy to send it to you, very generous… ; )

The RX580 is actually the easiest because the WX7100 card should already come with a working vbios, you just need to do the back-light mod. Not sure what’s happening with the DyingLight but in the mean time you can do a basic “hot-wire” mod instead, I think I posted about that before, to re-cap… You can do this with a single wire, but a safer method uses a PCIE power extension cable between the PSU and LCD “inverter” board.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-6-pin-PC...Video-Card-Power-Extension-Cable/352463698131
https://www.ebay.com/itm/6Pin-Male-...-Card-Power-Extension-Cable-20cm/201764196006
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-2-Pack-Extension-Power/dp/B01DV1Z4EQ

You just cut the PWM wire on the extension (at the female/socket end) and feed ~3v into it to fire the back-light, you can tap 3.3v from the Bluetooth / SD reader cable, or just poke the wire into the right hole (!) on the back of the main PSU connector, & secure with a zip-tie. The PSU pin is SMB_SCL, not really a power rail, but it works.

Obviously all the usual health warnings apply, even when unplugged that power supply can give you a nasty jolt (take my word for it!) so don’t go poking anything on the back of the PSU PCB. Apple really should have insulated that, it’s almost as if they don’t want people opening these things… xD


The RX560 is a bit tricky, there are at least two versions of the WX4170 card, the one I found had a blank vbios chip that you can “blind flash” in windows using remote access (TeamViewer etc) or with a programmer clip. But, the version in most eBay listings are actually missing a vbios chip, so you would need to solder one on. You would then also need to do the back-light mod. There’s a small chance the WX4150 cards could work in a late 2009 iMac, it was actually detected in an early 2009 iMac (A1225) but couldn't output to its LVDS screen. They might also work in a 2009 Xserve?

The boot-screen mod is quite complicated, we can get to that later, but it basically involves injecting a few bits & bobs from newer iMac firmware into your bootrom (all original Apple code). I’ll try and put together a magic boot disk so you guys can update your bootrom easily. I'll post some proper photos of the back-light mod when I get time, and if the DyingLight has actually died a death we can look into some other options.

UPDATE: Bootrom + vbios files to enable boot-screen now attached.

I was hoping to make a boot disc to enable boot-screens on 560 / 580 cards, I did find a way to patch & write the bootrom through EFI shell using a tool called Chipsec, but it was complicated and ridiculously slow (about 3 hours to write the full bootrom!) so the much faster / safer option is just to use a hardware programmer instead. You can get a CH341A + Clip for $5 which you can also use to flash the video card bios, two birds one stone etc.

First dump the iMac bootrom (make a back-up copy!) then use UEFI Tool to inject the CoreEG2 & EDID Parser (DXE drivers from the iMac 17,1). Expand the first volume in the bios region, scroll down and insert both drivers at the end before the free space, then save the file. Flash the modded bootrom and the vbios for your card (patched with a GOP taken from the MBP 14,3) then do a NVRAM reset and you should see a boot-screen! 8)

 

[Marsupio]

One thing you could have done to go further would have been to write out the before and after, and run then run a diffs against the images. The verify step effectively does this for you, So you should be good!

Done today. Confirmed that the "diff' is OK.

 

[NOTNlCE]

@Nick [D]vB
Do you want to Unigine Heaven Benchmark from macOS and/or Windows?
The difference is significant.

On macOS 10.15.4 with OpenGL at 1080p native/medium:
Scored 251 and 10.0 fps.

On Windows 10 Pro UEFI with DX11 at 1080p native/medium:
Scored 611 and 24.3 fps.

Just the macOS benchmarks please - the Windows benchmarks will *always* be better because the driver quality is so much higher. Thanks for your tests!

 

[nikey22]

I agree with Ausdauersportler. You have a blown component. Probably from a short. I can't tell if your pads are still okay, but they might be melted. You also have a completely broken top-half of the black plastic covering to the connector.

 

[herrdude]

I agree with Ausdauersportler. You have a blown component. Probably from a short. I can't tell if your pads are still okay, but they might be melted. You also have a completely broken top-half of the black plastic covering to the connector.
View attachment 911448

Thank you very much for that explanation. I am sure it is a stupid question, but I got to ask it anyways. Is there another way to run the 12v to LCD?

 

[xanderon]

View attachment 911409


Hey everyone, I think I'm going to get going with this upgrade today.

Is the photo above from the 1st post a good example of applying thermal paste on these cards? It seems like a hell of a lot!

I have 3.5g of Arctic Silver - not sure if that's even going to be enough by the looks of it

O m g That pic is horror.

A) get k5 paste for the RAMs and MOSFET only
B) get arctic or other cpu stuff for the GPU CORE only
C) don’t spend so much on the core as in this pic. It shouldn’t swim in the paste
D) you will need to apply a lot K5 to get contact to the heatsink. It will swim in k5

Hope that helps

 

[nikey22]

@herrdude
I had to alter the image I had previously, but I believe that your damaged pin is either 3 or 4 in the above schematic, have another look. It looks like inductor L9000 is blown. Pins 4,5,6 should receive 12V. See if you have continuity between them and 1,2,3,7,8. The missing component is a 250 Ohm ferrite bead.

 

[herrdude]

@herrdude
I had to alter the image I had previously, but I believe that your damaged pin is either 3 or 4 in the above schematic, have another look. It looks like inductor L9000 is blown. Pins 4,5,6 should be receive 12V. See if you have continuity between them and 1,2,3,7,8.

So according to the schematic, it is pin 3 that is broken. There is continuity between 1,2,3,7,8. As for 4,5,6 the voltage seems low (0.01). I checked the pins 1 and 4 on the mother board which give 3.12v and pins 1 and 11 give 12v. Does this mean there isn't any way of getting the volts to the LCD?

PS I see that we are neighbours!

 

[xanderon]

hey guys, I need help. 2009 iMac, 2x Quadro k2000m to flash. using my usb thumb boot method.

i installed the first card, no screen at all - not internal or external, booted the usb stick, got my IP, saved original bios, flashed the card. shutdown. removed the card.

installed the second card, same procedure, booted to usb stick, saved original bios and flashed the second k2000m with nicks bios. shutdown.

installed the internal screen to "see" anything BUT (!) I only got a black screen. so I did PRAM reset and got a white screen! cool. but no, not cool. not apple logo no booting, nothing. just a white screen and a odd fan at max (hdd swaped to ssd).

any ideas? even the old 4670 that should work with "secure mode" by holding don't want to boot the old system from ssd/hdd fusion.

need help
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UPDATE, the old 4670 with internal screen is showing the apple logo and is booting my dosdude Catalina stick.

hmmmmmmm y are the both k2000m not doing that job?

UPDATE
I used an original usb apple keyboard to PRAM again with k2000m, I hear the sound and I see a white screen. nothing more :/

 

[jowaju]

hey guys, I need help. 2009 iMac, 2x Quadro k2000m to flash. using my usb thumb boot method.

i installed the first card, no screen at all - not internal or external, booted the usb stick, got my IP, saved original bios, flashed the card. shutdown. removed the card.

installed the second card, same procedure, booted to usb stick, saved original bios and flashed the second k2000m with nicks bios. shutdown.

installed the internal screen to "see" anything BUT (!) I only got a black screen. so I did PRAM reset and got a white screen! cool. but no, not cool. not apple logo no booting, nothing. just a white screen and a odd fan at max (hdd swaped to ssd).

any ideas? even the old 4670 that should work with "secure mode" by holding don't want to boot the old system from ssd/hdd fusion.

need help
[automerge]1588444383[/automerge]
UPDATE, the old 4670 with internal screen is showing the apple logo and is booting my dosdude Catalina stick.

hmmmmmmm y are the both k2000m not doing that job?

UPDATE
I used an original usb apple keyboard to PRAM again with k2000m, I hear the sound and I see a white screen. nothing more :/

Did you hold down the option key to bring up the boot selection menu? It will sit on the White background with no indications of life for quite a while as it searches for boot options. Easiest way to be sure is to power on, hear the chime, immediately hold down the option (alt) key.

 

[xanderon]

I did of course. no boot menu for me. not with flashed k2000m

 

[stephengrenfell]

DyingLight - DosLab Electronics

Software and hardware to bring back the brightness functionality of MacBooks which have their dedicated gpu disabled.

doslabelectronics.com

[automerge]1588436983[/automerge]

ok, many thanks Pascal for the prompt reply.

Creating a pwm controller as described by wlagarde doesn't seem too hard, I'll lookover how to do that in the coming days.

The Nick [D]vB option of providing a fixed voltage is mentined for the RX580, does this also apply to the 780M ?.