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

e-tip · May 19, 2020

Hi everyone.
Some days ago, graphic card of my iMac 12,2 said hello for the second time in two years. First time i spent 250€ to replace the chip in the video card in a repair center, and this time i've rebailed it using the oven ( no time to spend 250€ ). As i'm prepared to my video card to die again in the next months, i started to think about change it with an nvidia, in this way i can continue to develip iOS apps without changing it ( latest xcode supports only 10.14.4).
Unfortunately i'm very uncertain on what kind of card to buy... Read the thread i'd say that, i'll go with the k2100M i've found for 80/100 euros ( which seems to be the easier to install and more compatibile ), but as a geek i'm tempted about the amd WX7100, but i have no money to spend with a card that couldn't work depending on too many factors ( but i'm very tempted ).
So my question is:
Quadro K2100 M mxm-A ( so no need to modify my heatskin ) or do any of you have a link of a 80% sure working WX7100 ?
TIA

NOTNlCE · May 19, 2020

e-tip said:
Hi everyone.

So my question is:
Quadro K2100 M mxm-A ( so no need to modify my heatskin ) or do any of you have a link of a 80% sure working WX7100 ?
TIA

If I were in your shoes, I would get the K2100M now - do the easy, full featured swap, and have a machine that won't die on you. Once WX7100s are more easily sourced, perhaps upgrade the K2100M down the line if your iMac is still serving its purpose for you, especially if you feel you cannot afford to take the gamble on a WX7100.

jborko · May 19, 2020

tgaillar said:
Yes, that's been the issue from day 1 with using non-Apple video cards. And probably a reason to keep the wattage as-low-as-possible, at the risk of ... eventually frying the boards (I hope everyone gets the irony in the latter part, because that's one of the reasons this thread exists in the first place... -- the other reason being access to Metal-capable GPUs).

Wouldn't you rather need to fill the VRAM "void" on the heatsink with thin adhesive copper clads? Below for reference a picture I took from my 27" iMac 2011 HD6970M + heatsink (notice how slightly different mine is from yours):
View attachment 916698

The heatsink on your picture is the 3-pipe heatsink, I am keeping that for the WX7100. The one on my picture is the 2-pipe (originally the HD6970 was in it)... The copper plate on the 3-pipe is longer, and there is also a difference in the upper left section. 15mm vs 12mm clearance.

Anyway, I just finished filing. I evened out the surface between the GPU copper plate, and the VRAM sections. Will let you know whether I made a difference or not.

e-tip · May 19, 2020

NOTNlCE said:
If I were in your shoes, I would get the K2100M now - do the easy, full featured swap, and have a machine that won't die on you. Once WX7100s are more easily sourced, perhaps upgrade the K2100M down the line if your iMac is still serving its purpose for you, especially if you feel you cannot afford to take the gamble on a WX7100.

Thanks for your reply. I’m quite sure to go with the quadro. Do anyone know if there is some performance differences between mxm A and B ? The less tdp should come from somewhere ....

NOTNlCE · May 19, 2020

e-tip said:
Thanks for your reply. I’m quite sure to go with the quadro. Do anyone know if there is some performance differences between mxm A and B ? The less tdp should come from somewhere ....

At the top of post #1, you can see many user submitted benchmarks that give an idea of performance. The NVIDIA Quadro cards are certainly not top tier performers - they are designed to be low power, easy fix. However, if you are not doing graphics intensive workloads on your iMac, they should still suit you well.

cyberheater · May 19, 2020

Hi folks.

I‘m looking to upgrade the GPU of my 12,1 21.5 inch mid 2011 iMac primarily for Mojave/Catalina due to the requirement for metal support.

I have over the last week or so reviewed most of the posts in this thread. I understand that the K2100m is the goto GPU but I’m having a hard time sourcing this part at a reasonable cost in the UK.

I’m currently looking at the k610m which is available at reasonable cost. I understand that currently there is no custom bios available for this board and that I would miss out on a boot menu and the ability to change screen brightness.

Is this basically a drop in part. Just do the physical swap on my system and boot Back to Mojave?

Thanks in advanced.

Brmp85 · May 19, 2020

I noticed that the logic board is not sitting straight after putting it all back together. Any suggestions/tricks what to look out for? What little demon is blocking it? Been fiddeling around alot but seems hard to get it straight. Is there a certain trick to put it back? Thanks

nathansz · May 19, 2020

Brmp85 said:
I noticed that the logic board is not sitting straight after putting it all back together. Any suggestions/tricks what to look out for? What little demon is blocking it? Been fiddeling around alot but seems hard to get it straight. Is there a certain trick to put it back? Thanks

i find it easier to put in if you take out the little ir board thing at the bottom in between the ram slots

then i plug something into the thunder bolt ports and the far side usb ports to make sure it straight

Rendell001 · May 19, 2020

jborko said:
Folks,

After running some more benches with the WX4170 with performance modified bios I found out that the GPU temps are meltdown high (93C + with ODD Fan running full speed and ambient temp of 27-28)

So I opened the iMac up and I realized that those shorts I experienced might have been because of the card not sitting properly with the heatsink... Especially VRAMs are sitting weirdly on the grooves created for the VRAM's on the original AMD, resulting in a gap between the GPU and the copper plate on the heatsink. (see the pics). Now I can put more thermal paste on the GPU, but that is nonsense because the heat will be transferred inefficiently and will stay on the GPU (I suppose).

Now this brings me to my dilemma: to file or not to file the memory grooves?

View attachment 916663 View attachment 916664

Just yesterday in fact I found a very useful clip on YT where someone was performing the card upgrade using a 765M instead. In the video, the poster shows how he had to file out certain sections of the heat sink to make space for the VRAMS on his card - he used a mini-drill with cutting disc for this work. You can watch what he does at the following link:

Ausdauersportler · May 19, 2020

jborko said:
Folks,

After running some more benches with the WX4170 with performance modified bios I found out that the GPU temps are meltdown high (93C + with ODD Fan running full speed and ambient temp of 27-28)

So I opened the iMac up and I realized that those shorts I experienced might have been because of the card not sitting properly with the heatsink... Especially VRAMs are sitting weirdly on the grooves created for the VRAM's on the original AMD, resulting in a gap between the GPU and the copper plate on the heatsink. (see the pics). Now I can put more thermal paste on the GPU, but that is nonsense because the heat will be transferred inefficiently and will stay on the GPU (I suppose).

Now this brings me to my dilemma: to file or not to file the memory grooves?

View attachment 916663 View attachment 916664

With my WX4170 (exactly the same model) I use the 3 pipe heat sink and when running the very same benchmarks using the same VBIOS getting the same results I observed 75 degrees centigrade max. With a better Fan management a temperature of 70 to 71 (using the script) during the Valley benchmark which gave me the best score, so far.

There is some room for improvement with your installation.
[automerge]1589916703[/automerge]

Brmp85 said:
I noticed that the logic board is not sitting straight after putting it all back together. Any suggestions/tricks what to look out for? What little demon is blocking it? Been fiddeling around alot but seems hard to get it straight. Is there a certain trick to put it back? Thanks

Install the board without the memory modules installed and of course without the IR board.

The secret is: Watch exactly how you pulled it out and install it the reverse order. I pull at first the CPU heat sink out, then the GPU sink, then lift the board out the left side and at last on the right bottom side.
Installing in reverse order keeping track where all the loose cables go. Especially the power and disc cables behind the pipes of the GPU sink and the 5 ones on the left hand side (both speakers, ODD fan, ODD thermal sensor and SDD card). If these get caught between some of the screw holes it is getting complicated.

Personally I fix all cables with Tesa/M3 strips while unplugging them initially. Take a picture with you smart phone before, you cannot plug in the cables in the wrong way...

jborko · May 19, 2020

Ausdauersportler said:
With my WX4170 (exactly the same model) I use the 3 pipe heat sink and when running the very same benchmarks using the same VBIOS getting the same results I observed 75 degrees centigrade max. With a better Fan management a temperature of 70 to 71 (using the script) during the Valley benchmark which gave me the best score, so far.

There is some room for improvement with your installation.
[automerge]1589916703[/automerge]

Install the board without the memory modules installed and of course without the IR board.

The secret is: Watch exactly how you pulled it out and install it the reverse order. I pull at first the CPU heat sink out, then the GPU sink, then lift the board out the left side and at last on the right bottom side.
Installing in reverse order keeping track where all the loose cables go. Especially the power and disc cables behind the pipes of the GPU sink and the 5 ones on the left hand side (both speakers, ODD fan, ODD thermal sensor and SDD card). If these get caught between some of the screw holes it is getting complicated.

Personally I fix all cables with Tesa/M3 strips while unplugging them initially. Take a picture with you smart phone before, you cannot plug in the cables in the wrong way...

Just finished.

So remained with the 2-pipe, filed down the VRAM sections flat with the coper plate, and reapplied K5, MX-4. Temps with ODD at max were max 64 and without the fan at 74. Results also impressive - 49.4 FPS (antialiasing off)...

rere64 · May 19, 2020

rere64 said:
I have now flashed the vbios on my GTX765M, done with the ch341prg in windows10
on a windows laptop.
The program did not detect the chip, so I went for the settings in the picture.
Renamed rom file to bin, and it seems to read,erase, and program well.
Says all OK. The size etc seems right. I have not swaped the card yet.
Next is to mount the card in the imac and boot up, then the
bootrom......thanks everyone for all work and help. To be continued.....View attachment 879691
View attachment 879693

Hi again everyone , I´ve been gone for some months , but now I have installed the GTX 765m with bios kepler beta3, in my Imac 21.5" mid 2011. EDITED.... card/Imac is running hot as page 1 describes. It needs more cooling. Maybee I go for a used 27" instead and mounting orginal card back in the 21.5".

Ausdauersportler · May 19, 2020

rere64 said:
Hi again everyone , I´ve been gone for some months , but now I have installed the GTX 765m with bios kepler beta3, in my Imac 21.5" mid 2011, and everything seems to work fine. Today I installed Catalina on an external disc with dosdudes catalina patcher, to try out before convert my High Sierra HFS+ SSD to APFS, and then update to Catalina.
Problem at intallation was black screen under catalina install, but I let it install with black screen, then I reboot to usb-install stick ( catalina patcher) and checked the" Legacy Video Card Patch" wish not was default. That seems to solved the problem with black screen.Catalina up and running.I´ll let you know how it goes.....PS. some modification done to the heatsink, to make the card fit in 21.5" Imac. Thank's again Nick and everyone involved for a great work!

View attachment 916788

You installed the "legacy video patch" ? How is the performance of your display, now? Sluggish?

This was definitely not the way to solve this particular problem with 10.15.4. Reinstall Catalina from your USB boot stick after paying a visit to the first post on the first page and the Catalina section. The real solution needs a patched kernel extension to be installed additionally on your iMac.

sparky720John · May 19, 2020

This may be off topic so if it is please point me the right place to get the problem solved,

Im working with the 27" Mid 2011 iMac, i am preparing the system to load my new WX7100 and flash the bios in windows, using all of the tools advised to use here, OpenCore and the SD cards to boot and so forth.

Main dilemma is the my system is running High Sierra 10.13.6 and anytime i use bootcamp assistant to load it refuses to take my win7 iso load it it will boot get to 93% install then crash saying its missing files, it refuses to boot off a usb installer and won't boot from win7 disk in external dvd how in the world can i get win7 installed to flash if bootcamp won't install without failure??

do i need to back my system down to yosemite or el captain install bootcamp and windows then upgrade to high sierra??

unless you all would recommend loading the system and flashing blind with the help of another mac doing the ssh version, but that maybe a little too scary in case i forget a step or brick the new video card.

any advice??

Thank you everyone, you are all amazing and skilled with what you have done to help us all get metal working cards into obsolete but still working iMacs, and other systems as well as of course genuine hackintoshes

nathansz · May 19, 2020

sparky720John said:
This may be off topic so if it is please point me the right place to get the problem solved,

Im working with the 27" Mid 2011 iMac, i am preparing the system to load my new WX7100 and flash the bios in windows, using all of the tools advised to use here, OpenCore and the SD cards to boot and so forth.

Main dilemma is the my system is running High Sierra 10.13.6 and anytime i use bootcamp assistant to load it refuses to take my win7 iso load it it will boot get to 93% install then crash saying its missing files, it refuses to boot off a usb installer and won't boot from win7 disk in external dvd how in the world can i get win7 installed to flash if bootcamp won't install without failure??

do i need to back my system down to yosemite or el captain install bootcamp and windows then upgrade to high sierra??

unless you all would recommend loading the system and flashing blind with the help of another mac doing the ssh version, but that maybe a little too scary in case i forget a step or brick the new video card.

any advice??

Thank you everyone, you are all amazing and skilled with what you have done to help us all get metal working cards into obsolete but still working iMacs, and other systems as well as of course genuine hackintoshes

maybe use this tool?

jowaju said:
I spent some time last week changing out one of my kids 21.5" 2010 iMac video cards for a K1000m. I'll write up a detailed post later on in the week, but in the meantime I used the Winclone idea posted here earlier by FlorisVN to make a package installer Windows 7 Bootcamp so there is no need to install Winclone or do any other trickery. It requires 10.12 Sierra to begin, and it simply adds the bootcamp image to your internal hard drive on a 15GB partition it creates. Teamviewer has been installed, and the NVtools folder is on the desktop with the flash rom files ready to go. Also the Page file and Hibernate file have been pared down to 2GB each to avoid running out of space at 15gb. No bootcamp drivers were loaded to maximize portability. I tried this on a 2010 iMac 21.5 as well as a 2011 iMac 27" and they both worked perfectly for simply creating the bootcamp partition to use for flashing purposes. I also uploaded it to Sync which has unlimited downloads so it shouldn't expire or be pulled if it gets popular. Here's the link to download it, simply unzip the .pkg file and run it in MacOS 10.12 or higher.

Windows 7 Bootcamp pkg installer iMac

Rassmusen · May 19, 2020

Hello everyone, thanks for all the great information. I used it to update my 2011 27" iMac's graphics card to an 860m a while back. It was working well except for the known boot screen and brightness control issues. I got greedy and found a WX7100 on eBay from China. I was able to flash it with the modified BIOS with a Ch341A and clip no problem. The install went as planned with no issues but once I installed it the iMac will no longer turn on. Only one of the diagnostic LEDs blinks for a bit then stays lit until I press the power button and it starts blinking again.

I put the 860m back in and still have the same no power issue. I assume something was wrong with the WX7100 and damaged the logic board. Do any of you have any ideas on things to try?

Thanks

sparky720John · May 19, 2020

nathansz said:
maybe use this tool?

I will give it a shot, can't hurt to try i've done everything besides pull out my hair rofl

NOTNlCE · May 19, 2020

sparky720John said:
any advice??

Alternatively, if you have a spare PC and disk, you can install UEFI Windows 10 on an external drive. If you disconnect other disks, the iMac will blind boot UEFI Windows 10 without issue, but you must not let it connect to the internet or it will install audio drivers and BSOD. I blocked the MAC address of my iMac's Ethernet in my home's firewall so that I can RDP/Teamviewer/whatever into the Windows 10 install and make my necessary changes.

Ausdauersportler · May 19, 2020

Rassmusen said:
Hello everyone, thanks for all the great information. I used it to update my 2011 27" iMac's graphics card to an 860m a while back. It was working well except for the known boot screen and brightness control issues. I got greedy and found a WX7100 on eBay from China. I was able to flash it with the modified BIOS with a Ch341A and clip no problem. The install went as planned with no issues but once I installed it the iMac will no longer turn on. Only one of the diagnostic LEDs blinks for a bit then stays lit until I press the power button and it starts blinking again.

I put the 860m back in and still have the same no power issue. I assume something was wrong with the WX7100 and damaged the logic board. Do any of you have any ideas on things to try?

Thanks

This is difficult, a hardware issue. You might try to start with less components installed, e.g. deinstall memory modules except one, unplug disk, ODD, SD, graphics card and check what happens.

sparky720John · May 19, 2020

NOTNlCE said:
Alternatively, if you have a spare PC and disk, you can install UEFI Windows 10 on an external drive. If you disconnect other disks, the iMac will blind boot UEFI Windows 10 without issue, but you must not let it connect to the internet or it will install audio drivers and BSOD. I blocked the MAC address of my iMac's Ethernet in my home's firewall so that I can RDP/Teamviewer/whatever into the Windows 10 install and make my necessary changes.

I must give a little credit to @nathansz I took the file and installed the bootcamp just like he said and that was painless it installed just fine.

I will take your advice as well and use the windows 10 if needed, or once I'm all flashed and setup i may need to swap to windows 10

Thanks again for the help.
[automerge]1589926275[/automerge]
@RRPC & @Nick [D]vB

I am just about to flash my new WX7100 I have a question and if anyone else is able to answer please feel free,

When nick posted the AMD Beta4 with all the rom bios the names represent i believe the real cards that i I'm not mistaken apple refers to? is the 560x thru 580 refs to the WX7100 and the WX4150 see the first image

or should i flash using the GOP from AMD in second image,

Im just wondering if the AMD Beta4 is updated Rom for both cards and the names were just changed? just wanted to check before flashing, and not sure we have any information on the first post referencing other names so I didn't want to flash the wrong one.

Thanks Guys again for the help,

I am almost to the point of installing and flashing, and will keep you posted, as well as if all is successful, i will be sure to give you my seller info i purchased from, as he confirmed before even shipping i was getting the card with XX serial to match the ones we saw Nick [D]vB used first.

nathansz · May 19, 2020

sparky720John said:
I must give a little credit to @nathansz I took the file and installed the bootcamp just like he said and that was painless it installed just fine.

I will take your advice as well and use the windows 10 if needed, or once I'm all flashed and setup i may need to swap to windows 10

Thanks again for the help.

give the credit to @jowaju. they put the package together

glad it worked

sparky720John · May 19, 2020

nathansz said:
give the credit to @jowaju. they put the package together

glad it worked

@jowaju Thank you for the awesome package, I got it installed with no problem, it crashed on the first boot with blue screen of death, but upon second reboot it installed a bunch on drivers to configure to my iMac and rebooted and working fine, i do get a message saying the recycling bin is corrupt do i want to empty but ignore that. and installed the bootcamp drivers to configure the rest of the drivers.

NOTNlCE · May 19, 2020

sparky720John said:
I must give a little credit to @nathansz I took the file and installed the bootcamp just like he said and that was painless it installed just fine.

I will take your advice as well and use the windows 10 if needed, or once I'm all flashed and setup i may need to swap to windows 10

Thanks again for the help.
[automerge]1589926275[/automerge]
@RRPC & @Nick [D]vB

I am just about to flash my new WX7100 I have a question and if anyone else is able to answer please feel free,

When nick posted the AMD Beta4 with all the rom bios the names represent i believe the real cards that i I'm not mistaken apple refers to?

Your best bet is to flash the AMD GOP ROM rather than the BETA4 ROMs. These ROMs are "best of both worlds" as they give both boot picker AND native backlight control using the OpenCore boot disk. I strongly recommend preparing your OpenCore USB ahead of time and enabling screen sharing on your macOS partition so that you can remote in and correctly change the OpenCore USB to your startup disk. Remember that the AMD config.plist needs to be unzipped and renamed as it is not the default!

elKikkoL290890 · May 19, 2020

xanderon said:
so guys, I have a little gift for you to give back after such an incredible thread
hope you like it, the headaches to get it running were immens for me as a newb.

I couldn't stand it to use fckin windows to flash the cards and so I prepared this ~350mb drive

I created a Linux Live USB (based on grml.org) Thumb Drive with nvflash_linux and Nicks Bioses preloaded. and its booting by itself so you can work blind with a new unpatched nvidia card plugged in. Also, its starting a ssh daemon and using DHCP to get an IP so you can remote login

Steps

Download
14 days left to download, uploaded here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cztz4xqj2sru9gj/2011_imac_usb.zip/file

mirror by NOTNICE, thnx: https://cloud.notnlce.com/index.php/s/xkJP34GD6a9WziE/download

Prepare USB Drive or SD Card
so, you take a small usb thumb drive, partition it with disk utility on a Mac: GPT + FAT32
and just unzip the files structure onto the drive, no dd or etcher or something. just copy paste it. folder structure see attached screenshot. (you can remove the .roms I downloaded and download itself if you want to be sure about the correct file size. I did not verify them at all. use/flash at your own risk please)

Test & Try
test your thumb drive with a more or less working GPU/ external Screen or just have faith in me

Swap Hardware
swap your GPU to NVIDIA and (!) disconnect every SSD/HDD, makes it easier to boot blindly from one USB or SD Card, connect the ETH Cable (!)

Find IP
let the iMac boot, everything is black, the boot loader is waiting 20s before booting, so give the whole process 1min time, then head over to your Router Page and find the right IP that the iMac got through DHCP

SSH to the iMac
now fire up your terminal on a Win/Mac/Linux Machine of your choice and ssh to your iMac with
ssh root@YOURIP
Password: flash
Confirm the ssh id with yes and you should be in your iMac

Working Directory
cd /lib/live/mount/medium/flash

read the RADME in there… I will enjoy my brand new k2000m in my 27" 2011 iMac with Catalina 10.15.3
… and because this is so easy, I rebuild it to a K1100M and flashed that also

(someone could write some fancy scripts but I thought its saver that everyone is doing it command by command and don't stop thinking and trusting some scripts)

I can't follow the procedure on the Mac terminal ! Who can help me ?

jmilan0302 · May 19, 2020

jborko said:
Folks,

After running some more benches with the WX4170 with performance modified bios I found out that the GPU temps are meltdown high (93C + with ODD Fan running full speed and ambient temp of 27-28)

So I opened the iMac up and I realized that those shorts I experienced might have been because of the card not sitting properly with the heatsink... Especially VRAMs are sitting weirdly on the grooves created for the VRAM's on the original AMD, resulting in a gap between the GPU and the copper plate on the heatsink. (see the pics). Now I can put more thermal paste on the GPU, but that is nonsense because the heat will be transferred inefficiently and will stay on the GPU (I suppose).

Now this brings me to my dilemma: to file or not to file the memory grooves?

View attachment 916663 View attachment 916664

You can use a copper shim too. But filing down the heatsink is probably better.

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