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

[xanderon]

thanks for the updated guide! that helped A LOT.

2011 iMac12,2 with Nvidia K2100M
- sleep is working
- no black screens anymore after 10.15.4
- reflashed Catalina Loader with Etcher > now I can select it as default Startup Disc!
- H.264 acceleration is working

my temps (especially Power Heatsink) are still high, during normal surfing and that's bothering. I thought that is not an issue anymore when I switch to K2100m with native brightness control

any ideas?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

thanks for the updated guide! that helped A LOT.

2011 iMac12,2 with Nvidia K2100M
- sleep is working
- no black screens anymore after 10.15.4
- reflashed Catalina Loader with Etcher > now I can select it as default Startup Disc!
- H.264 acceleration is working

my temps (especially Power Heatsink) are still high, during normal surfing and that's bothering. I thought that is not an issue anymore when I switch to K2100m with native brightness control

any ideas?

Probably you should have reinstalled the i7 CPU or at least the thermal paste on it? I rarely see (if ever) 60 C on the CPU core. The GPU is idle (135Mhz core and 810 MHz memory) , the CPU is not. Probably spotlight is re-indexing the internal MacOS data?

The brightness control does not affect in any way your CPU usage!

 

[xanderon]

you are right, its working right now, and I switched the cPU so its brand new thermal paste and I know what I'm doing here

ok i will report back, I thought that Power Heatsink 1 was not CPU but GPU. will report back, the temps are crazy, see screenshot

How can I configure an auto boot with Open Core to Macintosh HD after 3 seconds?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

you are right, its working right now, and I switched the cPU so its brand new thermal paste and I know what I'm doing here

ok i will report back, I thought that Power Heatsink 1 was not CPU but GPU. will report back

Probably you ran a valley benchmark just before because the GPU Peci shows 59 C, too. I use Mac Fan Control and a more aggressive setting ramping up the ODD fan to control the GPU heat sink temperature. You cannot start with it after reaching 70C - this is too late.

You are going to kill your card if you do not adjust this! Watch the sensors - there is reason why the HW Monitor is provided on the Catalina Loader.

One of the most serious issues is the loss of the thermal sensor on the GPU for the Apple thermo regulation. Even Mac Fan Control gets no access to the sensor of the new cards - so you have to control it using the heat sink data and having a good installation!

 

[r6mile]

you are right, its working right now, and I switched the cPU so its brand new thermal paste and I know what I'm doing here

ok i will report back, I thought that Power Heatsink 1 was not CPU but GPU. will report back, the temps are crazy, see screenshot

How can I configure an auto boot with Open Core to Macintosh HD after 3 seconds?

I'm interested here because I also get high temps for Power Heatsink 1 - could you confirm where this is exactly? Looks like I may need to get back into the iMac and put some thermal paste somewhere...

On your second question, when you boot Open Core, press Control + Enter on Macintosh HD, and this will make it the default.

 

[NOTNlCE]

I'm interested here because I also get high temps for Power Heatsink 1 - could you confirm where this is exactly? Looks like I may need to get back into the iMac and put some thermal paste somewhere...

On your second question, when you boot Open Core, press Control + Enter on Macintosh HD, and this will make it the default.

I also have (what seems like) very high "Power Heatsink 1" temperatures and after my years of working with these machines, I'll reiterate what someone once told me when I bought my first Mac Pro - "If you stare at the sensors too long, you're going to find a problem." These guys ran (and still run!) VERY HOT, and are just fine. Last week, I had a power flash overnight and woke up to all 5 of my iMacs running full blast at the OpenCore screen, almost burning to the touch, and they were fine. I guess that's what you get with 10 year old electronic? 😛

 

[dn325ci]

Next on your list upgrading the WiFi/Bluetooth card

Ooo. Is there a whole 'nother 290 page thread for that one? 🤣

 

[StephN999]

Ooo. Is there a whole 'nother 290 page thread for that one? 🤣

Bonjour,

Not just 15 this time on this topic. 😂

I did just yesterday.

 

[xanderon]

Probably you ran a valley benchmark just before because the GPU Peci shows 59 C, too. I use Mac Fan Control and a more aggressive setting ramping up the ODD fan to control the GPU heat sink temperature. You cannot start with it after reaching 70C - this is too late.

You are going to kill your card if you do not adjust this! Watch the sensors - there is reason why the HW Monitor is provided on the Catalina Loader.

One of the most serious issues is the loss of the thermal sensor on the GPU for the Apple thermo regulation. Even Mac Fan Control gets no access to the sensor of the new cards - so you have to control it using the heat sink data and having a good installation!

But isn’t power heatsink 1 On the let side of the Mac where the power boards are? When I put my hand on the iMacs frame I can feel the heat and where it’s been generated. The odd fan is on the right bottom and is going above the hdd/odd and gpu heatsink.

AFAIK the high power heatsink 1 is like with a 770m and without any brightness control = Maximum brightness all the time. But here with k2100m it’s controlled and should be cooler

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I misread you first post, was just focussed on the GPU heat sink. Assuming the power heat sink is located on the power supply your only choice to cool this down is ramping up the CPU fan... but I do not know.

Just search the web for more temperature data of the 2011 power heat sink, I guess the value shown in your post is not a problem. The Apple thermo management should work on this side of the machine and you probably had the very same values all the time before watching it closely.

And, no: The LCD becomes cooler because the OpenCore allows the brightness control to work, again. Unless you boost it to max. again... There is no link between brightness and the power heat sink as far as I can see. Do not ask me where you got the 78 degrees from. This is a separate issue/feature/problem..

I have 50/51 for both power heat sinks 1/2 after a full day running and working at my 2011. And 61/53 after a half an hour running Valley using a 70W card with brightness control enabled. Mac Fan Control shows me a PSU Primary sensor - try to control the CPU fan using this one. Of try to ramp up all three fans a little bit...

Found this old post:

Is my iMac getting too hot? - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[xanderon]

what is your room temperature? maybe its a basement? I sit here under the roof with 25°C in the room

 

[ddi666]

hi, if you search this numbers" CBBDDC4E" you find dcd table in hex fiend,

here is dcd from 680 Mac and pc
680//
000053CB BDDC4E23 41754605 56C55795 5AA55C10 000EF550 20100013
00002000 00100020 00000008 21201083 00002006 22402021 0000200B
B6388304 1000420F 72380304 10000200 0F00
680pc//
083252CB BDDC4E7F 527352BC 53C853D5 530654C1 00004B54 20F00013
00002000 00F00020 00000008 21F01083 00002006 22F02021 0000200B
63F83041 1000420F 723F0304 10000200 0F00

wil this work on all nvidia cards if the driver is supported bij macos

 

[caxias_Brazil]

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)

YES!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN!!!

Thanks my friend!!!

 

[internetzel]

OpenCore Installation Guide (yet another version)

@Pascal Baillargeau, @highvoltage12v and me were trying to make another guide to install the OpenCore with AMD and Nvidia cards. We did this in particular because the handling of kernel extensions is so different for AMD and Nvidia systems, especially when using a mid 2011 model which has constantly sleeping problems.

I add here a draft of this guide, it is not complete, and not error free, and recently @Pascal Baillargeau found yet another way to configure the AMD systems to have sleep, HEVC and H.264 acceleration at the same time. The three of us spent weeks in figuring out how to handle the OpenCore boot loader in the best way to reach that goal.

Nvidia users will get sleep and H.264 acceleration provided by the Intel iGPU installing the extensions to the disk - OpenCore injection does not work here.

We did not mention each and every detail of OpenCore, and currently most pictures are shots from one of my lab systems using the German language - hope you will find the necessary information.

Feel free to send comments and corrections!

Nice work!

"shiki-ad" ? I suppose it must say "shiki-id" instead.
Speaking of the board id; forcing the iMac Pro board id seems to break decoding of DRM protected video streams (in iTunes and Safari for example) on my late 2009. Instead of the video there are just colored stripes. Playing from local media is not affected.
At least on Mojave I've not seen any problems yet when using the original board id - decoding of DRM protected video streams is working then as well.

 

[Yojx21]

Hi, thanks for all your work.

A week ago i grabbed a 27" Mid 2011 iMac with a dead GPU. I replaced it with a Nvidia Quadro K2100M flashed with Nick [D]vB's BIOS. Now the screen is working, i can boot to High Sierra, but each time i hold "option" key at boot to boot from my patched Catalina USB key, the screen remains black. I can't go to the boot picker at all and so i can't install macOS Catalina.

If i try to set my USB installer as boot drive in macOS configuration panel, the iMac also reboot on a black screen.

Do you have any hint ?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi, thanks for all your work.

A week ago i grabbed a 27" Mid 2011 iMac with a dead GPU. I replaced it with a Nvidia Quadro K2100M flashed with Nick [D]vB's BIOS. Now the screen is working, i can boot to High Sierra, but each time i hold "option" key at boot to boot from my patched Catalina USB key, the screen remains black. I can't go to the boot picker at all and so i can't install macOS Catalina.

If i try to set my USB installer as boot drive in macOS configuration panel, the iMac also reboot on a black screen.

Do you have any hint ?

This is unexpected!

What you can do is to create a new APFS container (e.g. called Catalina) and run the patched installer directly from High Sierra and choose "Install to disk" and select the new container as a target. Otherwise you would overwrite the HS installation. This does not work with 2009/2010 systems because you cannot stop the installer from auto install all patches including the video legacy patch on disk.

But this does not solve your missing boot selection problem at all. You have OpenCore configured and running? This would and should give you another boot selector!

 

[Yojx21]

This is unexpected!

What you can do is to create a new APFS container (e.g. called Catalina) and run the patched installer directly from High Sierra and choose "Install to disk" and select the new container as a target. Otherwise you would overwrite the HS installation. This does not work with 2009/2010 systems because you cannot stop the installer from auto install all patches including the video legacy patch on disk.

But this does not solve your missing boot selection problem at all. You have OpenCore configured and running? This would and should give you another boot selector!

Thanks for your fast reply.
I though that it was due to the fact that i have not installed the AppleGraphicsControl.kext.
I prefer to avoid using OpenCore. It seems to be complicated to use. For me, normal boot screen would be enought. For now i don't need of brightness control or temp monitoring.

If it can help: after a PRAM reset (because of black screen while trying to access boot picker) the machine reboots on High Sierra and it displays immediatly the boot screen (with Apple logo). But if i do a reboot from High Sierra (without pram reset), the boot screen take a while to appear and when it appear the loading bar goes super fast: like 1 or 2 sec before showing login screen.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I was told that even High Sierra may have the black screen issue after the May, 2020 upgrade. But this happens after booting into the MacOS and not on reboot with the EFI boot screen. The AppleGraphicsControl extension can help with HS!

The vBIOS of the Nvidia has a delay which leads to the behavior you discovered: The screen (without choosing alt/option to have a boot screen) remains black some seconds and after that you see suddenly the login screen. This is normal.

But you should have the EFI boot screen on boot (pressing and holding the option key while pressing power button) and you should use OpenCore to get the brightness control. Without the LCD will cook slowly your iMac

BTW:
Using OpenCore with the MacPro1,1 ID makes the black screen issue disappear, even with Nvidia systems.

 

[dn325ci]

Thanks for your fast reply.
I though that it was due to the fact that i have not installed the AppleGraphicsControl.kext.
I prefer to avoid using OpenCore. It seems to be complicated to use. For me, normal boot screen would be enought. For now i don't need of brightness control or temp monitoring.

If it can help: after a PRAM reset (because of black screen while trying to access boot picker) the machine reboots on High Sierra and it displays immediatly the boot screen (with Apple logo). But if i do a reboot from High Sierra (without pram reset), the boot screen take a while to appear and when it appear the loading bar goes super fast: like 1 or 2 sec before showing login screen.

Did you get this problem solved then? I was going to do this Catalina install tonight on my 2011 27/Quadro K2100M.

 

[Sharpino89]

Hello everyone, now i’m trying to make the best 2010 imac 27 with the wx7100, from my previous post i explained that i was able to install it correctly and make it work with windows, but nothing with High Sierra.

I also reused the opencore pendrive using Nick’s guide, with Amd config, and even if in 2011 imac works perfectly in the 2010 it lights up the screen but it stays black and doesn’t do more than that.

Any advice to make the WX7100 and opencore work with High Sierra in a 2010 Imac?

Thank you in advance for your help ;-)

 

[herrdude]

Hello everyone, now i’m trying to make the best 2010 imac 27 with the wx7100, from my previous post i explained that i was able to install it correctly and make it work with windows, but nothing with High Sierra.

I also reused the opencore pendrive using Nick’s guide, with Amd config, and even if in 2011 imac works perfectly in the 2010 it lights up the screen but it stays black and doesn’t do more than that.

Any advice to make the WX7100 and opencore work with High Sierra in a 2010 Imac?

Thank you in advance for your help ;-)

Did you reset the PRAM?

 

[Sharpino89]

Did you reset the PRAM?

I think that i did. But i can try again.

Other options? Should it work without issues? Did anyone was successful?

 

[caxias_Brazil]

Hello everyone, now i’m trying to make the best 2010 imac 27 with the wx7100, from my previous post i explained that i was able to install it correctly and make it work with windows, but nothing with High Sierra.

I also reused the opencore pendrive using Nick’s guide, with Amd config, and even if in 2011 imac works perfectly in the 2010 it lights up the screen but it stays black and doesn’t do more than that.

Any advice to make the WX7100 and opencore work with High Sierra in a 2010 Imac?

Thank you in advance for your help ;-)

Excuse me,

Where did you get to buy the wx7100?

 

[Sharpino89]

Excuse me,

Where did you get to buy the wx7100?

Ebay from China

 

[herrdude]

I think that i did. But i can try again.

Other options? Should it work without issues? Did anyone was successful?

A couple of times after rebuilding the computer, I had to reset the PRAM to get the card recognized by the iMac. Also try Alt/Option at boot to see if it shows you your boot options. I believe you said that it was working on BootCamp on the same machine which should rule out LCD connection problems.