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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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Hello everyone,
First of all I'd like to say thank you to all who has worked on this great upgrade tutorial.
Today I successfully did the upgrade to K2100 (card flashed but no OC yet), but after initial success ran into the problem.
When I started my 2011 27" iMac for the first time, after a few seconds of black screen I saw my refind boot screen. Selected my main High Sierra install partition and booted successfully. Ran the UV benchmark, and left iMac running to let the Time Machine do the backup. I manually turned off the screen by moving the mouse to the upper left corner. The screen was black, but I saw the backlight still on. When I got back to iMac after around 10 minutes and moved the mouse, instead of getting back the desktop, I saw the backlight going off. I thought that maybe iMac tried to put the screen to sleep and was having problems with waking it, so I forced the computer to shut down by holding the power button.
Unfortunately, after that, when trying to turn iMac back on, there is no more backlight. I can hear the boot chime and I see on the mobo that the third green led goes on.
What may be wrong?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tom
Ps. I must admit I have not searched through all 300+ pages of this thread, so if someone already posted similar problem and solution, I'll be thankful for a link to that post.
First of all I'd like to say thank you to all who has worked on this great upgrade tutorial.
Today I successfully did the upgrade to K2100 (card flashed but no OC yet), but after initial success ran into the problem.
When I started my 2011 27" iMac for the first time, after a few seconds of black screen I saw my refind boot screen. Selected my main High Sierra install partition and booted successfully. Ran the UV benchmark, and left iMac running to let the Time Machine do the backup. I manually turned off the screen by moving the mouse to the upper left corner. The screen was black, but I saw the backlight still on. When I got back to iMac after around 10 minutes and moved the mouse, instead of getting back the desktop, I saw the backlight going off. I thought that maybe iMac tried to put the screen to sleep and was having problems with waking it, so I forced the computer to shut down by holding the power button.
Unfortunately, after that, when trying to turn iMac back on, there is no more backlight. I can hear the boot chime and I see on the mobo that the third green led goes on.
What may be wrong?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tom
Ps. I must admit I have not searched through all 300+ pages of this thread, so if someone already posted similar problem and solution, I'll be thankful for a link to that post.
Having not the fourth LED means no communication with the internal LCD. Open the iMac an recheck the four cables.
forums.macrumors.com
I must add this: The search function on top of this page works pretty well. Give it a chance and search yourself!
2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
LED #1 + LED #2 + LED #3 + LED #4 = Power available, system is powered on, video card found, and internal LCD found. When the fans spin up then the LCD thermal sensor has no connection to the logic board, just reseat it on both sides. The thermal sensor is the other thin cable near the display...
forums.macrumors.com
I must add this: The search function on top of this page works pretty well. Give it a chance and search yourself!
Thanks for your reply. I know about the 4th LED and indeed it's not getting on. I have checked all four cables several times already, unplugged and plugged back in. No success 4th still off. I would assume something was wrong with connectors if the screen wouldn't turned on for the first time, but it just went black when computer was running. That is not my first time when I disassemble this iMac and have never had this issue before...
What else could happen? Could it be the inverter and it's just a coincidence that this happened just after the GPU upgrade?
Nobody can repair hardware through a forum thread. Yes, it could be the inverter, could be the main display cable damaged internally, could be the plug. The only chance I see is changing parts on by one if we lack the tools to analyse the functionality. The cable from inverter board to the display glued partly on the LCD is known to break, too. I have more than one system and can do the "check by change game". My only option...
ok, I'll try to look for another iMac.
I'm still not convinced though that it's just a coincidence that the LCD went suddenly off soon after the computer was booted for the first time after the gpu upgrade.
Is it possible also, that the 4th led does not lit because of the gpu not working properly, or does the 3rd led confirms all is fine with gpu?
4th LED is that the motherboard isn't communicating with the LCD. The reasons and solutions are beyond the scope of this thread. You can check if your graphics card is working by connecting another monitor to your iMac. Cheers!
PRAM reset! Give it a try.
LED #4
•
Indicates that computer and LCD panel are communicating. This LED will be ON when computer is turned on and video signal is being generated. If LED#4 is ON and there is no image on display, then the LCD panel, the LED backlight board, or the cables between LCD and logic board or backlight board might be installed incorrectly, or need replacement.
Out of date: Check the first post of this thread, open core section!
New Catalina Loader based on OpenCore 0.59
Before @jborko vanished into the summer break he left me a new empty image of the Catalina Loader based on the OC 0.59. Today I found the time to install back the extensions we need with our GPU enhanced iMac and preconfigured three config.plist files.
config.AMD.plist
config.NVIDIA.plist
config.NVIDIA.iMacPro.plist (experimental, here we use the iMacPro board-id, please ignore for now)
config.plist (the one used, currently a copy the the AMD version)
I decided to move off the sleep extensions @highvoltage12v made and maintains from the EFI/OC/KEXTS folder on the Catalina Loader. It does not make any sense to have a bunch of different sources of one set of files. It is impossible to maintain.
Good thing is:
(After installing the sleep extensions exactly as described by @highvoltage12v for 2011 systems) You have only to select the AMD or NVIDIA version of the config file and rename it to config.plist. There is no need to make manual adjustments for AMD cards. The recent versions of the Whatevergreen, Lilu und AppleBacklightFix, PolarisBoost extensions have been already installed.
We will manage Whatevergreen and Lilu per injection on the loader. I do not install these files to the disc. Reason is quite simple. The sleep extensions will be likely unchanged. Both Whatevergreen and Lilu are under (heavy) development and will change more rapidly than we will provide new versions of the complete loader. It is simple to replace files on the loader, complicated to install extensions on disk and rebuild the prelinked kernel.
Both FakeSMC_GPUSensors and FakeSMC_CPUSensors work for both AMD and Nvidia cards. These extensions are now enabled by default, too. Unfortunately you will still need a tool like Macs Fan Control to manage the ODD fan and help the GPU to survive. Having the HW Monitor and the sensors working is only really useful after the GPU installation to check out the thermal coupling of the GPU and the sink. The GPU should not be much hotter than the sink after a while (I have less than 5 degrees difference after 5 minutes of a Valley run, i.e. 55 on the GPU and 51 on the GPU heat sink.).
I put the image containing the OpenCore Configurator on my google drive. Another image without the configurator you will find attached. Cannot put the big image here due to upload limitations. You will find the OpenCore Configurator on the official project page.
Installation on an SD card or USB flash drive is simple: Use the app balena etcher as before or use the disk utility to restore the card/drive from the image you downloaded and unpacked before.
Many thanks to @Nick [D]vB, @highvoltage12v, @jborko, and @Pascal Baillargeau for creating the contents.
Disclaimer:
I tried this my own on four machines, only. But I got at least as many positive feedbacks from the field, right now. It should work! You made a Hackintosh out of your iMac. There are some risks related to this method. You take all this risks on your own!
EDIT:
I added a real short Guide how to install the new image and configure it. I dropped the entire 2011 section and the section about the manual added specific configurations we made for the AMD cards. It is all preconfigured, now. Just select your config.plist and go!
The attached version of PolarisBoostMAX effectively switches off the idle mode of the GPU burning a lot of more power than needed. To get the maximum performance just send the system once to sleep and use the attached old version named PolarisBoost. I will change the image soon installing both extensions and offering the user to select by using a config.AMD.MAX.plist or by just editing the exiting AMD version.
Got a first reply from @Pascal Baillargeau. He was using the PolarisBoostMAX with his WX7100. He experienced during a Valley run a hard crash, observing a powerdraw of 200W for a short while. So please avoid the settings with WX7100.
Change Log:
07/31/2020: Some minor edits in the PDF and uploaded a new image containing the latest AppleBacklighFix and the latest PolarisBoost extensions usable with all AMD cards.
07/31/2020: Attached an completely working image without the OpenCore Configurator app.
07/31/2020: Attach back old version of PolarisBoost, changing new one to name PolarisBoostMAX.
08/03/2020: Changed PolarisBoost back to the former version on image
08/11/2020: Revised config.plist files and made some minor corrections. New image upload!
12/20/2020: deleted open core image (google flagged it contains a virus)
Before @jborko vanished into the summer break he left me a new empty image of the Catalina Loader based on the OC 0.59. Today I found the time to install back the extensions we need with our GPU enhanced iMac and preconfigured three config.plist files.
config.AMD.plist
config.NVIDIA.plist
config.NVIDIA.iMacPro.plist (experimental, here we use the iMacPro board-id, please ignore for now)
config.plist (the one used, currently a copy the the AMD version)
I decided to move off the sleep extensions @highvoltage12v made and maintains from the EFI/OC/KEXTS folder on the Catalina Loader. It does not make any sense to have a bunch of different sources of one set of files. It is impossible to maintain.
Good thing is:
(After installing the sleep extensions exactly as described by @highvoltage12v for 2011 systems) You have only to select the AMD or NVIDIA version of the config file and rename it to config.plist. There is no need to make manual adjustments for AMD cards. The recent versions of the Whatevergreen, Lilu und AppleBacklightFix, PolarisBoost extensions have been already installed.
We will manage Whatevergreen and Lilu per injection on the loader. I do not install these files to the disc. Reason is quite simple. The sleep extensions will be likely unchanged. Both Whatevergreen and Lilu are under (heavy) development and will change more rapidly than we will provide new versions of the complete loader. It is simple to replace files on the loader, complicated to install extensions on disk and rebuild the prelinked kernel.
Both FakeSMC_GPUSensors and FakeSMC_CPUSensors work for both AMD and Nvidia cards. These extensions are now enabled by default, too. Unfortunately you will still need a tool like Macs Fan Control to manage the ODD fan and help the GPU to survive. Having the HW Monitor and the sensors working is only really useful after the GPU installation to check out the thermal coupling of the GPU and the sink. The GPU should not be much hotter than the sink after a while (I have less than 5 degrees difference after 5 minutes of a Valley run, i.e. 55 on the GPU and 51 on the GPU heat sink.).
I put the image containing the OpenCore Configurator on my google drive. Another image without the configurator you will find attached. Cannot put the big image here due to upload limitations. You will find the OpenCore Configurator on the official project page.
Installation on an SD card or USB flash drive is simple: Use the app balena etcher as before or use the disk utility to restore the card/drive from the image you downloaded and unpacked before.
Many thanks to @Nick [D]vB, @highvoltage12v, @jborko, and @Pascal Baillargeau for creating the contents.
Disclaimer:
I tried this my own on four machines, only. But I got at least as many positive feedbacks from the field, right now. It should work! You made a Hackintosh out of your iMac. There are some risks related to this method. You take all this risks on your own!
EDIT:
I added a real short Guide how to install the new image and configure it. I dropped the entire 2011 section and the section about the manual added specific configurations we made for the AMD cards. It is all preconfigured, now. Just select your config.plist and go!
The attached version of PolarisBoostMAX effectively switches off the idle mode of the GPU burning a lot of more power than needed. To get the maximum performance just send the system once to sleep and use the attached old version named PolarisBoost. I will change the image soon installing both extensions and offering the user to select by using a config.AMD.MAX.plist or by just editing the exiting AMD version.
Got a first reply from @Pascal Baillargeau. He was using the PolarisBoostMAX with his WX7100. He experienced during a Valley run a hard crash, observing a powerdraw of 200W for a short while. So please avoid the settings with WX7100.
Change Log:
07/31/2020: Some minor edits in the PDF and uploaded a new image containing the latest AppleBacklighFix and the latest PolarisBoost extensions usable with all AMD cards.
07/31/2020: Attached an completely working image without the OpenCore Configurator app.
07/31/2020: Attach back old version of PolarisBoost, changing new one to name PolarisBoostMAX.
08/03/2020: Changed PolarisBoost back to the former version on image
08/11/2020: Revised config.plist files and made some minor corrections. New image upload!
12/20/2020: deleted open core image (google flagged it contains a virus)
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Ok, sorry for this maybe very obvious problem I have but I really ran out of options here. I have created a bootable USB stick from @xanderon. I think the first time I tried it was in a Late 2009 iMac (27"). The videocard was still working but with lines. I booted up, waited and I got presented with the grml quickconfig menu in which I saw the SSH command I could connect to including the IP address of the machine.
I shut down the machine, replaced the videocard with a NVIDIA G610M and booted the machine again. I waited for about 4 minutes and after that I SSH'ed into the machine and was able to easily flash the new ROM into the card and after that the machine worked great!
So now a few days later, I tried the same trick again on a mid 2011 machine. The first thing after letting Linux boot up is I don't see an IP address .. I rebooted but still no IP. I had a mid 2010 machine tried the same, again, nothing! I tried the late 2009 again and again no IP, no connection!
I rebooted my router, tried another UTP cable and checked with my laptop and got a connection and could connect to the internet.
Back in the iMac with the same cable, booted up linux again, no IP!! I typed netcardconfig and after all the configuration steps I got an IP address and I could connect to the machine, but I still have to replace the videocard and so when I boot I wont be able to see anything. I tried configuring the eth0 "blind" but it did not work...
I'm going nuts here, anybody any idea's what the .&#%@ am I doing wrong here.. I reformatted the USB stick put everything fresh on it again.. still no dice..
Thanks all I hope someone can help me out here..
I shut down the machine, replaced the videocard with a NVIDIA G610M and booted the machine again. I waited for about 4 minutes and after that I SSH'ed into the machine and was able to easily flash the new ROM into the card and after that the machine worked great!
So now a few days later, I tried the same trick again on a mid 2011 machine. The first thing after letting Linux boot up is I don't see an IP address .. I rebooted but still no IP. I had a mid 2010 machine tried the same, again, nothing! I tried the late 2009 again and again no IP, no connection!
I rebooted my router, tried another UTP cable and checked with my laptop and got a connection and could connect to the internet.
Back in the iMac with the same cable, booted up linux again, no IP!! I typed netcardconfig and after all the configuration steps I got an IP address and I could connect to the machine, but I still have to replace the videocard and so when I boot I wont be able to see anything. I tried configuring the eth0 "blind" but it did not work...
I'm going nuts here, anybody any idea's what the .&#%@ am I doing wrong here.. I reformatted the USB stick put everything fresh on it again.. still no dice..
Thanks all I hope someone can help me out here..
Hi Brennan,
Have you solved your internal speakers problem?
I got a similar symptom of no sound out from iMac's internal speakers.
Thanks in advance if you can share your information.
Hey guys,
I’ve acquired a spare GTX 780M and am wondering about fitting it in my 27” 2011 iMac, but I have a question. If I understand correctly we can configure a little customer board (Rasbery Pii or some other thing I forget the name of) which will enable backlight control from the CLI and maybe a toolbar widget. My question is, is it possible to setup automatic backlight dimming on hot cornerds and idle timers with this system? (If not, I have a K2100M arriving in a couple of days so will probably stick with that for ease of use).
Incidentally, is anybody still working on a non-hardware-mod based way to achieve this, or has that possibility pretty much been written off? (Sorry, I know I’m late to the party with these questions!)
I’ve acquired a spare GTX 780M and am wondering about fitting it in my 27” 2011 iMac, but I have a question. If I understand correctly we can configure a little customer board (Rasbery Pii or some other thing I forget the name of) which will enable backlight control from the CLI and maybe a toolbar widget. My question is, is it possible to setup automatic backlight dimming on hot cornerds and idle timers with this system? (If not, I have a K2100M arriving in a couple of days so will probably stick with that for ease of use).
Incidentally, is anybody still working on a non-hardware-mod based way to achieve this, or has that possibility pretty much been written off? (Sorry, I know I’m late to the party with these questions!)
Update on my 2010 27" iMac:
Swapped the GTX-765m for a K610m, using the MXM-A heatsink off of the original HD4750. Highly recommend using this as a replacement for any iMac originally fitted with an MXM-A GPU as it's a super easy swap, once flashed with the modded vBIOS-- the stock Apple x-brace even fits perfectly on the HP card I used.
Between OpenCore allowing native screen brightness (so I can turn it down from 100% brightness, aka surface-of-the-sun), and the much lower TDP of the K610m vs the GTX-765m, power supply heatsink 1 (which has the 12v rail on it afaik) never goes north of 70C on the stock fan profile. Before I had to keep the CPU fan at a minimum of 1300RPM to keep it below 80C.
That said, in the remote chance OpenCore support for the GTX-765m lands, I will be swapping mine back in, as the extra horsepower (and VRAM) is appreciated...
Swapped the GTX-765m for a K610m, using the MXM-A heatsink off of the original HD4750. Highly recommend using this as a replacement for any iMac originally fitted with an MXM-A GPU as it's a super easy swap, once flashed with the modded vBIOS-- the stock Apple x-brace even fits perfectly on the HP card I used.
Between OpenCore allowing native screen brightness (so I can turn it down from 100% brightness, aka surface-of-the-sun), and the much lower TDP of the K610m vs the GTX-765m, power supply heatsink 1 (which has the 12v rail on it afaik) never goes north of 70C on the stock fan profile. Before I had to keep the CPU fan at a minimum of 1300RPM to keep it below 80C.
That said, in the remote chance OpenCore support for the GTX-765m lands, I will be swapping mine back in, as the extra horsepower (and VRAM) is appreciated...
What else I would try:
1) check some other Linux live USB to see if you get the IP assigned by DHCP,
2) depending on the router and the soft there - see if you can find some logs concerning the DHCP requests,
3) try to run DHCP clinet in the debug mode and look at the log,
3) check if your router allows fixed IP assigning based on the MAC of your iMAc card - maybe this will work
Thank you for your response!
1) I have searched but not really found any good live USB images, do you have a good suggestion?
2) For the rest I have a Netgear RB50 mesh network router, I'm not sure if it is possible but I will have a look
For the rest I don't really even have any basic Linux knowledge, so I have no clue on how to debug a DHCP client
I still do not get how do you use the Linux boot drive:
Unless you have a GPU offering a boot picker you have to disable every other bootable drive from the iMac to force the system to boot from the single available source, the Linux flash drive. Otherwise the iMac will stick at an invisible boot selection and the only chance is to select the right device blindly - this is a real pain. At the boot selection there is no IP visible.
I chose an USB drive having an activity LED. You can easily see if the boot happens.
I have a mostly functional alpha ROM for the 780M it has backlight control under OpenCore but the card Benchmarks a bit low. The ROM is from @Nick [D]vB so I really don't want to upload it as it's not mine. I haven't heard from Nick in months so I don't know when/if a revised version will ever be released. But it does exist.
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Never, if you can readHow many times did I try to log in with the wrong username and password?
You put the user as "flash". The user is "root" and the password is "flash" (minus the quotation marks).How many times did I try to log in with the wrong username and password?
It should be:
ssh root@192.168.3.73
Cheers!
Spoon? It is printed word by word on the picture he attached...what else can a documentation give you?
My English is very poor, and I can't read it all through translation. Maybe I understand the translation wrong. The test has been successful for many times, and the user name is :root password: Flash is ok and the refresh is successful. The reason for this is that some graphics CARDS are flat-footed and the VBIOS chip Ch341a can't be clipped. Before I was directly to replace the flat - footed VBIOS chip for the feet. The SSH method does not require a vBIOS chip replacement.Never, if you can read
Attachments
Okay, we know the problems with the WSON like chips and for that reason one came up with this nice Linux method. Of course you must have some English language knowledge to use terminal commands. Otherwise it will be cryptographic