Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
- WikiPost WikiPost
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
Hi Ausdauersportler
Thanks for your reply.
Trust me that I read Post#1 many times already to ensure I do not miss anything.
I know X bracket is that x shape part that goes with the card.
It is just that the mxm card is able to fit to the heatsink with screws but without x bracket and everything still works well.
So I am wondering what is the purpose of the bracket. I googled elsewhere too and was unable to get any mention of the purpose.
I could try to explain to you the basics of mechanics and electricity (not even electronics), but if you think that the bracket is of no use at all, go ahead and be happy. You could also plugin the card in the slot without the heat sink....There are many ways to mess things up on the long run.
Last edited:
In my understanding the x bracket is meant to minimize bending of the PCB. One of the worst things you can do to a PCB board is bending it because the soldering cannot resist even modest mechanical stress. Soldering can resist high temperatures without problems but bending or torsion will weaken it. And imagine the hundreds of very small solder balls that connect the GPU chip to the PCB - and now figure that that part sits exactly in the center of the four screws, and how exactly that part of the PCB is where most bending will occur...
I have the same question as you. I was wondering if someone else installed an HP K3100m. I bought one. I flashed it successfully. But when it boots I get a black screen and on my second screen it shows the boot picker and the boot screen and then it freezes. I have tried with another hard drive with high Sierra, another drive with Catalina, and with catalina usb installer. They all freeze. It does completely boot with the Linux boot usb. I tried on two different iMacs.
i am trying to figure out if the card is defective or it’s because the card is HP.
i have had success with HP k2100m and k1100m.
I believe it was me posting the first trial here with the K3100M and it came from a HP machine, too. It had not usable BIOS, just some file with a BIOS header - as all cards coming from HP notebooks. After flashing it using the Linux USB it worked with MacOS out of the box.
If you see the boot screen on the external display only it is the "black screen" issue which can be solved by the patched extension.
If it freezes after trying to enter the graphics mode (after 2/3 of the progress bar during boot) the card is most likely broken (only my experiences with 5 or 6 K3100M and 780M cards showing exactly this behaviour). Sometimes it may be a fried cap, only. I other cases it is only one apparent symptom of a dying GPU or dying card or a bad installation.
The Linux USB does not enter the graphics mode, it does not really stress the GPU. Other signs of a broken card are crashing the OS when doing GPU demanding tasks like Valley tests or gaming. You milage may vary until you hit such a road block.
Talking about bad hardware I should have mentioned the first post
Last edited:
New to this thread, I have a few quick questions( did a quick search of this thread, but could not find any info.)
1. wonder if the guidelines and suggestions here can be used for mid 2010 21.5 inch iMac to upgrade GPU? I understand that 2010 iMac's GPU card, ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor, has smaller memory, only 256 MB.
2. Is it required that three LEDs, 1,2,3 on logic board much be on to consider to upgrade GPU for iMac 2011?
Thanks for sharing
1. wonder if the guidelines and suggestions here can be used for mid 2010 21.5 inch iMac to upgrade GPU? I understand that 2010 iMac's GPU card, ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor, has smaller memory, only 256 MB.
2. Is it required that three LEDs, 1,2,3 on logic board much be on to consider to upgrade GPU for iMac 2011?
Thanks for sharing
Read the first post on page 1...and especially the hardware problem post and docs linked there (Apple technician guides).
From my research, after you've installed the new GPU for your iMac, you can check the LEDs on the Logic Board if everything is in good status, check the video below...
As the person says:
LED 1 (one lights) indicates AC Power has entered the Logic Board
LED 2 (two lights) indicates the iMac has turned ON and should play Chime boot sound
LED 3 (three lights) indicates the GPU is working and talking to Logic board
LED 4 (four lights) indicates the Display is connected
So if the third LED is ON, this would make easier to know if GPU is in Good status and you've installed it fine.
that's a nice thing! 😜
Note: this is a newer 2014 iMac, seems useful for information on all iMac
tanventure was right to ask that question, even I didn't which LED you were talking about? LED TV Display!? 😄
I hope the video will help....
However, you're trying hard work and we have to help you all too to answer those kind questions 😉
Thanks again
Everybody can ask every question, but I do not have to answer every question myself. And not every answer is correct or useful: You can have four LED burning and still not a working card installed or a working iMac, back.
For exactly this reason I recommend again and again and again to read the original Apple guides linked in the post a already wrote about. This is the ultimative guide trough any hardware trouble shooting. Even this guide may fail to explain or detect every piece of broken hardware. The inverse logic does not work on hardware failures: If you cannot find a description of an observed error, the error will not go away for this reason.
dead card => no graphics
<=>
graphics => no dead card
more you do not get....
there is no:
four LED => graphics working
or even better:
no graphics => card dead
conclusion possible.
You may go just a few posts back to @herrdude's latest question: He may happily confirm to see three or even four LEDs and still not having a properly working card. Knowing the half is more dangerous than knowing nothing...
I have seen approximately 10 flashed Nvidia cards with three LED burning not working under load or not able to boot into MacOS. And the double number of broken Apple cards....
Last edited:
NVIDIA K2000M issues on High Sierra:
after burning down three Quadro K2000M in 3 month perhaps it's right to ask about TDP,
heat development and frequency steppings of the K2000 ROM on page 1 of this thread ?!
Perhaps VBIOS ROM frequency steppings are too aggressive for those old Kepler cards ?
With compared Quadro K1100m there are no problems whole time - cards are running in
21.5" iMac (Core i5-660 / 2010 and surprising good Unigine Valley results) same as inside
both iMac 2011 (Core i5 - 21.5 & 27)...
...compare K1100M with K2000M they have nearly same / compareable Unigine Valley
Benchmarks.
All Attributes together with age of refurbished / used MXM cards, heat development based
on power consumption, DDR3 compare to DDR5 VRAM and frequency steppings I think the
more modern K1100M & K2100M are the better solution for any iMac !
I think the same is (in comparation) K3000m vs K3100m or K4000M vs K4100M - more
modern cards are more stress resistant under load, have lower power consumption and
heat development - all attributes together allow a longer term solution for any iMac.
... anyone else have same experience with that cards ?
after burning down three Quadro K2000M in 3 month perhaps it's right to ask about TDP,
heat development and frequency steppings of the K2000 ROM on page 1 of this thread ?!
Perhaps VBIOS ROM frequency steppings are too aggressive for those old Kepler cards ?
With compared Quadro K1100m there are no problems whole time - cards are running in
21.5" iMac (Core i5-660 / 2010 and surprising good Unigine Valley results) same as inside
both iMac 2011 (Core i5 - 21.5 & 27)...
...compare K1100M with K2000M they have nearly same / compareable Unigine Valley
Benchmarks.
All Attributes together with age of refurbished / used MXM cards, heat development based
on power consumption, DDR3 compare to DDR5 VRAM and frequency steppings I think the
more modern K1100M & K2100M are the better solution for any iMac !
I think the same is (in comparation) K3000m vs K3100m or K4000M vs K4100M - more
modern cards are more stress resistant under load, have lower power consumption and
heat development - all attributes together allow a longer term solution for any iMac.
... anyone else have same experience with that cards ?
Last edited:
The author has been offline for months, now. You may use the Kepler Bios Tweaker to check those values yourself?NVIDIA K2000M issues on High Sierra:
after burning down three Quadro K2000M in 3 month perhaps it's right to ask about TDP,
heat development and frequency steppings of the K2000 ROM on page 1 of this thread ?!
Perhaps VBIOS ROM frequency steppings are too aggressive for those old Kepler cards ?
With compared Quadro K1100m there are no problems whole time - cards are running in
21.5" iMac (Core i5-660 / 2010 and surprising good Unigine Valley results) same as inside
both iMac 2011 (Core i5 - 21.5 & 27)...
...compare K1100M with K2000M they have nearly same / compareable Unigine Valley
Benchmarks.
All Attributes together with age of refurbished / used MXM cards, heat development based
on power consumption, DDR3 compare to DDR5 VRAM and frequency steppings I think the
more modern K1100M & K2100M are the better solution for any iMac !
I think the same is (in comparation) K3000m vs K3100m or K4000M vs K4100M - more
modern cards are more stress resistant under load, have lower power consumption and
heat development - all attributes together allow a longer term solution for any iMac.
No experiences with these cards without brightness control. Unless you have hardware solution for brightness you are overheating a 27” anyway and IMHO no wonder to see dying cards there. Had the K2100M without brightness and the LCD was over 60c all the time.
There are some brand new K3000Μ on the market (unused spare parts). Let’s wait an see how these cards run if @nikey22 solves the current problems. Of course these will offer brightness control...
Three dead cards is not good. But it is not a valid base for statistical conclusions, especially because of unknown former live...
We could create another online sheet with average live times of used cards and a good/bad statistics for new acquisitions of used cards. This may give a new user an impression what to expect from the market....
@NOTNICE was a victim of some online sellers
Hi guys!
Would you be so kind to help me with one question?
I want to replace the AMD 6970 with GTX 770m / 780m on a 27 " iMac (MXM-B card, 3 pipes).
But my iMac has Win7 (Ultimate) installed.
Without iOS
Will Win7 boot (no black screen) with GTX 770m / 780m after replacement?
Thank you very much.
Would you be so kind to help me with one question?
I want to replace the AMD 6970 with GTX 770m / 780m on a 27 " iMac (MXM-B card, 3 pipes).
But my iMac has Win7 (Ultimate) installed.
Without iOS
Will Win7 boot (no black screen) with GTX 770m / 780m after replacement?
Thank you very much.
Hello to all, first post here.
Managed to successfully install a K1100m on a 2011 21.5" iMac.
However, after updating to Catalina I noticed the following odd behavior of the Magic Mouse 2, one the right/left click is working. Scrolling and gestures do not work at all. Tried restarting, connecting/disconnecting, but nothing helped.
Any ideas what might be causing this?
Managed to successfully install a K1100m on a 2011 21.5" iMac.
However, after updating to Catalina I noticed the following odd behavior of the Magic Mouse 2, one the right/left click is working. Scrolling and gestures do not work at all. Tried restarting, connecting/disconnecting, but nothing helped.
Any ideas what might be causing this?
System Preferences -> Mouse and select the features you want. By default there is no right click or any gestures enabled...
Thanks for the quick reply, but this was my first thought and the features are enabled. Tried disabling/enabling them but it did not help
Hardware problem, read post #1
Check if other BT devices work or check the BT cable connection to the logic board....BT keyboard works fine. Magic Mouse (v1) works fine, its just the new one that doesnt work - very odd!
EDIT: problem solved. it appears that an outdated version of USB Overdrive was the problem. Uninstalling the old version did not solve the problem, but I installed the latest version and Magic Mouse came back to life - it is still working after I uninstalled the latest version of USB Overdrive
EDIT: problem solved. it appears that an outdated version of USB Overdrive was the problem. Uninstalling the old version did not solve the problem, but I installed the latest version and Magic Mouse came back to life - it is still working after I uninstalled the latest version of USB Overdrive
Last edited:
Just for you I pulled my brand new Magic Mouse 2 out of the box. It is working as designed. So no graphics BIOS problem.
When migrating to Catalina do no full time machine restore, this brings you back all the 32bit crap you just wanted to get rid off....
Ok, things were going good but as I did not have acceleration (2011 21.5”) I tried to install the kext files from this guide https://docs.google.com/document/d/14L_Rj7gLXOeMjUyylG-Sftqx-pApBc-EW2CMUOuhoug/mobilebasic using kext utility and now the iMac entered a boot loop - boots again shortly after the apple logo.
I seriously messed something up. Tried to revert to previous snapshot with Time Machine but it is not working.
Any ideas for a solution?
EDIT: Managed to revert to state before the silly move of installing random kexts and system is working again.
Before I mess things up again, any suggestions on how to enable acceleration?
I seriously messed something up. Tried to revert to previous snapshot with Time Machine but it is not working.
Any ideas for a solution?
EDIT: Managed to revert to state before the silly move of installing random kexts and system is working again.
Before I mess things up again, any suggestions on how to enable acceleration?
Last edited:
As mentioned in previous post the boot loop problem was resolved.
However, I have read post #1 carefully and have followed directions exactly as described for use of latest OC 0.6.0 but still acceleration is not enabled on my 2011 iMac with k1100m.
Any thoughts what I should check?
Sleep, brightness control, etc all work as expected. But acceleration is not enabled (checked with MaxC)