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

[Ausdauersportler]

Cards with BIOS from @stephle

• NVIDIA K3000M 2GB including 2011 three pipe heat sink and ODD thermo sensor
• NVIDIA K5000M 4GB including 2011 three pipe heat sink and ODD thermo sensor

Cards will run in Late 2009 and Mid 2010 27 inch iMac (iMac11,1 and iMac11,3) only. All tests with my 2011 failed when trying to connect the internal display (does not start with internal display connected).

Normally those cards can run in 2011 systems, too. Cannot explain this odd behavior. Had other test cards running in 2011 fine.

 

[Fastord]

Great! Please run UNIGINE Valley and post some benchmark results!

result

 

[davidg5678]

I have been experimenting with the latest version of OCLP using my 2010 27" iMac 11,3 with an AMD WX4150. I am using @Ausdauersportler's 0.6.8 EFI folder inside of my existing Catalina Loader drive (thanks for providing this folder!). It took a bit of trial and error, but I was able to get Big Sur installed on my spare SSD. Everything works perfectly with the exception of the internal speakers, which was to be expected. I'm using a USB sound card that came with my headset to circumvent this problem for now (Bluetooth audio is also working fine). Hopefully, the developers can figure out a solution to this final kext problem in the future, but I'm really happy for now.

The only notable quirk that I have to report has to do with the boot picker. Ordinarily, when I start my iMac, OC shows me a list of drives, and I just scroll over to the one I want to use and hit enter. If and only if I hit the enter key to select the Big Sur volume the computer fails to boot the drive. I discovered by accident that if I use my arrow keys to hover over my desired boot drive and let the computer sit there (without hitting enter) until OpenCore auto-boots, I am able to successfully boot into Big Sur. It takes a second longer for OpenCore to automatically boot the drive that I am hovering over, but it really seems to work okay after that. I'm not really sure why this is happening, but I verified this strange behavior several times, and with even different EFIs.

 

[davidg5678]

Hi!

Yesterday I put the same WX4150 model from the same seller into one 27 Mid 2010 (iMac11,3) and got it working very quickly. When I tried to change the SATA HDD with a SATA SSD (Crucial MX500 500GB) the system refuses to boot at all.

Some illumination hit me and I took a SATA splitter cable to put it in between the SSD and power cable coming from the power supply. It solved the problem immediately.

I am writing because I believe you had several problems at the same time: The bad installation of the card onto the heat sink (without the copper plate) and this weird SSD problem (which I never had seen before).

Just a heads up. I do not know what your SDD problem solved at the very end.

Thanks for your message. Looking back, I think that my SSD problems were probably caused by several things.

I think that my WX4150 GPU was shorting to the heatsink in such a way that the PSU was being pushed to its limits even without any drives installed. Once I added the SSD and Hard Drive simultaneously, I think it was drawing so much excess current that some safety protection in the PSU tripped and stopped it from turning on at all. Ever since I properly insulated the GPU (with lots of Kapton tape), I have been able to attach whatever devices I want to the SATA power cables without any issues.

I have used SATA power splitters as well, and I currently have two SSDs working without a problem. I even attached a cheap transistor to the original HDD temperature cable to solve the maximum fan speed issue for < $1 instead of buying the $40 OWC adapter. The computer has been a stable workhorse for months, so I am very glad to have gotten everything working! As progress with OCLP and Big Sur has been going so well, I think I'll try fully transitioning to macOS 11 at some point in the next few months. Thanks for your help with getting this working!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thanks for your message. Looking back, I think that my SSD problems were probably caused by several things.

I think that my WX4150 GPU was shorting to the heatsink in such a way that the PSU was being pushed to its limits even without any drives installed. Once I added the SSD and Hard Drive simultaneously, I think it was drawing so much excess current that some safety protection in the PSU tripped and stopped it from turning on at all. Ever since I properly insulated the GPU (with lots of Kapton tape), I have been able to attach whatever devices I want to the SATA power cables without any issues.

I have used SATA power splitters as well, and I currently have two SSDs working without a problem. I even attached a cheap transistor to the original HDD temperature cable to solve the maximum fan speed issue for < $1 instead of buying the $40 OWC adapter. The computer has been a stable workhorse for months, so I am very glad to have gotten everything working! As progress with OCLP and Big Sur has been going so well, I think I'll try fully transitioning to macOS 11 at some point in the next few months. Thanks for your help with getting this working!

That cheap transistor is just as good as shorting the cable. Totally wrong temperature reading in iStat menu. (It stops at 9 degree celcius)

 

[davidg5678]

That cheap transistor is just as good as shorting the cable. Totally wrong temperature reading in iStat menu. (It stops at 9 degree celcius)

While iStat menus do seem to get a bit confused, I still believe this is a worthwhile modification. I did some research about this process beforehand, and using a transistor as a temperature sensor is a legitimate application. What may be missing is a form of calibration for the transistor's output. See here: https://www.sensortips.com/featured/get-temperature-sensor-transistor/

I use MacsFanControl once my computer boots into the OS, so essentially all the transistor does is keep the computer quiet for a few moments when it is turning on. Perhaps shorting the cable works just as well --I believe I have read about Apple using a jumper in some stock configurations of their iMacs. I just happened to find this method first, and it seems to work perfectly for my needs.

 

[dksp]

I have the sensor shorted, and it works the same. The HDD fan will spin at minimum speed until Macs Fan Control is loading and takes control.

 

[Radical78]

Hi,

I'm newbie here and I have some issues with the GPU in my obsolete iMac.

Had some trouble with the card, that freeze my iMac and I could only move the mouse pointer.
Then the boot screen just loaded half way and I had to reset the PRAM or start in safe mode, so I can boot normally (sometimes). I've made a fresh clean install of the OSX.

I've baked my card but no luck, still the same issue so I believe my card is dying. Works great in Safe Mode.

I want to know which card I need to buy to fix my issue.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi,

I'm newbie here and I have some issues with the GPU in my obsolete iMac.

Had some trouble with the card, that freeze my iMac and I could only move the mouse pointer.
Then the boot screen just loaded half way and I had to reset the PRAM or start in safe mode, so I can boot normally (sometimes). I've made a fresh clean install of the OSX.

I've baked my card but no luck, still the same issue so I believe my card is dying.

I want to know which card I need to buy to fix my issue.

Thanks in advance.

Check the list on the first post of this thread.
Your system will work fine with all AMD and NVIDIA cards - as long as you buy a working one.

 

[Radical78]

Check the list on the first post of this thread.
Your system will work fine with all AMD and NVIDIA cards - as long as you buy a working one.

I've checked the list but I don't want to change/mod Heat Sink (to 3 pipes).

Is the Quadro K3000M probably the easiest NVIDIA GPU to install?

What about the AMD?

Thanks for your quick reply.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I've checked the list but I don't want to change/mod Heat Sink (to 3 pipes).

Is the Quadro K3000M probably the easiest NVIDIA GPU to install?

What about the AMD?

Thanks for your quick reply.

The K3000M will work on the 4850 type head sink but you would have to modify it in the same way (grinding out). The smaller MXM-A WX4130/4150 cards can be installed on that particular sink, too. But we put all this info onto the first post and into the tables with the cards. There is no such thing as a best card. There were some cheap cards until the market drove the price through the clouds... check you bank account, the market and buy.

 

[Radical78]

The K3000M will work on the 4850 type head sink but you would have to modify it in the same way (grinding out). The smaller MXM-A WX4130/4150 cards can be installed on that particular sink, too. But we put all this info onto the first post and into the tables with the cards. There is no such thing as a best card. There were some cheap cards until the market drove the price through the clouds... check you bank account, the market and buy.

Thanks for your input. I've purchased the K3000M at great price. I'll update my post in a couple of weeks.

 

[globetribe]

Thanks for your message. Looking back, I think that my SSD problems were probably caused by several things.

I think that my WX4150 GPU was shorting to the heatsink in such a way that the PSU was being pushed to its limits even without any drives installed. Once I added the SSD and Hard Drive simultaneously, I think it was drawing so much excess current that some safety protection in the PSU tripped and stopped it from turning on at all. Ever since I properly insulated the GPU (with lots of Kapton tape), I have been able to attach whatever devices I want to the SATA power cables without any issues.

I have used SATA power splitters as well, and I currently have two SSDs working without a problem. I even attached a cheap transistor to the original HDD temperature cable to solve the maximum fan speed issue for < $1 instead of buying the $40 OWC adapter. The computer has been a stable workhorse for months, so I am very glad to have gotten everything working! As progress with OCLP and Big Sur has been going so well, I think I'll try fully transitioning to macOS 11 at some point in the next few months. Thanks for your help with getting this working!

Quick question regarding your WX4150 install. Did you flash the GPU with the clip or using the usb stick ? do you remember if when using usb stick there was an error with the soft unable to read rom. ?

 

[cbprado]

If anyone has a flashed replacement card, plug and play that will last nearly forever for my 2011 i27 please contact me DM... I love my machine but I am sick and tired of having to fry the gpu every 2 months... thanks! by the way I'm in Europe.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Finally: Full support for unsupported iMacs with OCLP or OpenCore
​

EDIT!!

After a long night with a lot of tests we figured out that the configs generated by OCLP will install Catalina and Mojave, too.

To run Mojave and older you have to disable SecureBootModel while creating the EFI folder. You can and you have to generate your customer EFI folder for your system type yourself with the patcher.

Original post!

Sound is now fully working with AppleALC on all OpenCore based installations. I have updated and uploaded the EFI folders based on 0.6.8. The extension comes for the most recent OCLP version 0.0.22 thanks to @khronokernel and @dhinakg !!

You can use this EFI folder (use OCLP!!) to install and update Mojave, Catalina, and Big Sur without any loss of functionality on all 11,x iMacs and on 12,x iMacs using a new AMD card. And you can run High Sierra with spoofing the iMacPro1,1 ID on iMac 12,x without getting the sleep problem there! The Swiss Army knife for iMac users.

Users of 12,x iMacs and NVIDIA cards with Mojave and Catalina are better suited with classical patching since this is the only way to get the SandyBridge iGPU working there for H.264 support.

On Big Sur the iGPU does not work right anyway, regardless which method of installation you chose: patching or OpenCore. So go with OCLP for obvious reasons.

Important Notes:

1. Please use the original OCLP generated EFI folders!
2. Changing the EFI needs a PRAM reset in any case!

 

[davidg5678]

Quick question regarding your WX4150 install. Did you flash the GPU with the clip or using the usb stick ? do you remember if when using usb stick there was an error with the soft unable to read rom. ?

I flashed the WX4150 using the Xanderon Linux flash USB. I did experience a small error at first, but I was able to override this by adding the force flag to my flash command. I believe this can be done with a -f. Be sure to use the amdvbflash program, and not the NVIDIA GPU flashing program -that could be problematic. Not every card has the same size or type of ROM chip, so it is possible that something about your GPU is different from my GPU.

If you haven't yet seen this post, I would recommend following its instructions -it should have all the information you need in regards to flashing the AMD GPU. (I know sometimes these helpful posts get buried in the thousands of other posts.)

If none of the information above works, if you provide a high resolution scan of both sides of your GPU, I could likely try to identify whether or not you have the necessary ROM chip on your GPU.

Good luck!

 

[davidg5678]

Finally: Full support for unsupported iMacs with OCLP or OpenCore​

Sound is now fully working with AppleALC on all OpenCore based installations. I have updated and uploaded the EFI folders based on 0.6.8. The extension comes for the most recent OCLP version 0.0.22 thanks to @khronokernel and @dhinakg !!

You can use this EFI folder to install and update Mojave, Catalina, and Big Sur without any loss of functionality on all 11,x iMacs and on 12,x iMacs using a new AMD card. And you can run High Sierra with spoofing the iMacPro1,1 ID on iMac 12,x without getting the sleep problem there! The Swiss Army knife for iMac users.

Users of 12,x iMacs and NVIDIA cards with Mojave and Catalina are better suited with classical patching since this is the only way to get the SandyBridge iGPU working there for H.264 support.

On Big Sur the iGPU does not work right anyway, regardless which method of installation you chose: patching or OpenCore. So go with OCLP for obvious reasons.

Note: If you just plan to run Big Sur use the original OCLP!

I just updated my OpenCore to this new version. Everything, including sound, is working perfectly! I haven't needed to patch anything, and I have a brand-new stock installation of Big Sur. This is almost as seamless as anyone could hope for (at least as far as iMac-hack projects go 😉). Thanks to all of the developers for providing this!

If you get a chance to look at my post above, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the boot-picker quirk I described.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I just updated my OpenCore to this new version. Everything, including sound, is working perfectly! I haven't needed to patch anything, and I have a brand-new stock installation of Big Sur. This is almost as seamless as anyone could hope for (at least as far as iMac-hack projects go 😉). Thanks to all of the developers for providing this!

If you get a chance to look at my post above, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the boot-picker quirk I described.

Basically after complete integration of our needs into OCLP I pick this tool, generate an 12,2 or 11,3 EFI (AMD) and modify it.

Modifications are: SPOOFING, adding kernel extension, adding back all DeviceProparties to get a single one size fits all EFI. Up to now I used all debug flags OCLP offered, but since we are clean now I will remove them on the next edition.

I do not touch the key or mouse settings on boot and I certainly will not look into this

Note: Who wants to install just Big Sur alone on his iMac should stick with OCLP and generate an EFI with light spoofing on his/her own.

 

[panwato]

So @Ausdauersportler, It’s not working with Nvidia?

 

[kral84]

Do we have to reinstall the system if we want to use OLCP or is it enough to simply replace the EFI folder?I copied olcp efi but it jumps to recovery when booting, so I don't look through it. Or i must read the olcp wiki 😁

 

[Ausdauersportler]

So @Ausdauersportler, It’s not working with Nvidia?

Please check it out and report. It should work. The limits have been described more than once.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Do we have to reinstall the system if we want to use OLCP or is it enough to simply replace the EFI folder?I copied olcp efi but it jumps to recovery when booting, so I don't look through it. Or i must read the olcp wiki 😁

What system, what macOS, what GPU? So the basics!
After that long time you could at least be more precise and add a signature to your account.

 

[OnawaAfrica]

with version 0.6.8 i get a KP on Boot. no Entry point in vm_map. is there stil any link to the old 0.6.6 OC? i was so dump not to backup my old folder -.- SMH

 

[panwato]

Please check it out and report. It should work. The limits have been described more than once.

In patched 11.2.3, with your EFI in the internal, it’s not booting. (Of course, with a PRAM reset). Backing to CL.

Waiting for 11.3 final for a clean install and do another test.

 

[kral84]

What system, what macOS, what GPU? So the basics!
After that long time you could at least be more precise and add a signature to your account.

imac 12,2, big sur..K1100m thx