That looks cool but could you explain what all you did and why? I assume that heat sink also no longer works with the stock card. Also, where do you buy the cooper shim?
I don't have access to power tools, so my modding choices are limited.
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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
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That looks cool but could you explain what all you did and why? I assume that heat sink also no longer works with the stock card. Also, where do you buy the cooper shim?
I don't have access to power tools, so my modding choices are limited.
I can confirm. Even for my GTX 770m, I had to use a dremel and shave down the heatsink (exact same place as him) so that it would sit flush. It wasn’t difficult though, aluminum is a very soft metal.
Yea, I’ve got the 6770m running on the 6790 larger Heatsink, works a charm now
I tried a EGPU setup with my 21.5" iMac and it works. Since the internal card is now a Nvidia card I had to switch to a GTX 650 because my rx 580 displays a black screen in Mojave. (it's a Mojave issue not an MXM/iMac issue) I am using an Akito node and thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter in a backwards config. Purge Wrangler is the script I ran to enable thunderbolt on older Macs/this iMac.
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Holy cr@p did I just make an accidental discovery. I took one of my spare EFI GTX 970 Mac Pro cards from the shelf (No Mojave drivers) and threw it in my Akito Node. On startup I had the EFI boot screen come to life from my iMAC!!! I tried this months ago on my 27" iMac and nothing happened, but with my 21.5" iMac and the 770m this worked. I thought I would never see the boot screen again, this is amazing.
EDIT: I just tried it with my 27" iMac with the 780m and it too works. The EFI screen of course shows up on an external Display. Once you choose the OS the loading status bar never fills but it does boot the OS. If Nvidia web drivers aren't installed It will just sit on that same screen after the OS loads. So It's not ready to be used with Mojave Until web drivers come out. If someone here has a Mac Pro EFI GTX 680/780 I'd love to see them attempt this as well. My only two efi cards are this founders GTX 970 and my original 5770.
EDIT: I just tried it with my 27" iMac with the 780m and it too works. The EFI screen of course shows up on an external Display. Once you choose the OS the loading status bar never fills but it does boot the OS. If Nvidia web drivers aren't installed It will just sit on that same screen after the OS loads. So It's not ready to be used with Mojave Until web drivers come out. If someone here has a Mac Pro EFI GTX 680/780 I'd love to see them attempt this as well. My only two efi cards are this founders GTX 970 and my original 5770.
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No, I am referring to running a NVIDIA card, not another AMD. The whole point of me modding my iMac would be to use Mojave.
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So, I am guessing this means that a work around for using Mojave on this older iMac could be using an eGPU? Something like this might be a way to extend the life of your PC if you have all of the right equipment (and also get brightness control).
No we still don't have brightness control. But having an EFI screen is huge because we can Boot from external sources if needed.
Also please look at my post for how I modded my 27" heatsink. Yes I used a 780m but the 765m and 770m all have the same PCB layout. We are shaving the area where two large coils prevent the heatsink from laying flat with the PCB. You should also check your X bracket and modify it make sure the X-bracket doesn' touch any capacitors on the back of the board. When I had my 765m it definitely had caps touching the X-bracket.
Great discovery !
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Does your external GPU also work on internal iMac display, or only on external monitors ?
Maybay try a dummy dongle, or a software hack to make it work on internal imac display, if it does not work now.. ?
There is an issue i'm running into related to Nvidia Web drivers, It will only load one frame buffer at startup. So my GTX 970 will have acceleration but my 780m/770m wont have acceleration. The same thing would happen to a Macbook Pro user if they had the 650m/750m and used a newer Nvidia card. Which is why i'm thinking about getting a GTX 780Ti but it's expensive at $275. I might look into a r9 280x.
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I used a milling bit, drill press, and XY vice to mill down the elevated areas pictured to allow the GTX 765M to fit. If you purchase a GTX 765M and disassemble your machine the issue will be clear once you examine the heatsink and GTX765M. Another alternative is to use a dremel tool as others have described. Upgrading to a GTX 765M will allow you to run Mojave but you will need to use dosdude1's patcher (http://dosdude1.com/mojave) to complete the installation and you will need to use the backlight control mod I discussed above if you want true backlight control.
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Would any sort of backlight/brightness control be had using any sort of software for it that is out there? Like, how I use MacFansControl to deal with the lack of sensors on my hard drives?
The free Brightness Slider App from the MacAppstore is a good alternative.
It can adjust brightness aswell..
I dont think it has the same result as the hardware mod can, but it comes a long way this app..
https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/brightness-slider/id456624497?mt=12
I use both - the brightness slider and the hardware mod I described. The hardware mod allows you to achieve true backlight control and I use this to set the backlight output to 50%. This limits the max brightness of the screen to 50% which I find is more than enough brightness. I then use the brightness slider app to provide adjustability between 0 and 50%. This lowers the heat output that is generated and loss of contrast by having the backlight on maximum. Using the brightness slider app alone will work and adjusts brightness but doesn't reduce backlight output so you just have to be willing to accept the heat and loss of contrast (and probably decreased backlight life).
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So I only got about 55 FPS in the Cinebench GPU benchmark. That is slower than yours, but I’m still wondering if that’s due to the GPU throttling or because your Sandy Bridge CPU is faster than my Nehalem, and that is skewing the results?
The 765m/770m all use the same gk106 core and have a TDP of 75w (760m is 55w) Which again is why I was wondering about the GPU core clock issue on my 21.5". Maybe I should attempt flashing the Dell 765m ROM to my 770m and see what happens. But yeah the 765m and 770m are same on TDP the only 100w card is the 780m.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series
Edit: a brief search for the MXM-A spec shows the maximum wattage MXM-A can handle is 55W which is most likely why it can only hit full boost for a second and drop down. Which is fine, after my ROM modification of increasing the Ram speed it performs snappier. I bought a 780TI EFI for my thunderbolt project. Based on what I'm seeing using a GTX 650 and no web drivers. We shouldn't have two different framebuffer loading issues.
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You can boot from external sources.
You just have to bless it in osx, effectively setting it as the default boot volume.
This is how i completely reinstalled OSX to my 27" imac.
It was on Yosemite. I created an installer USB stick but it refused to show up in startup volumes.
I then went ahead and did this: https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-change-the-mac-startup-disk-from-the-command-line
Code:
sudo bless -mount /Volumes/Startup_Disk_Name -setBootI then rebooted and it booted from USB just fine, the recovery Image on the stick just took a really long time to recognize the display (couple minutes), but hey it worked.
Booting to single user mode with CMD+S (no display here, but it works) is also possible and CMD+R will bring you to the built in recovery, but if it still is 10.7 it won't have display.
Thanks I know the command, It only works when we can still boot an OS. EFI Boot screens are important because with Mojave is the first OS to Not support the 2011 iMac, and with no EFI screen target disk mode doesn't work. With the EFI screen it basically means High Sierra is no longer needed as the first boot partition.
@highvol
Maybay the problem could also be that the mxm-a cooler in 21,5 inch iMac, is much smaller.
And the I think the heatsink only covers the gpu die and memory chips.
I think the vrm power chokes are not covered at all with this smaller heatsink.
This could i Think also be a problem, and can start throttheling the performance of the card ?
And of course power limit is also a problem.
I think then a mxm-a gtx760m which had 55Watt tdp should be the best i Think.
But I dont know if there are dell/alienware version of that card..
Are there any mxm-a cards available that are compatible..
And use 55Watt as a tdp
I think that is a good question for 21,5 users...
Maybay the problem could also be that the mxm-a cooler in 21,5 inch iMac, is much smaller.
And the I think the heatsink only covers the gpu die and memory chips.
I think the vrm power chokes are not covered at all with this smaller heatsink.
This could i Think also be a problem, and can start throttheling the performance of the card ?
And of course power limit is also a problem.
I think then a mxm-a gtx760m which had 55Watt tdp should be the best i Think.
But I dont know if there are dell/alienware version of that card..
Are there any mxm-a cards available that are compatible..
And use 55Watt as a tdp
I think that is a good question for 21,5 users...
I'm going to find a 760m ROM dump, use Nvidia Kepler tool to read the power states, and apply them to the 770m. I keep my optical drive a 3100rpm so I don't think it's getting too hot. I think it's more like running a graphics card on a PC without the 6 pin 12v connector plugged in. I will go look for the MXM-A pinout and compare it with the MXM-B pinout and see if there are any additional 12v lines missing.
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Is there in MXM-A form factor card that is known to work in the 21.5" 2011 iMac? I'm not looking for gaming performance just equivalent performance to the original Radeon 6750M or even better the 6770M and metal support so I can run Mojave. Goal is to achieve a better physical solution in terms of the card form factor/fit and lower power dissipation given the smaller 21.5' heat sink. Has anyone tried the Dell Quadro K2000M?
As far as I know, an known working mxm-a card had has not been posted here..
You can try the dell quadro k2000M
Could be hit or miss..
This post suggests it will support metal for Mojave: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...ost-done-qm77-i7-3720qm-quadro-k2000m.261489/
Card delivers today. Will follow up with outcome of trial.
Its a no go. Card physically fits perfectly without any modification of heatsink required but unfortunately power won't come on. One led lit - the one the farthest to the right...
Correction...its a go! I had accidentally left the smaller power cable to the logic board unattached when I reassembled and once corrected it boots. This card works beautifully in High Sierra and the form factor fits without any physical modifications. Moving to Mojave now to see if metal is supported...
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have you tried another bios ??
You can have a look here : https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...&version=&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...dro+2000M&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...ro+K2000M&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=
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Correction...its a go! I had accidentally left the smaller power cable to the logic board unattached when I reassembled and once corrected it boots. This card works beautifully in High Sierra and the form factor fits without any physical modifications. Moving to Mojave now to see if metal is supported...
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