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I bought a second iMac 2011 and a WX 7100 (I already have a similar setup up and running). I tried to flash the card this time with a programmer, but I think I managed to destroy the eeprom because I saw some lightning at the chip when using the programmer. When the card is in the iMac the fans just spinning for one second when turning on the iMac and nothing happens, with the old card everything works.

Would it be possible to replace the chip on the card or do you think some more components are dead?
 
I bought a second iMac 2011 and a WX 7100 (I already have a similar setup up and running). I tried to flash the card this time with a programmer, but I think I managed to destroy the eeprom because I saw some lightning at the chip when using the programmer. When the card is in the iMac the fans just spinning for one second when turning on the iMac and nothing happens, with the old card everything works.

Would it be possible to replace the chip on the card or do you think some more components are dead?
Can you give us the version of the card? (Under the GPU IC, after V345…)
 
I bought a second iMac 2011 and a WX 7100 (I already have a similar setup up and running). I tried to flash the card this time with a programmer, but I think I managed to destroy the eeprom because I saw some lightning at the chip when using the programmer. When the card is in the iMac the fans just spinning for one second when turning on the iMac and nothing happens, with the old card everything works.

Would it be possible to replace the chip on the card or do you think some more components are dead?
This symptoms are most likely caused by an incompatibility of some WX7100 cards with iMac12,2 models. Surely you have checked the first post about these problems - and no, this is still not an MXM card repair thread.
Post pictures of the card, you surely took one of each side before placing it onto the head sink.
 
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Thanks for the fast reply. Please find attached a photo of the card. The version is 1.0.
 

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Thanks for the fast reply. Please find attached a photo of the card. The version is 1.0.
Unfortunately, you (presumably) have an example of a non-POSTing WX7100 in iMac12,2 machines. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

To explain: Recently, I spent some time scrolling through a random chunk of some 100-150 pages of this thread, looking for (un)successful installations of the WX7100 cards in iMac12,2. Looking at ‘visual‘ evidence a pattern emerged: cards that do POST are all VER: 1.1, those that do not POST are VER: 1.0. (The only known (to me) RX480 card is also V1.0 and it does not POST.) I’m not sure if this has been observed before…
 
I've been following this thread for nearly 2 years, and I think I understand Ausdauersportler's feelings.
As do I. Again, I am a huge part of many helping hands forums and I try to understand each problem without judgement. My problem is not with the help they provide it's the feeling of being talked down to or simply made to feel dumb. I am not talking about the people who don't follow instructions. I am talking about the ones who have read the posts and given this an honest try but failed and come here for some help.
 
As do I. Again, I am a huge part of many helping hands forums and I try to understand each problem without judgement. My problem is not with the help they provide it's the feeling of being talked down to or simply made to feel dumb. I am not talking about the people who don't follow instructions. I am talking about the ones who have read the posts and given this an honest try but failed and come here for some help.

One of our biggest problem is: We assume the card to work with our iMacs, while 1) They are not designed to do that; 2) They might have been tortured for quite a long time before reaching the shops, then us; 3) They might work on this Mac, but not on another Mac; and lastly 4) It might be just another bad card.

Trouble shooting maybe tiresome, frustrating and even desperate.
 
Can someone post a step by step guide for 2011 GPUs -- the information is quite fragmented and id like a overall step by step guide for 2011 Imacs before ordering what i need.

Is there one in here somewhere?
 
I've been following this thread for nearly 2 years, and I think I understand Ausdauersportler's feelings. The experts have been working very hard to come up to solutions. They have explained every details, picking up from each and every useful informations scattered all over the posts of this 6-hundred-ish-page thread. There maybe some language barriers to some, but by reading and understanding post #1 and every link from post #1 with the help of Google translate, even a novice Mac user (like me) can do the upgrade. When hitting an issue, you just need to come to this thread, using the search function with several key words, and you will see similar cases have been described with solutions already.
A simple price search of the cards listed on post#1 will give you a glimps of what to buy, how powerful it would be, etc.

But instead of reading, more than half of the new comers to this thread often start with: "What is the most powerful card to go with my 2009~2011 iMac, which I've just got for free, blah blah blah etc.". And those attitudes are really disgusting. We are only try to make old iMacs (more often than not, with dead GPUs because of Apple's design flaw) work again and upgradable to newer Mac OS, keeping them from going to metal scrap yard, while pulling some usage from them.
If money doesn't matter, discuss your concern with the GPU sellers from the Far East, they have the responsibility to help you with your issue to sell their merchandise and benefit from that. They read this thread, too.
That the amd GPUs die is Not an Apple Design flaw it’s a fkup on AMDs side. Even most of the Windows Laptops/AIO with the same gpu chipsets they have the same issue like the iMac/MacbookPros
 
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1. Modify heatsink and have thermal pastes at hand to install gpu. Read all of post one again, I cant believe you didn't see the image at the very bottom of the post of a modified heatsink?

2. Carefully disassemble the imac, dont break anything.

3. Install GPU and reassemble everything being careful not to break anything again.
Leave your hard drive disconnected and dont brother installing the lcd panel yet.

4. Insert your bootable Linux flash usb disk into the iMac that you prepared earlier making sure it contains the rom applicable to your new GPU, (you want Linux so you can flash your card) you know about this because you have thoroughly read post 1.

5. Boot your iMac and check your router for the iMacs local IP address.

6. From your other device, smartphone, tablet, laptop, PC SSH into your iMac, backup the original rom and flash the new rom.

7. When successful plug your HDD back in and reinstall the LCD.

8. Start your iMac if there are issues read post one thoroughly and search this thread as all possible scenarios have been covered multiple times.

9. Don't worry about OCLP as you wish to keep using High Sierra.


Don't know why you want to disable SIP?
Here I am! I installed the video card, reassembled everything, inserted the usb linux to update the bios. I managed to backup the original bios. When I enter the command to update the bios I get this error:
ERROR: Board ID mismatch
 
Hey peoples, revived my 2011 27" iMac with a GTX780 using info in this thread and its all gone pretty well, everything works including boot screen / brightness on latest Big Sur.

My only issue is, the OS seems very sluggish for a fresh install on an SSD. There's a noticeable lag on most operations, even just browsing through the menu bar items in Finder on a fresh boot feels laggy. Most apps also have a generally laggy feel compared to High Sierra that was installed previously. I know this OS is more demanding, but its quite a big and annoying difference, more than I would expect from just Big Sur itself.

So question is, could this have anything to do with the way the heatsink was installed on the GPU?
I didn't have any thermal pads, so I used thermal paste, but needed a fair bit to fill some of the gaps.

If some of the chips on the board were not properly cooled, could this affect the general performance of the OS?

oh and its a 3.4ghz i7 with 16gm ram, and the heatsink was already the 3 pipe version, which I modified to fit as per notes in post #1
 
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I finally got target display mode working on Big Sur, but it's very unstable. It's a bit painful to enter TDM, and exiting TDM will cause the iMac to lock up on a black screen with no backlight requiring a hard reboot. I know High Sierra is the last supported version with TDM, but with my WX7100 I can only boot High Sierra with an external display attached so I cannot really use that. Anyone else get Target Display Mode working or know how to make it more stable?
hold your power button for 2-3 seconds to let the iMac sleep, wait for the fans to spin down, wake the iMac back up and it should be out of Target Display Mode. Haven't found a better way on an OS newer than High Sierra.
 
Hey peoples, revived my 2011 27" iMac with a GTX780 using info in this thread and its all gone pretty well, everything works including boot screen / brightness on latest Big Sur.

My only issue is, the OS seems very sluggish for a fresh install on an SSD. There's a noticeable lag on most operations, even just browsing through the menu bar items in Finder on a fresh boot feels laggy. Most apps also have a generally laggy feel compared to High Sierra that was installed previously. I know this OS is more demanding, but its quite a big and annoying difference, more than I would expect from just Big Sur itself.

So question is, could this have anything to do with the way the heatsink was installed on the GPU?
I didn't have any thermal pads, so I used thermal paste, but needed a fair bit to fill some of the gaps.

If some of the chips on the board were not properly cooled, could this affect the general performance of the OS?

oh and its a 3.4ghz i7 with 16gm ram, and the heatsink was already the 3 pipe version, which I modified to fit as per notes in post #1
Check your Geekbench5 score, could be CPU throttling?
 
./nvflash_linux --protectoff
I had already given that command. the strange thing is that the video card should be a k3100m framework instead now that I have also started the system it is recognized as a gtx 675mx. how come? is it possible that then it should flash with the rom for gtx 675mx? Now that I have everything mounted, can I flash bios directly from iMac avoiding SSh?
 
I dont know why but one of our 2011 27" iMac's with an flashed GTX765M running Mojave dosdude1 patched.
Is getting random sometimes efi.dump errors and macos errors/warnings.

the GTX765M was flashed a long time ago with the latest beta vbios, and as far as I can remember I have flashed the bootrom back to original.

Why do we still get these efi.dump and macos error messages, is not clear to me.
Is this perhaps due to running a patched dosdude1 based Mojave.. ?

Yes I will be running OCLP in the future on this machine, but still not possible atm since it is in heavy production use here..

Perhaps I have missed out on this info somewhere in this thread, than I am sorry for that.
But as far as I can remember this error with eficheck.dump would only occour when running a patched bootrom ?

I hope somebody can help me out on this one, thanks in advance.
 

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I dont know why but one of our 2011 27" iMac's with an flashed GTX765M running Mojave dosdude1 patched.
Is getting random sometimes efi.dump errors and macos errors/warnings.

the GTX765M was flashed a long time ago with the latest beta vbios, and as far as I can remember I have flashed the bootrom back to original.

Why do we still get these efi.dump and macos error messages, is not clear to me.
Is this perhaps due to running a patched dosdude1 based Mojave.. ?

Yes I will be running OCLP in the future on this machine, but still not possible atm since it is in heavy production use here..

Perhaps I have missed out on this info somewhere in this thread, than I am sorry for that.
But as far as I can remember this error with eficheck.dump would only occour when running a patched bootrom ?

I hope somebody can help me out on this one, thanks in advance.
1. On the Catalina Loader post there is this an extension provided with the OC distribution which disables the eficheck, likely you can to this yourself changing some macOS config files. It is not part of the OCLP - there are rarely users out using a modified vBIOS. eficheck is a normal system tool.

2. There has been a new vBIOS version posted by @Santa's Little Helper - check out the first post. It needs OC to get brightness working and you may just use the OC version including the EFIcheck disables kext just mentioned.

3. You may check the dumped file and the system messages about more details. You may have corrupted firmware?
 
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I am attaching a screenshot
I had already given that command. the strange thing is that the video card should be a k3100m framework instead now that I have also started the system it is recognized as a gtx 675mx. how come? is it possible that then it should flash with the rom for gtx 675mx? Now that I have everything mounted, can I flash bios directly from iMac avoiding SSh
Are you sure your card is a K3100m?
I have never seen a board ID: DEAD!
 
Are you sure your card is a K3100m?
I have never seen a board ID: DEAD!
I do not know!!! Before mounting it I searched through the writings in the card and on google it recognized it as k3100m, instead from iMac High sierra recognizes it as gtx 675mx. I tried to look for the 675mx rom in order to load it into the boot usb, but I can't find the rom. can you help me? I am attaching a screenshot of High Sierra.
 

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I do not know!!! Before mounting it I searched through the writings in the card and on google it recognized it as k3100m, instead from iMac High sierra recognizes it as gtx 675mx. I tried to look for the 675mx rom in order to load it into the boot usb, but I can't find the rom. can you help me? I am attaching a screenshot of High Sierra.
Post photos of your GPU.
There is no modified ROM for a GTX 675 as I’m aware.
Feeling adventurous try flashing the 680 rom.
 
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