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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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Hi everyone,
I replaced the old 4850 card with new Wx4130 (AliExpress) in my Imac 27 late 2009 11.1 yesterday. I flashed it successfully (see attached). Reset PRAM and reboot to internal SSD Hi Sierra. Nothing on the mDP connected external screen, just black! I need advice for what to do next? Thank you in advance and have a nice day!
Attached are the new WX4130 pictures. Please someone help identifying if this is the correct one? Thanks .
I replaced the old 4850 card with new Wx4130 (AliExpress) in my Imac 27 late 2009 11.1 yesterday. I flashed it successfully (see attached). Reset PRAM and reboot to internal SSD Hi Sierra. Nothing on the mDP connected external screen, just black! I need advice for what to do next? Thank you in advance and have a nice day!
Attached are the new WX4130 pictures. Please someone help identifying if this is the correct one? Thanks .
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Hello everyone, a strange thing happened to me I installed the k3100 on imac 27 2011 but if I turn on the fan turns for a second and turns off, if I look at the LEDs on the motherboard the n1 is always on, then if I press the key for a thousandth of a second the n2 you can see the light and it goes out and it always remains the n1, I tried on another same imac it does the same thing, could the card be broken?
Unfortunately, this is a suspected 'Known issue' from post 1 (for Nvidia cards). (Maybe it is not stated exactly in your terms. The symptoms you experience occur for example with many AMD cards: unmodded HP WX4150, RX480, VER 1.0 WX7100.) While we know how to resolve it with the HP WX4150, the root cause is still unknown. We like to refer to iMac12,2 as being 'picky'. It could be a SMBus issue, it could be some 'collision/misunderstanding' with the iMac12,2 power up logic. You can try powering up without HDD, ODD, and LCD connected.
(Side question: Did you try with triple PRAM reset without the GPU mounted? ... and then reinstall the GPU, power up...)
Yes they work well , i have rgb keyboard and mouse and they light up , so I’m confused what should i do , someone here mentioned something about setting up an ip adress manually
Hi can you explain more , make it easier for me i have a problem with usb stick ^_^ , thanks in advance
Just wanted to say I've had a very successful (if not completely) upgrade of my 12,2 2011 27" iMac with 12GB of ram and 3.4GHz i7. HD6970 it came with had gone through 2 oven bakes. It was sitting in a corner being unusable and sad and I was also sad that giant beautiful screen was useless. Thanks to these forums and many late nights trying to figure out what OCLP was, I've got it working.
Upgraded to a m5100 AMD, the red dell version. Not the fastest but from my readings seemed to be the most reliable.
Had to buy some copper spacers. Bracket also had to be changed and the new bracket kind of sits on top of some circuits so i just didn't tighten it all the way. Plus card kinda sits a little lopsided but its working.
Used the linux flash upgrade utility on these forums...somewhere. Had to figure out what SSH was and how to use it. Also, all the of the folder structures are different than the manual says for the utility so that was fun.
Finally got the card flashed and took me a while to figure out that the iMac would only boot with the Monterey install drive i made before this started. Had to make the drive twice because...I don't know why. The installer wouldn't work the first time.
Got it upgraded to Moneterey, copied the EFI settings to the boot drive (you guys are brilliant and I appreciate you all so much, but instructions could have a bit more detail. Took 6 reboots to figure out where to put the files) and now my iMac boots normally and consistently and I just did the later Monterey update from the mac update and its working!
I had to use the post install to get wifi working. Bluetooth works, but airplay and sidecar and handoff don't, but I have the original wifi card so that's not surprising. Plus i can live without those features.
The card runs ridiculously cool, but that may because its very slow and I have the 3pipe heatsink. I can't get it to hit 60 and thats with an hour long FCPX render. Monterey runs just as quick and fast as it does on my 2019 MacBook Pro with the i9, but I do have an SSD in here as well. This is just an office computer so I can get my wife to stop using her pc laptop, so I don't need game performance, but this thing is running better now than it did when it was new!
So. Success! It's possible. Even for those of us poser nerds who are only fans of star wars shirts and not actually star wars itself. It was fun though. I feel like I won something.
Upgraded to a m5100 AMD, the red dell version. Not the fastest but from my readings seemed to be the most reliable.
Had to buy some copper spacers. Bracket also had to be changed and the new bracket kind of sits on top of some circuits so i just didn't tighten it all the way. Plus card kinda sits a little lopsided but its working.
Used the linux flash upgrade utility on these forums...somewhere. Had to figure out what SSH was and how to use it. Also, all the of the folder structures are different than the manual says for the utility so that was fun.
Finally got the card flashed and took me a while to figure out that the iMac would only boot with the Monterey install drive i made before this started. Had to make the drive twice because...I don't know why. The installer wouldn't work the first time.
Got it upgraded to Moneterey, copied the EFI settings to the boot drive (you guys are brilliant and I appreciate you all so much, but instructions could have a bit more detail. Took 6 reboots to figure out where to put the files) and now my iMac boots normally and consistently and I just did the later Monterey update from the mac update and its working!
I had to use the post install to get wifi working. Bluetooth works, but airplay and sidecar and handoff don't, but I have the original wifi card so that's not surprising. Plus i can live without those features.
The card runs ridiculously cool, but that may because its very slow and I have the 3pipe heatsink. I can't get it to hit 60 and thats with an hour long FCPX render. Monterey runs just as quick and fast as it does on my 2019 MacBook Pro with the i9, but I do have an SSD in here as well. This is just an office computer so I can get my wife to stop using her pc laptop, so I don't need game performance, but this thing is running better now than it did when it was new!
So. Success! It's possible. Even for those of us poser nerds who are only fans of star wars shirts and not actually star wars itself. It was fun though. I feel like I won something.
Mount the usb stick on another computer and edit that file. The 10.0.0.55::10.0.0.1:255.255.255.0 are for my configuration, but you might need a 192.168 address instead. Check you networking config on another computer.
The USB stick is supposed to do dhcp, but it wasn't working for me. I could boot from the stick before the upgrade and networking worked, and now that I flashed the card I can boot and networking works, but booting the usb stick with a new hp (blank vbios) card wouldn't get me a working network connection. Setting it manually like above worked. Good luck!
So where should i type my ip and mac adress inside this text?
This file contains some code lines already so I’m confused ,
Sorry about my tiny tech knowledge
I’m gonna check this out and let you know, I can’t thank you enough, thanks for your patience and replies, i’ll try and let you know <3
Like this ? Is that correct?
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Hi! I've been skimming the thread for quite some time and have finally decided to try and jump in with a bit of experimentation. However, I'm not 100% sure of my specific case, since what I'll try to mod is an Early 2009 iMac, not the way more common Late 2009, and information is scarce. I'm not 100% sure if I get this right, but if I try to change the graphics card (I'm planning to get a K1100M or K2100M) do I need to buy the driver board for the internal screen? Or that's only if I want some features? Or that depends on the graphics card itself?
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You'd better drop that idea. It will not work.
Try open your early 2009 iMac first to check if there is even any removable graphic card inside.
(If you know that your iMac has nVidia Geforce 9400m from the specs, you can even save yourself the hassle to open).
For those that replaced the HDD with an SSD, what temps do you see for your SSD?
Mine sits around 43-44 celcious. Is that normal?
Mine sits around 43-44 celcious. Is that normal?
60? Really?
I have set the macfan control to slightly increase the HDD fan speed after 40 degrees celcius but to be honest I see no real difference even if I have the HDD fan set to the default low rpm. It would still get around 44 degrees.
Maybe that's the operating temp of an SSD inside the hot enclosure of an iMac?
One thing we know for sure:
The (NVIDIA) EFI modded vBIOS versions published here will not work on the Core2Duo 2009 iMac models, so drop this idea of using a K1100M or K2100M with this vBIOS.
There might be a decent chance to get AMD GCN cards like the M4000 fully working using OCLP and some vBIOS modifications, it can also be possible to use a NVIDIA GPU with a unmodified GOP vBIOS and OCLP. But you are entering uncharted territory.
I was just kidding with you.
But frankly speaking, the GPU heatsink temperature reading in my iMac was once reached 63 degrees Celsius at idle and light task.
The cause:
Room temperature was 34 degrees.
The LCD was at maximum brightness.
So when you talk about any temperature readings inside those ancient iMacs, it's often misread if you don't mention about room temperature and LCD brightness setting.
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Hello, recently I upgraded my iMac 27' 2010 to k1000m and had success. Big thanks to everyone who made this possible! Now I have the bug and want to upgrade my iMac 27' 2009 to k610m.
One issue though, my machine is stuck on MacOS Yosemite and the plan 3# says I need to have my boot rom updated. My machine has stalled out when trying to upgrade to High Sierra, It boots fine in safe mode though. Just has trouble updating currently.
forums.macrumors.com
Any advice on what I should do next?
Currently my boot rom is IM111.0034.B04 and my smc is 1.54f36
One issue though, my machine is stuck on MacOS Yosemite and the plan 3# says I need to have my boot rom updated. My machine has stalled out when trying to upgrade to High Sierra, It boots fine in safe mode though. Just has trouble updating currently.
2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
A short plan how to change the GPU and prepare tools and software (06/04/2021) Like the hardware section I decided to move this to the thread into a post because we hit the limit of the firsts posts size. Which each change there I have to delete some other mostly interesting stuff. This plan...
forums.macrumors.com
Any advice on what I should do next?
Currently my boot rom is IM111.0034.B04 and my smc is 1.54f36
You should also use signature field to state that you have an iMac12,2... please do.
Sleep probably fails because of i7-2700K - it has HD3000 IGPU instead of HD2000 IGPU that i7-2600 has (with a different device-id). (Either use OC to properly spoof the IGPU device ID or) use OCLP - which will disable the IGPU - to restore wake from sleep.
In my experience, it’s impossible to update your bootrom with a non-original GPU installed.Hello, recently I upgraded my iMac 27' 2010 to k1000m and had success. Big thanks to everyone who made this possible! Now I have the bug and want to upgrade my iMac 27' 2009 to k610m.
One issue though, my machine is stuck on MacOS Yosemite and the plan 3# says I need to have my boot rom updated. My machine has stalled out when trying to upgrade to High Sierra, It boots fine in safe mode though. Just has trouble updating currently.
2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
A short plan how to change the GPU and prepare tools and software (06/04/2021) Like the hardware section I decided to move this to the thread into a post because we hit the limit of the firsts posts size. Which each change there I have to delete some other mostly interesting stuff. This plan...
Any advice on what I should do next?
Currently my boot rom is IM111.0034.B04 and my smc is 1.54f36
thank you i didn't notice the igpu difference
Ask again, I remember correctly, the 2010 i7 does not have a built-in display chip Can I sleep normally?
Hi all! please tell me whether it is possible to install big sur or Monterey operating system on 2011 imac gtx880m will video support work fine in final cut???? which system to choose? Or stay on Catalina?