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

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
Help needed

Recentley opened up my upgraded machine to add in the super drive back into help air flow, while i was in there again i wanted to redo the termal pad on the gpu as i wasnt happen with way it had gaps on some parts.

So took the mother board out and on reassembly i pinched the cpu fan cable, i noticed that the cpu fan stoped working. And and stated 0 rpm

I have looked at the transitors and i cant see that any have been knocked off during reassembly so i presummed the cable was dammaged and brought another cpu fan and still showing 0 rpm and not spining at all.

Im not what is going on here ?

The superdrive i use the temp cable that came with that , i reused the temp cable for the cpu fan.

I have very limited skill to diagnose this any help would be appreciated.
 
Ozzies said:
Help needed

Recentley opened up my upgraded machine to add in the super drive back into help air flow, while i was in there again i wanted to redo the termal pad on the gpu as i wasnt happen with way it had gaps on some parts.

So took the mother board out and on reassembly i pinched the cpu fan cable, i noticed that the cpu fan stoped working. And and stated 0 rpm

I have looked at the transitors and i cant see that any have been knocked off during reassembly so i presummed the cable was dammaged and brought another cpu fan and still showing 0 rpm and not spining at all.

Im not what is going on here ?

The superdrive i use the temp cable that came with that , i reused the temp cable for the cpu fan.

I have very limited skill to diagnose this any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
One possibility: Pinched cable created a short which means that excessive current flew through the FET and ferrite bead that drives the fan. So either the FET or the ferrite bead (or both) went open circuit - and the fan is therefore no longer driven. (This failure is usually not apparent just with a visual inspection.) You'd need a multimeter to measure if the corresponding ferrite bead is in fact 'open' and then some soldering skills to replace that ferrite bead (or FET, or both). You don't have the recommended signature, so I cannot help you with the appropriate schematic sheet to show you what (probably) failed.
 
dfranetic said:
One possibility: Pinched cable created a short which means that excessive current flew through the FET and ferrite bead that drives the fan. So either the FET or the ferrite bead (or both) went open circuit - and the fan is therefore no longer driven. (This failure is usually not apparent just with a visual inspection.) You'd need a multimeter to measure if the corresponding ferrite bead is in fact 'open' and then some soldering skills to replace that ferrite bead (or FET, or both). You don't have the recommended signature, so I cannot help you with the appropriate schematic sheet to show you what (probably) failed.
Click to expand...
Thank you replay

this could be beyond my skills, if i knew the bead was missing i could create a jumper if possible but these are really small 402 and not possible for me soldering these with 0 skils.

I presume my only option is to buy a new motherboard .

So if i did replace the motherboard and swapped out the cpu and gpu to the current machine would i have to go through the same steps when i upgraded imac or should it work plug and play ?
 
Ozzies said:
Thank you replay

this could be beyond my skills, if i knew the bead was missing i could create a jumper if possible but these are really small 402 and not possible for me soldering these with 0 skils.

I presume my only option is to buy a new motherboard .
Click to expand...
You can also take it to a repair shop and explain what happened.
Ozzies said:
So if i did replace the motherboard and swapped out the cpu and gpu to the current machine would i have to go through the same steps when i upgraded imac or should it work plug and play ?
Click to expand...
You'll probably have to repeat Apple ID sign-in - every iMac (logic board) has its own serial number.
 
Looking for some advice, from everything i've read in post#1 this should be doable. but i'm a complete nubie, so i may be wrong.
I am trying to upgrade a Mid 2010 21" Imac 11,2 (w/i3.01). i was able to format an external SSD to Big Sur using open core, leaving the original HHD installed with High Sierra. plan was to replace HDD with the SSD when done. booting to the Big Sur on the SSD showed the obvious graphics issue, but the OS worked. so i purchased a K2100m to replace the original GPU. when i power up i get nothing, fans run, but only two mother board lights. no boot, so i cant SSH into it. so, i believe my only option is to flash the bios directly using CH134A and Nicks rom? does this sound like the right direction? thanks Dave in NY.

this is the card i bought: Dell Precision M4800 Video Card GDDR5 Nvidia Quadro K2100M 2GB G4FN0 0G4FN0 (W/BIOS VERSION 80.06.7D.00.06)
 
DaveNY said:
Looking for some advice, from everything i've read in post#1 this should be doable. but i'm a complete nubie, so i may be wrong.
I am trying to upgrade a Mid 2010 21" Imac 11,2 (w/i3.01). i was able to format an external SSD to Big Sur using open core, leaving the original HHD installed with High Sierra. plan was to replace HDD with the SSD when done. booting to the Big Sur on the SSD showed the obvious graphics issue, but the OS worked. so i purchased a K2100m to replace the original GPU. when i power up i get nothing, fans run, but only two mother board lights. no boot, so i cant SSH into it. so, i believe my only option is to flash the bios directly using CH134A and Nicks rom? does this sound like the right direction? thanks Dave in NY.

this is the card i bought: Dell Precision M4800 Video Card GDDR5 Nvidia Quadro K2100M 2GB G4FN0 0G4FN0 (W/BIOS VERSION 80.06.7D.00.06)
Click to expand...
Check the FAQ or the upgrade plan both on the first post for all flashing options.
 
Thanks, Quick question. will remote login work with only two lights on? i'm wondering if the remote login is possibly not turned on.
 
splifingate said:
I'm in almost the same situation as you, but trying with AMD...

Just can't get grml to blind auto-start with a successful ping/ssh

I *did* dl the most recent grml (it's changed a fair bit since 2018), modified the appropriate .cfg files, copied-over the /flash folder, and made a usb thumb + installed it to a spare ssd

Will test sometime this week if I can find some time to re-perform the gfx card installation

I know I can flash the vBios to thee WX7100 with my rPi4, but it miffs me that I can't get what should be working, er, working <grumble>

Maybe I'll produce some result/s that might help others.

Regards.
Click to expand...
g4v1n said:
Well, I tried a few things:

- I installed the grml from this post on a spare hard drive, opened up the iMac and plugged the HDD into the SATA port instead of my SSD. Then rebooted. No luck, the machine still cannot be pinged.

- Then I put the screen back and tried installing Mac OS High Sierra on that spare hard drive instead (now plugged into the USB). That worked, installed, and booted fine.

So it can boot from the internal SSD, can boot from a USB-connected drive, it just can't boot from the USB created using the method in @The_Croupier's post.

I'm at a bit of a loss, but I guess I will try an alternative linux USB stick next (Ubuntu I guess) - if that works perhaps I'll try building nvflash directly on that stick. (I'm assuming I should really get this fixed / flashed before trying to install OpenCore.)

bw,
Gavin.
Click to expand...

After much deliberation and trying out different USB sticks, linux distros, CD-R disks, and so on, I solved this issue by ... installing OpenCore (via the OpenCore-Patcher app). That gave me a boot picker that booted from my original USB stick (the one from @The_Croupier's post) allowing me to flash the card.

That is pretty amazing! From there it has been downhill & I now have Monterey 12.5.1 up and running, with Unigene Valley benchmark 1166 on my k2100m, all seems to be working well. Thanks so much to all for all the info/code/resources that made this possible.

(One thing I have noticed is that the rear top right of my iMac is getting very hot - almost too hot to touch at times. I'm not sure whether it was doing this before but definitely hot now. Wondering if this is normal / have others noticed this? Is there a guide to sensible Macs Fan Control settings somewhere?)

bw,
Gavin.
 
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g4v1n said:
After much deliberation and trying out different USB sticks, linux distros, CD-R disks, and so on, I solved this issue by ... installing OpenCore (via the OpenCore-Patcher app). That gave me a boot picker that booted from my original USB stick (the one from @The_Croupier's post) allowing me to flash the card.

That is pretty amazing! From there it has been downhill & I now have Monterey 12.5.1 up and running, with Unigene Valley benchmark 1166 on my k2100m, all seems to be working well. Thanks so much to all for all the info/code/resources that made this possible.

(One thing I have noticed is that the rear top right of my iMac is getting very hot - almost too hot to touch at times. I'm not sure whether it was doing this before but definitely hot now. Wondering if this is normal / have others noticed this? Is there a guide to sensible Macs Fan Control settings somewhere?)

bw,
Gavin.
Click to expand...
Either move the ODD temp sensor to the heat sink or use Macs Fan Control and enable control of the ODD fan at 55C depending on the (normal) GPU heat sink temp sensor.

Sure this has been mentioned somewhere before. Apple SMC will start ramping up the ODD fan at 80C - nice setting to kill another GPU quickly.
 
Ausdauersportler said:
Either move the ODD temp sensor to the heat sink or use Macs Fan Control and enable control of the ODD fan at 55C depending on the (normal) GPU heat sink temp sensor.

Sure this has been mentioned somewhere before. Apple SMC will start ramping up the ODD fan at 80C - nice setting to kill another GPU quickly.
Click to expand...

Sorry - *rear top left* (when viewed from the front). So this would be where the power supply is. The GPU heatsink does not *seem* to be getting all that hot I don't think (but am keeping an eye on it.)

Thanks for this setting advice, v. helpful. I did not move the ODD temp sensor unfortunately, so Macs Fan Control it is. (I'm sure these settings have been gone through before but this thread is... 767 pages long!)

bw,
g.
 
g4v1n said:
Sorry - *rear top left* (when viewed from the front). So this would be where the power supply is. The GPU heatsink does not *seem* to be getting all that hot I don't think (but am keeping an eye on it.)

Thanks for this setting advice, v. helpful. I did not move the ODD temp sensor unfortunately, so Macs Fan Control it is. (I'm sure these settings have been gone through before but this thread is... 767 pages long!)

bw,
g.
Click to expand...
The power supply and the CPU will generate the heat there, adjust the CPU and HDD fan using Macs Fan Control in the same way as described before. Root cause is the same, Apple SMC is programmed to give you the wrong illusion of having a silent power house on your desk.
 
Ausdauersportler said:
The power supply and the CPU will generate the heat there, adjust the CPU and HDD fan using Macs Fan Control in the same way as described before. Root cause is the same, Apple SMC is programmed to give you the wrong illusion of having a silent power house on your desk.
Click to expand...

Makes sense - thanks!
g.
 
On the instruction page on how to set up OCLP, there are still instructions for the TUI version of the app, which is no longer supported. How do I set the generic bootstrap in the GUI version of the app?
 
basslib said:
On the instruction page on how to set up OCLP, there are still instructions for the TUI version of the app, which is no longer supported. How do I set the generic bootstrap in the GUI version of the app?
Click to expand...

Just read the complete post:

I have already a working OC config, how can I use it?

Alternative: If you have already a working OC config you can mount the EFI volume, create manually the /Volume/EFI/EFI/BOOT folder and copy the file /Volume/EFI/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi and rename it to BOOTx64.efi.
 
I have an iMac 12,2 with an AMD ATI M5100 red card on the way from eBay. Can someone point me in the direction I need to go to install this card? I would like to at least be running Catalina. I currently have the 6770 amd card. I’m a little tech savvy but I can’t find clear cut instructions for installing this card and being able to use the iMac. Thanks for listening!
 
macexperimental said:
I have an iMac 12,2 with an AMD ATI M5100 red card on the way from eBay. Can someone point me in the direction I need to go to install this card? I would like to at least be running Catalina. I currently have the 6770 amd card. I’m a little tech savvy but I can’t find clear cut instructions for installing this card and being able to use the iMac. Thanks for listening!
Click to expand...
macexperimental said:
Also, has anyone been able to install a Nvidia 675(M) fermi card in a 2011 27”? I have one of those on the way also lol
Click to expand...
Any knowledge needed to install the cards is linked to on the first post of this thread - you'll have to study for some days in order to get an idea of the process.
 
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macexperimental said:
Can I just power it up with the new card in it and do the ssh flash procedure from another laptop then? Does nvflash work over ssh?
Click to expand...
The answer is yes --if you take a look at the documentation regarding GRML and the Linux flash utility, it should help clear things up. My advice is if you don't have prior experience with SSH, this is something you should experiment with it and learn how to use before you begin taking your iMac apart, as it will just get more difficult if you have to do it while in the midst of the project. There are lots of tutorials about SSH online which could be of great help.
 
Hi everyone, what's the best quality/price GPU for a 2009 iMac right now ? And is it better to buy it preflashed ?
 
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