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

[gagarin]

Well, are iMac PSUs going out are normal thing when you start tinkering with GPUs or is it just my luck? First fuse on 2010 fired because of this metal sliver that looks like part of some connector but I am not able to find which one.

Then after installing wx4150 in 2011 I have found no power on diagnostic LEDs at all and after few reassemblies I have finally checked PSU to MB connector — zero on every pin, mains cables are fine, fuze is fine (checked with continuity)

I wonder is it normal? I only have one working PSU left for 3 computers now ;(
Also any good guides on troubleshooting these iMac PSUs?

P.S. Going to put new fuse into first one that fired and hope no other component died during that short.

 

[Marche90]

Hi thx for the answer
So I guess the card is broken and I'll get another one. What problems do you mean? I wonder if I should buy another 880m something else.

There's a list of issues in the first post. Check them under the Working NVIDIA cards' spoilers

I updated my 27 inch with a HP HP ZBook 17 nVidia Quadro K4100M 4GB. I updated the bios and It runs OSX great but I mainly use bootcamp. That works great but about 30% of the time when the GUI would normally turn on in Windows from the boot logo it doesn't. The mouse turns on and I think the system is booted up. I usually turn on and off a few times and it boots up. But it is annoying. Anyone see anything like this? I am using Open Core to make the Sound work in Windows. Any ideas? Everything works great but this...Also no sleep mode in windows but that is ok.

The only think I can think of is trying to reset the nvram (you can do that in opencore pressing the spacebar when selecting the OS). Might work, might not, but you can test and judge.

Well, are iMac PSUs going out are normal thing when you start tinkering with GPUs or is it just my luck? First fuse on 2010 fired because of this metal sliver that looks like part of some connector but I am not able to find which one.

Then after installing wx4150 in 2011 I have found no power on diagnostic LEDs at all and after few reassemblies I have finally checked PSU to MB connector — zero on every pin, mains cables are fine, fuze is fine (checked with continuity)

I wonder is it normal? I only have one working PSU left for 3 computers now ;(
Also any good guides on troubleshooting these iMac PSUs?

P.S. Going to put new fuse into first one that fired and hope no other component died during that short.

You might be accidentally touching a metal thing with it. You might not realise it was there and BAM! the PSU is toast.

 

[Tom.Tom]

Hello after some time of not posting here.

Got a question about the Windows black screen issue, that was discussed here already in several posts. My case seems to be a bit different though.

Usually when I boot Windows on 27" 2011 with latest OCLP and Kepler card (k1100m), the screen remains black. The desktop does not appear after couple of minutes, but Windows is working fine. Four LEDs are lit, but the screen is black with no backlight. This usually happens when I use the restart option in either system (Win or MacOS). When this happens, it happens on every retry. Pram reset does not help. However when I switch to MacOS, log in and then choose "shutdown" not "restart" and then switch to Windows, the screen starts to work just fine. This procedure fix is 100% reproducible.
Looking into Windows event log, I can see some "nvlddmkm" errors with id 14 but no any helpful description.
This happens both on clean win 10 or 11 installs.

Any ideas what may be wrong, where to look at, what other tests i could do?

 

[Tom.Tom]

I updated my 27 inch with a HP HP ZBook 17 nVidia Quadro K4100M 4GB. I updated the bios and It runs OSX great but I mainly use bootcamp. That works great but about 30% of the time when the GUI would normally turn on in Windows from the boot logo it doesn't. The mouse turns on and I think the system is booted up. I usually turn on and off a few times and it boots up. But it is annoying. Anyone see anything like this? I am using Open Core to make the Sound work in Windows. Any ideas? Everything works great but this...Also no sleep mode in windows but that is ok.

Which Windows is it?
Which NVIDIA drivers do you use?
Does the k4100m show correctly in Device Manager?
Do you have the brightness slider available in Windows?

Usually no sleep option means something is wrong with graphics driver.

If the driver is ok, please try the following procedure:

1. Log into MacOS,
2. Click "shutdown" in the menu (not restart),
3. Start iMac with the power button,
4. Choose Windows in OC boot picker.

Does the above let you run Windows without issues?

 

[xalebimunna]

Hello,

First thanks to everyone for this amazing thead and all usefull advices.

I updated my iMac 12,1 with a AMD WX 4130. I've flashed the vbios, and the imac is currently running on High Sierra with OC. Everything is working fine except one small stange thing:

When the iMac is booting (apple screen loading) it turns the screen off (I am still not sure if it is the back light or the full thing). If I plug the mini DP the screen comes back, I can then unplug the mini DP and it continues to work and is able to go t sleep and wake up correctly. 100% reproductible.

Any idea? I've looked in the thread but found nothing, did I missed it?

 

[luckasa]

As you can see in first post, it is correct:

Initial setup: Using High Sierra the GOP vBIOS disables the internal LCD on power on.
Work around: Use an additional external display.
If you plan to use High Sierra on a regular basis you can just use a miniDP emulator stick (recommended) or you can implement this hard wire mod (only mentioned here to have a complete overview) or patch it or you can enable the OpenCore agpdmod=vit9696 in the boot-args. Unfortunately this setting is not always compatible with more recent macOS versions and may break access to external displays. Patching is the most easy way.

 

[gagarin]

You might be accidentally touching a metal thing with it. You might not realise it was there and BAM! the PSU is toast.

I am sure I didnt touched anything with metal. I have already established quite safe way of work with them and after that first fuse came off I doubled have doubled down on being careful and attentive. But … 🤷‍♂️

 

[mrlost]

Hello everyone, Friday and Saturday, I finished updating the second Imac 2011 21.5" with k2100m, I was thinking of updating the second with wx4150 but, since no one answers me in this forum, I played it safe, and I installed both Imacs on the k2100m. Here I leave a photograph of how the 2 ssds were, so as not to obstruct the passage of air to the GPU.

I also wanted to tell you that I have not been able to install High Sierra from scratch, alt key, with the usb installer. If I try, the apple is eternal.

I can't install from internet recovery either. If I try, I get an alert that it is not available.
I can only install from scratch, starting the imac with an external disk that has high sierra installed, in this way I run the installation from usb but, being inside high sierra.

I would appreciate if anyone knows if this is normal.

Right now, I have high sierra installed on a 480gb ssd without opencore, using imac brightness control, and I have windows 10 installed on a second 960gb ssd, without opencore, I run bootcamp, after installing windows. I repair audio with macrumors method.
To install windows 10, I do master boot format and fat32 on the disk where windows will be installed, and when the installation of windows 10 starts, I press shif f10 and, I run diskpart, do a clean and convert to GPT, so it installs Windows without problems and, it accepts GPU drivers.

 

[hossavogado]

Hey guys, so i’ve been trying to put a wx4150 in my imac 12,2 for almost a week now, however i donno if i just got a lemon or if i messed up setting up oclp before starting the swap but the new card would not get recognize at all. No signal on boot with the either a efi boot loaded usb drive or xanderon’s linux live usb. The lights for diagnostic leds #3/4 for the gpu and display also does not light up.

So i decided to go back to my previously working radeon 6770 first to start from scratch in case i missed something, but upon reinstalling the old card, while the imac would boot into the opencore bootpicker with a working display, if i actually pick and boot into my oclp monterey 12.6.3 partition, the mac would load about 1/4 way through the loading bar before the screen turning off, the fans ramping up and the diagnostic led #4 for the display would turn off.

I’m not really sure what to do at this point to get my mac back to booting up normally, any help would really be appreciated.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hey guys, so i’ve been trying to put a wx4150 in my imac 12,2 for almost a week now, however i donno if i just got a lemon or if i messed up setting up oclp before starting the swap but the new card would not get recognize at all. No signal on boot with the either a efi boot loaded usb drive or xanderon’s linux live usb. The lights for diagnostic leds #3/4 for the gpu and display also does not light up.

So i decided to go back to my previously working radeon 6770 first to start from scratch in case i missed something, but upon reinstalling the old card, while the imac would boot into the opencore bootpicker with a working display, if i actually pick and boot into my oclp monterey 12.6.3 partition, the mac would load about 1/4 way through the loading bar before the screen turning off, the fans ramping up and the diagnostic led #4 for the display would turn off.

I’m not really sure what to do at this point to get my mac back to booting up normally, any help would really be appreciated.

For a WX4150, #3/4 LED lit up is a good signal. It means no short circuit and the GPU is recognized by the system.
The next thing to do is flashing it with a compatible vBIOS. You need to do it remotely from another computer.
Check both posts about the GRML to know how to access the iMac remotely and command the flash.

When you go back to your Radeon HD6770m, you need to remove the OCLP and the Monterey volume first. Or simply replace the entire disk with a blank one and do Internet Recovery/Installing Mac OS from USB installer.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hello everyone, Friday and Saturday, I finished updating the second Imac 2011 21.5" with k2100m, I was thinking of updating the second with wx4150 but, since no one answers me in this forum, I played it safe, and I installed both Imacs on the k2100m. Here I leave a photograph of how the 2 ssds were, so as not to obstruct the passage of air to the GPU.
View attachment 2179250

I also wanted to tell you that I have not been able to install High Sierra from scratch, alt key, with the usb installer. If I try, the apple is eternal.

View attachment 2179251

I can't install from internet recovery either. If I try, I get an alert that it is not available.
I can only install from scratch, starting the imac with an external disk that has high sierra installed, in this way I run the installation from usb but, being inside high sierra.

I would appreciate if anyone knows if this is normal.

Right now, I have high sierra installed on a 480gb ssd without opencore, using imac brightness control, and I have windows 10 installed on a second 960gb ssd, without opencore, I run bootcamp, after installing windows. I repair audio with macrumors method.
To install windows 10, I do master boot format and fat32 on the disk where windows will be installed, and when the installation of windows 10 starts, I press shif f10 and, I run diskpart, do a clean and convert to GPT, so it installs Windows without problems and, it accepts GPU drivers.

This is normal when you do everything without opencore.

 

[mrlost]

At this very moment, I am having a party at my house, I have been at this milestone for months, and it is the first time that someone answers a question for me, I am very happy, thank you very much Nguyen Duc Hieu.
As you may notice, I don't know anything about opencore, I have read and read about opencore, and I still have a lot of doubts. I guess I'll start learning when I start using it and experimenting. Two things about experimenting, in my case the two imacs that I have, my daughters use them to study, for this reason the Imacs cannot be stopped for a long time. I am waiting for the arrival of another imac, which will be mine, and then I will be able to experiment for days and weeks, without harming my daughters. The other point about experimenting is that, by installing and uninstalling one or more operating systems many times, the ssds end up lifeless and they are not cheap.

I have one last question, does anyone know what it measures, the heatsink 2 indicator in hwmonitor? In my case, it rises to 72 degrees Celsius in red, when I demand it. And I have stopped it, for fear that it will rise more...

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

At this very moment, I am having a party at my house, I have been at this milestone for months, and it is the first time that someone answers a question for me, I am very happy, thank you very much Nguyen Duc Hieu.
As you may notice, I don't know anything about opencore, I have read and read about opencore, and I still have a lot of doubts. I guess I'll start learning when I start using it and experimenting. Two things about experimenting, in my case the two imacs that I have, my daughters use them to study, for this reason the Imacs cannot be stopped for a long time. I am waiting for the arrival of another imac, which will be mine, and then I will be able to experiment for days and weeks, without harming my daughters. The other point about experimenting is that, by installing and uninstalling one or more operating systems many times, the ssds end up lifeless and they are not cheap.

I have one last question, does anyone know what it measures, the heatsink 2 indicator in hwmonitor? In my case, it rises to 72 degrees Celsius in red, when I demand it. And I have stopped it, for fear that it will rise more...

CPU heatsink or GPU heatsink?
Either way, 72 degrees Celcius in idling is a signal that your fans are not working well.
Under load, 72 degrees is healthy, though.
However, those are just my wild guess. It will be less wild if you can attach a screenshot of of HWmonitor.

 

[mrlost]

CPU heatsink or GPU heatsink?
Either way, 72 degrees Celcius in idling is a signal that your fans are not working well.
Under load, 72 degrees is healthy, though.
However, those are just my wild guess. It will be less wild if you can attach a screenshot of of HWmonitor.

Thanks for answering. The name of the indicator is power heatsink 2. It works normally at 64 degrees, now it looks cold, just now I turned on the imac. But in demand with CinebenchR23 multi test it reaches 72 degrees, I don't know if it can rise to more than 72 degrees, I have not wanted to allow it to continue, when it reaches 72 degrees Celsius. In my other imac, in Under load, work in 58 degrees Celsius, -6 degrees Celsius.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thanks for answering. The name of the indicator is power heatsink 2. It works normally at 64 degrees, now it looks cold, just now I turned on the imac. But in demand with CinebenchR23 multi test it reaches 72 degrees, I don't know if it can rise to more than 72 degrees, I have not wanted to allow it to continue, when it reaches 72 degrees Celsius. In my other imac, in Under load, work in 58 degrees Celsius, -6 degrees Celsius.

It's still cooler than the PSU in my iMac.
I would just use it until it snaps.
Can't do anything about it anyway.

 

[Borowski]

Hello,

i would like to use the tool ATOMTableResize.
Topic&downloads: https://www.overclock.net/threads/gui-tool-atomtableresize.1686521/

Tried several machines and operating systems (from Windows 7 up to 10 and macOS Monterey), installed the latest Java, but when opening, its only asking in a new window "save as". Same when starting from command-line.
I'm sure it is only a wrong setting/permission/..., any hints?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello,

i would like to use the tool ATOMTableResize.
Topic&downloads: https://www.overclock.net/threads/gui-tool-atomtableresize.1686521/

Tried several machines and operating systems (from Windows 7 up to 10 and macOS Monterey), installed the latest Java, but when opening, its only asking in a new window "save as". Same when starting from command-line.
I'm sure it is only a wrong setting/permission/..., any hints?

Drag and drop onto the "save as dialog box" will solve all your permission problems ....Using it on macOS, only.

 

[Borowski]

Drag and drop doesn't work. It happens nothing (Windows+JRE installed).

 

[betolley]

Which Windows is it?
Which NVIDIA drivers do you use?
Does the k4100m show correctly in Device Manager?
Do you have the brightness slider available in Windows?

Usually no sleep option means something is wrong with graphics driver.

If the driver is ok, please try the following procedure:

1. Log into MacOS,
2. Click "shutdown" in the menu (not restart),
3. Start iMac with the power button,
4. Choose Windows in OC boot picker.

Does the above let you run Windows without issues?

Thank you so much. I read your message about shutting down and I found if I enter EFI shell and issue a "reset -s" when this happens the issue goes away until I reboot.

Windows 10 and 11
Driver Version:25.21.14.2678
Yes it is in the device manager and runs great. I am playing sons of the forest on it.
Yes on the slider. I did the registry edit that fixed it.

 

[mrlost]

It's still cooler than the PSU in my iMac.
I would just use it until it snaps.
Can't do anything about it anyway.

Thank you very much, I never imagined that I could measure the power supply. Do you think that it may be about to break down? It is possible that your power source is hotter, but is yours 300w, or not?

 

[Marche90]

Thank you very much, I never imagined that I could measure the power supply. Do you think that it may be about to break down? It is possible that your power source is hotter, but is yours 300w, or not?

Nah. Unless it reaches an absurd temperature (90?) I wouldn't worry about it. The PSU are made to run hot. Do use MacsFanControl to pump some air into it if it worries you.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thank you very much, I never imagined that I could measure the power supply. Do you think that it may be about to break down? It is possible that your power source is hotter, but is yours 300w, or not?

Yes, I have the 310W PSU plugged to a 220V outlet.

CPU TDP = 84W
GPU TDP =100W
LCD panel (always max brightness) = 65W
Logicboard = 5~10W
PSU 30~35W (assumed 90% efficiency)
Fans 5W x 3 = 15W

The iMac case is always hot to touch. I can't touch it for a long time.

 

[mrlost]

Nah. Unless it reaches an absurd temperature (90?) I wouldn't worry about it. The PSU are made to run hot. Do use MacsFanControl to pump some air into it if it worries you.

Yes, I have the 310W PSU plugged to a 220V outlet.

CPU TDP = 84W
GPU TDP =100W
LCD panel (always max brightness) = 65W
Logicboard = 5~10W
PSU 30~35W (assumed 90% efficiency)
Fans 5W x 3 = 15W

The iMac case is always hot to touch. I can't touch it for a long time.

Thank you very much, I feel much calmer. I'm really happy with the upgrade of both imacs. It only remains to perform a delid on the I7 2600s and, surely, this will also help to lower the temperature of the power supply.

I also have the brightness at maximum power, but only on MacOs, I am using the mac brightness control app, because windows does give brightness control, and for this reason, windows is colder.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Thank you very much, I feel much calmer. I'm really happy with the upgrade of both imacs. It only remains to perform a delid on the I7 2600s and, surely, this will also help to lower the temperature of the power supply.

I also have the brightness at maximum power, but only on MacOs, I am using the mac brightness control app, because windows does give brightness control, and for this reason, windows is colder.

Jesus, please install OC through OCLP app to regain brightness control with the K2100M in your iMac. You are deliberately running the LCD hot. And get used to install Windows in UEFI mode. The legacy EFI is broken in so many ways, there is a good technical reason why Apple never supported W10 on these machines.

Note:
It is really frustrating to experience how the knowledge gathered in a few years got quickly buried in this chat. Everything has been documented. Everything can be ignored - and it will be ignored.

 

[Tom.Tom]

Thank you so much. I read your message about shutting down and I found if I enter EFI shell and issue a "reset -s" when this happens the issue goes away until I reboot.

Interesting. I have to try this for my case, where I'm getting Windows booted with no display.

Windows 10 and 11
Driver Version:25.21.14.2678
Yes it is in the device manager and runs great. I am playing sons of the forest on it.
Yes on the slider. I did the registry edit that fixed it.

Ok then, so does this reset -s solve your problem with sleep function?