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

[beblack568]

Some news for all tired of reading documentation:

- RX480 will not boot in the iMac12,2 at all
- GTX880M and K5100 lost macOS support with Monterey and have great problems with Ventura - the time has come to say good bye to NVIDIA, often only crappy old expensive cards
- M6100 will not work properly in iMac12,2
- most powerful fully working option is WX 7100 8GB
- most powerful option is the RX 5500 XT 8GB (Catalina, Big Sur and only Monterey right now, Ventura work in progress)

I just read RX 480 wont boot on iMac 12,2 on OP so is a no go then.
GTX 1070 and PXXXX are no go now since i dont want to stay with High Sierra.

so... I am about to purchase WX7100. I also read AMD works a lot better than Nvidia and are more "plug&play" and natively supported but i did not find any RX5500 on sale.

 

[dannieboiz]

Some news for all tired of reading documentation:

- RX480 will not boot in the iMac12,2 at all
- GTX880M and K5100 lost macOS support with Monterey and have great problems with Ventura - the time has come to say good bye to NVIDIA, often only crappy old expensive cards
- M6100 will not work properly in iMac12,2
- most powerful fully working option is WX 7100 8GB
- most powerful option is the RX 5500 XT 8GB (Catalina, Big Sur and only Monterey right now, Ventura work in progress)

I have an m5100 in the mail was hoping to use it with Ventura, does this mean it's a n o go?

 

[maccoops]

I have an m5100 in the mail was hoping to use it with Ventura, does this mean it's a n o go?

If it's a 12,1 or 12,2 (2011) no, it won't work properly. Take a good look at the post 1, read it all and read the posts that are linked to from it. I'm a noob, just done an upgrade and found myself reading and re-reading here. I still missed that you need one of the later AMD cards for Ventura in a 2011 iMac. Good luck!

 

[madvinegar]

So, I just started from scratch with a different USB stick checking to make sure FAT32 + GPT are correct.
Copied the commands from above, sadly no change.
Could the chip be removed and replaced ? Maybe this ones had it ?
I think I've seen them for sale.
I have an original BIOS from my first attempt, I might try to put that back on, see if that works.
I'd appreciate anymore options you may know of.
Cheers.

The error message you get is like you have a gtx 765m and you are trying to flash the bios of a k2100m...

GTX765m id is 10DE: 11E7 (GK106 M)
K2100m id is 10DE: 11FC (GK106 GLM)

 

[maccoops]

The error message you get is like you have a gtx 765m and you are trying to flash the bios of a k2100m...

GTX765m id is 10DE: 11E7 (GK106 M)
K2100m id is 10DE: 11FC (GK106 GLM)

I think so too. It looks to me like the user has got things confused and is trying to flash the GPU in the wrong machine altogther.

 

[KipsDirtyWang]

Thanks for the help guys, I'm gonna get onto the dude I bought this from on eBay.

 

[KipsDirtyWang]

I think so too. It looks to me like the user has got things confused and is trying to flash the GPU in the wrong machine altogther.

Could you explain a bit more there dude, I can't see how I've gone so wrong ?
As far as I can tell I've been sold the wrong GPU. Or am I missing something else here ?

 

[maccoops]

Could you explain a bit more there dude, I can't see how I've gone so wrong ?
As far as I can tell I've been sold the wrong GPU. Or am I missing something else here ?

I was thinking the GTX765m is in another machine on your network or something but looking again it's even more mysterious: The GTX765M seems to be a more powerful GPU in which case you could hang on to it and consider it a bargain if you paid a K2100M for it .... but .... the GTX765M is a MXM-B interface whereas K2100M is MXM-A, so I'm questioning which interface you have on your iMac? If you have MXM-B (3 pipes) then maybe you should keep that GTX765M. But obviously you'll need to flash the correct BIOS to it and make sure you're OK with any differences between it and the K2100M you thought you were buying.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Could you explain a bit more there dude, I can't see how I've gone so wrong ?
As far as I can tell I've been sold the wrong GPU. Or am I missing something else here ?

From your first post, you said that you had flashed the card with a chip programmer.
If the vBIOS file in that step was a wrong one, it would messed up all things afterward.
Perhaps you should try flashing back the original HP Vbios, and try again another K2100m vBIOS.
From you actual photo of the card, the model number carved on the GPU chip proves that it is a Quadro K2100m.

 

[Ka3yc]

Hi, I bought 880 8gb, tried both bios for it, and have a boot screen, nice test in FurMark in Win boot camp, no problem with Aida64 stress test, but any time when I try to launch game or benchmark like 3D mark or Valley, after 5-10 seconds macOS crushed to login screen. Can anybody help, please?
GTX 880M from MSI GT60.
iMac 27 mid 2011

 

[dannieboiz]

If it's a 12,1 or 12,2 (2011) no, it won't work properly. Take a good look at the post 1, read it all and read the posts that are linked to from it. I'm a noob, just done an upgrade and found myself reading and re-reading here. I still missed that you need one of the later AMD cards for Ventura in a 2011 iMac. Good luck!

for the price of these newer cards, might as well buy a new imac

 

[maccoops]

for the price of these newer cards, might as well buy a new imac

I found it an interesting challenge to replace the GPU and at £30 for a K2100M it seems economical - especially as my iMac was very reasonably priced. My view is a reasonable investment like this (together with SSD) should pay off in order to revive a sickly device and then sell it as a working one, or give it another couple of years of service.

 

[maccoops]

Well done and congrats!
It is encouraging to see this post now, as I am doing the exact same more or less with my iMac 12,2. Mine is completely disassembled awaiting arrival of GPU (K2100M) and BCM94331CD. Might do CPU while I am here, and bios battery is on order as well. I installed and successfully tested an SDD during the disassembly process. I just hope that I can remember how to put it all back together in a week's time!
Did you have any problems with getting all those cables plugged back in? I'm worried about getting the logic board installed without trapping something behind it to be honest.
Also how was the application of the thermal paste? I'm worried about the having the right amount of paste on the memory modules.

My iMac 12,2 is now just awaiting soldering of the new BT(/wifi) module and will then have display put back in for final testing. The GPU was upgraded, the hard disk was replaced with SSD and I also replaced the PRAM battery while the device was open. And a whole bunch was dust was vacuumed out! I powered on (boots very quickly!), have SSH'd in and screenshared as well, and was able to run the unigine valley test without any heat problems.

I had flashed the GPU using a clip programmer, this was surprisingly easy once I had bought the correct equipment and just guessed how to put it together! I put an X of Arctic MX4 paste on the GPU, and covered the surface of each VRAM chip with a thick coating of K5. Hopefully this will be OK! I also needed to peel off a metallic X shape off the other side of the GPU card in order for the iMac clamp to fit. This required quite a bit of force so I am hoping that the stress I put into the card does not create problems later. Fitting the logic board back in to the iMac was quite straightforward and I found the Apple documentation quite helpful here, as they recommend using tape to secure the various wires prior to reinstalling the logic board.

I haven't been able to get an external monitor working yet (just see "no signal" on the monitor) so I am hoping that this is not a sign of a deeper problem.

 

[KipsDirtyWang]

Hi guys, thanks for the help so far.
I did contact the seller and he's adamant he only has K2100 cards for sale. I do believe I have one.
So the 1st time I tried to flash the BIOS was with the USB method. I only bought the chip programer as I thought it was going solve the problem. The programer clip made a connection and I did save the original BIOS. But I'm unable to get that back on as I've tried to do that yesterday. I will look for the original HP vbios and see how that goes.
Thanks for the reply Nguyen Duc Hieu, I'll go back and try your suggestions.
I was thinking on what Maccoops posted and wondered if the firmware on the iMac could be old. I think It came with Lion OS. There was a SSD in place of the original HDD. I'm probably wrong but I'm sure I read that you needed High Sierra & a mechanical HDD for the firmware update to show ? Maybe that never took place ?
If that would even affect it ?
Also, this iMac looked like it came from a war zone when it arrived. I've taken the board and popped it into another machine which I already had here. Could that cause an issue ?
Sorry this is going on a bit
I appreciate the help.

 

[dannieboiz]

I found it an interesting challenge to replace the GPU and at £30 for a K2100M it seems economical - especially as my iMac was very reasonably priced. My view is a reasonable investment like this (together with SSD) should pay off in order to revive a sickly device and then sell it as a working one, or give it another couple of years of service.

I say any card sub $50 is worth doing. I'm seeing cards that are selling for 200-300 to put on a machine that's worth maybe $200.

With that said, here's a k1100m that I found should this work?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I say any card sub $50 is worth doing. I'm seeing cards that are selling for 200-300 to put on a machine that's worth maybe $200.

With that said, here's a k1100m that I found should this work?

View attachment 2196937 View attachment 2196939

If your K1100m is working, then it will function well in iMac 2011. I used to have one.

 

[internetzel]

hi
I wrote to the seller to send me the original bios. Can you add imac support? for windows
just don't change anything else. only support for imac windows. thanks

There are four VBIOS images in that zip file - which one is the original one for your card?

 

[zzy159]

I changed a W5170M graphics card to my 2011imac, and successfully flashed vbios and drivers, but there is a strange problem, every time after a cold start, it shows that the graphics card model is HD7XXX, and it shows W5170M after restarting, passed the geek6 test, the performance it's the same

 

[Fauxly]

There are four VBIOS images in that zip file - which one is the original one for your card?

I don’t even know, this is all that the seller sent me. I wrote to the seller if you have the original bios
I changed bios and overclocked it, changed voltage on gpu. I also want to change the voltage on the memory used your bios
testing overclocked bios

 

[madvinegar]

I have an m5100 in the mail was hoping to use it with Ventura, does this mean it's a n o go?

I use an m5100 with Ventura.
Works nicely. Only two problems. You lose sleep (so you need to deactivate it because the iMac does not wake up from sleep), and some times you may experience some graphical issues during boot and you would need to restart. But this does not happen often.

 

[s3eker]

hello guys, I have iMac 27 inch 2010 (iMac 11,3) with Mac OS el capitan. I bought Nvidia K2100 with flashed firmware from the seller. when I install the vga, it's black screen but normal on external display. the seller suggest me to create usb disk and copy the Efi, but maybe I'm doing wrong so it's still black screen. I tried reset nvram and smc and now it's only chime (chime loop in some minutes). nothing on external display too. I try to install original vga but it's the same. I read first post and some other post but I cannot find solution for this. please help.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Hi
what about the diagnostic leds?

 

[s3eker]

3 leds on when I remove the lcd. I think it’s fine

 

[ZenSurfeur]

You must have the 4 leds to get something on screen

 

[ZenSurfeur]

I use an m5100 with Ventura.
Works nicely. Only two problems. You lose sleep (so you need to deactivate it because the iMac does not wake up from sleep), and some times you may experience some graphical issues during boot and you would need to restart. But this does not happen often.

I got this Video card too and ventura 13.3.1 works fine with OCLP 0,65 no problems at all