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

[Jforte]

Hi,

If I have an iMac 2011 27 inch and want to upgrade it with an Nvidia Quadro K3100M GPU do I have the change the heatsink?

Thanks in advance folks.

The most important post here is post #1… read it.
You can find out What kind of heatsink do you have just by taking off your screen… you’ll need the 3 cooper heatsink. (Or see What gpu do you have now, for instance if it is the AMD HD 6970m 1024mb, you definitely have it). You must mod it.

 

[rthpjm]

Hi all,
I've got a mid-2010 27 inch iMac, and I wanted to upgrade the GPU on it. As such, I purchased an Nvidia Quadro K3100M, and also a 3 pipe heatsink. I installed High Sierra on an internal SSD, which upgraded the firmware on the iMac to the latest. I modified the 3 pipe heatsink, and installed it the K3100M.

The K3100M came from a HP machine, so I imagine it has no VBIOS installed.
When booting, I get a chime, and then the mac reboots. I've taken out the GPU, reset the PRAM 3 times, and re-installed the K3100M. The chime-reboot cycles returned. I can reset PRAM with the K3100M installed, however only the first 2 LEDs light up on the main board.

The Mac does not finish booting from the internal SSD (has Screen sharing, remote login turned on), nor does it boot from the GRML USB I created, with the SSD disconnected. The mac behaves as normal with the old GPU, and passes ASD EFI and ASD OS.

Am I having issues because of the lack of VBIOS on the HP card? Or is there potentially another issue, am I missing something?

Many thanks for your help.

Hello @romanboy

if you want to start from an HP VBIOS (to ensure compatibility), check out my post #19670 in this thread. I walk through the process of finding an HP Service Pack, and then extracting the video BIOS. The toolset is Linux-based, I used a raspberry Pi but any Linux distro should work (in a virtual machine maybe).

Or you could just try to use the published VBIOS for that type of card…

 

[romanboy]

1> Boot loop may be the result of a defective card, or short circuit because components on the card touching the heatsink. Search this thread again with "boot-loop" and K3100m issues to see if others have solution for similar case. I haven't try a K3100m yet.
I remember others have successfully overcome the boot loop issue by detaching the wifi card or bluetooth card from their iMac 2011.

2> There are 2 type of adapter (PCIe X16 to MXM), one for nVidia, and one 1 AMD.
Check the link below. They are not cheap.

Eurocom MXM-to-PCIe x16 adapter lets you put a laptop GPU inside of a desktop PC

In what is essentially an eGPU docking station in reverse, the Eurocom Riser card allows users to install laptop MXM3 graphics cards directly onto their desktop PCIe slots. The product is aimed at professionals and workstation environments for specialized SFF PCs rather than a home office.

www.notebookcheck.net

The cheapo PCie x1 to MXM adapter will be more miss than hit. If you don't mind spending 10$ or less to try your luck, then they are all over the internet.

3> The vBIOS chip of K3100m is on the lower left corner of the GPU chip side. Normally you can see a letter M on it.
Google Quadro K3100 BIOS chip and you can find compatible chip.

But remember, the boot-loop is caused by the whole card, not by the incompatible vBIOS. So even if you successfully program the vBIOS on to the chip, your iMac might still boot-looping.

Good point on #1. I'll double check the card seating. I've covered the back X-clamp in some tape, as some of the surface mounted components were touching the X-clamp, but there may be something else.

#2 yeah, I don't want to spend too much money on a PCI-e to MXM adapter, as I'll likely only use it for flashing this one card, maybe one more in the future.

#3, many thanks, I'll have a look.

Hello @romanboy

if you want to start from an HP VBIOS (to ensure compatibility), check out my post #19670 in this thread. I walk through the process of finding an HP Service Pack, and then extracting the video BIOS. The toolset is Linux-based, I used a raspberry Pi but any Linux distro should work (in a virtual machine maybe).

Or you could just try to use the published VBIOS for that type of card…

good post, I'll go through it, thanks for sharing.

 

[romanboy]

Good point on #1. I'll double check the card seating. I've covered the back X-clamp in some tape, as some of the surface mounted components were touching the X-clamp, but there may be something else.

#2 yeah, I don't want to spend too much money on a PCI-e to MXM adapter, as I'll likely only use it for flashing this one card, maybe one more in the future.

#3, many thanks, I'll have a look.






good post, I'll go through it, thanks for sharing.

So i disconnected the camera, the bluetooth and the WiFi, and I tried to boot, still got the boot-loop. I then had the idea to boot into Safe mode. This worked, I can connect via both SSH and VNC (apple screen sharing). The GPU gets recognised as an Nvidia Chip Model. That means it works, right? Still no image on intrenal display, and nothing on external display either. I will try to re-create the GRML USB again, and try to boot from it. Wish me luck!

 

[romanboy]

So i disconnected the camera, the bluetooth and the WiFi, and I tried to boot, still got the boot-loop. I then had the idea to boot into Safe mode. This worked, I can connect via both SSH and VNC (apple screen sharing). The GPU gets recognised as an Nvidia Chip Model. That means it works, right? Still no image on intrenal display, and nothing on external display either. I will try to re-create the GRML USB again, and try to boot from it. Wish me luck!

Managed to flash the firmware, internal screen works fine, everything seems to work fine. I need to fix brightness, but I think this iMac will be really good for my dad. He's retired now, and needs a bigger screen for his ageing eyes. Thanks everyone for your help, much appreciated!

 

[goncaloaraujo]

Hello everybody
I just bought a Nvidia K4100M and put it in my old Imac 27 Late 2009.
At beggining it didn't turn on. Turned on the fans and no image.😥
After 1 month, I tried again and it turned on normally.

I noticed right from the start that it was very slow. It was impossible to work with him. Then I made a patch update of the Catalina mod system. Since then it has improved a lot, but it continues with a performance much lower than my old Radeon.

I already looked for drivers for Nvidia, but I didn't find anything. I've looked here on the Forum and can't find a solution. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this?

I didn't made any bios flash because the seller said it should be 100% compatible, it was bought in Aliexpress.


I also put a 3 pipe heatsink.

 

[Quinten07]

Hello everybody
I just bought a Nvidia K4100M and put it in my old Imac 27 Late 2009.
At beggining it didn't turn on. Turned on the fans and no image.😥
After 1 month, I tried again and it turned on normally.

I noticed right from the start that it was very slow. It was impossible to work with him. Then I made a patch update of the Catalina mod system. Since then it has improved a lot, but it continues with a performance much lower than my old Radeon.

I already looked for drivers for Nvidia, but I didn't find anything. I've looked here on the Forum and can't find a solution. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this?

I didn't made any bios flash because the seller said it should be 100% compatible, it was bought in Aliexpress.


I also put a 3 pipe heatsink.

That is because you did not read the first post correctly and used the dosdude patcher for you Catalina install. You should use open core legacy patcher since this correctly configures the OS for your system. Dosdude removes Nvidia drivers and installs legacy drivers for your IMac since it assumes you have a AMD 4850 installed.

 

[goncaloaraujo]

That is because you did not read the first post correctly and used the dosdude patcher for you Catalina install. You should use open core legacy patcher since this correctly configures the OS for your system. Dosdude removes Nvidia drivers and installs legacy drivers for your IMac since it assumes you have a AMD 4850 installed.

Thanks Quinten07, but I bought the grafic just like that, I didn't did anything, just put it inside the Imac.

"open core legacy patcher" - is this a difficult thing to do?

You´re talking of this, right?

Thanks

 

[romanboy]

I wanted to update the Geekbench Metal and Valley scores, with my 2010 27 inch, i7-870 and K3100M GPU, however I think in the form for Valley OpenGL I entered K3100M as a K4100M. I submitted another entry, this time correct as a K3100M, FPS 41.6, score of 1739. So please delete the entry with the K4100M FPS 41.6, score of 1739, it is incorrect.

The timestamp of the incorrect entry is 6/2/2023 6:19:56.

 

[Quinten07]

Thanks Quinten07, but I bought the grafic just like that, I didn't did anything, just put it inside the Imac.

"open core legacy patcher" - is this a difficult thing to do?

You´re talking of this, right?

Thanks

I understand you just put it in the IMac, hardware wise that is fine. But software wise you need the correct version of MacOS. that is indeed the open core installer but you will need to do a clean install for the drivers to work properly. Just flash a usb drive with Bigger, Monterey or Ventura using OCLP and install it to your Mac (Ventura is not recommend for Kepler cards).

 

[goncaloaraujo]

Ok, thanks. That's what I tought.

I'm doing just right now a USB flash with Monterey 12.6.6 - OCLP

Hope all works

Thanks

 

[The_Croupier]

I understand you just put it in the IMac, hardware wise that is fine. But software wise you need the correct version of MacOS. that is indeed the open core installer but you will need to do a clean install for the drivers to work properly. Just flash a usb drive with Bigger, Monterey or Ventura using OCLP and install it to your Mac (Ventura is not recommend for Kepler cards).

Actually he did the right thing and installed Catalina with dosdude patcher as OCLP does not support Catalina.
What he failed to do was uncheck legacy graphics while performing post instal patches.

 

[The_Croupier]

Hello everybody
I just bought a Nvidia K4100M and put it in my old Imac 27 Late 2009.
At beggining it didn't turn on. Turned on the fans and no image.😥
After 1 month, I tried again and it turned on normally.

I noticed right from the start that it was very slow. It was impossible to work with him. Then I made a patch update of the Catalina mod system. Since then it has improved a lot, but it continues with a performance much lower than my old Radeon.

I already looked for drivers for Nvidia, but I didn't find anything. I've looked here on the Forum and can't find a solution. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this?

I didn't made any bios flash because the seller said it should be 100% compatible, it was bought in Aliexpress.


I also put a 3 pipe heatsink.

Boot into the dosdude Catalina install USB, under post instal patches unselect legacy graphics card patch and apply, reboot and all should be good.

 

[goncaloaraujo]

@The_Croupier is better to do a clean install and update to Monterey. Or just leave Catalina and unselect legacy?

Thanks

 

[The_Croupier]

Up to you. If you want Apple TV app to work and prefer a more traditional Mac OS operating environment stay with Dosdude Catalina otherwise update.

 

[The_Croupier]

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Nick[D]vB Bios for the K1100m doesn’t suffer from the color depth issue?

 

[vkd]

Does anyone have contact for Nikey22 that they could send me in a PM? I have his BIOS flashed in my K2100M but the problem is it flashes intermittently if the GPU Heatsink temp goes above 50ºC. I PM'd him on here already but he's not responding.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Does anyone have contact for Nikey22 that they could send me in a PM? I have his BIOS flashed in my K2100M but the problem is it flashes intermittently if the GPU Heatsink temp goes above 50ºC. I PM'd him on here already but he's not responding.

Probably not VBIOS issue, likely bad GPU. Those K2100Ms and the Kepler GPUs around that series are hit or miss. I own.... 12? and only 4 work.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Actually he did the right thing and installed Catalina with dosdude patcher as OCLP does not support Catalina.
What he failed to do was uncheck legacy graphics while performing post instal patches.

No, he clearly did not!

I do not know if the wording on the first post has any room for misinterpretation.

Using an AMD card on iMac11,x models does not need any patching with Mojave or Catalina or even Big Sur.
BT & WiFi & LAN is managed via OpenCore injection, everything else is running completely unpatched.
With Monterey you need WiFi post install patching.

AirPlay (to AppleTV) is working on AMD with Mojave and Catalina only.
AppleTV (app) is working with every AMD card even on Monterey, possibly even on Ventura. No time to check this out.

 

[Mark.g4]

hi there,
i have an old imac 27 i3
with 5650 2010 model year.
I'am happy and i use it also as target monitor.
But now I've found this thread and it's gone monkey in my brain for an upgrade.
I have no doubts about the CPU i7 870, but about the GPU I have several, especially because spending $150 on this old machine doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.

This topic is an incredible source of information, I read the first page quickly and plan to read it again later calmly.
I would like to ask you who have experience in this regard, if it is possible to upgrade the video card, keeping costs low and perhaps, if possible, avoiding flashing the GPU.
I would like to stay under $100 for CPU and GPU is this possible?

 

[The_Croupier]

No, he clearly did not!

I do not know if the wording on the first post has any room for misinterpretation.

Using an AMD card on iMac11,x models does not need any patching with Mojave or Catalina or even Big Sur.
BT & WiFi & LAN is managed via OpenCore injection, everything else is running completely unpatched.
With Monterey you need WiFi post install patching.

AirPlay (to AppleTV) is working on AMD with Mojave and Catalina only.
AppleTV (app) is working with every AMD card even on Monterey, possibly even on Ventura. No time to check this out.

Considering he’s using a Kepler card and not a AMD I think he did the did the right thing.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Considering he’s using a Kepler card and not a AMD I think he did the did the right thing.

Please read the documentation carefully, again. If you find misleading information point it out.
Neither AMD nor NVIDIA equipped iMac9,1+iMac10,1+iMac11,x need the dosdude1 patcher.

P.S.:
Do you have any different experience to share here?
An NVIDIA card is simply a poor choice on such systems. AliExpress resellers may disagree.

 

[dorninko]

I can only assume it is a question of older version of Metal that became deprecated in Ventura. All cards from your signature are Metal v1 cards. I have newer Polaris (Metal 2) card in my iMac but I do not have Ventura installed to check it.

Hello Gagarin,
thanks for the reply, it is a strange behaviour, I hope that updates in Ventura might help. I did not know that there are v1 and v2 metal cards, what is the difference? which are v2 cards?
If I can find a v2 card I will try and check if the problem still exists.

Thanks again and I am hoping for some more reply, seems that this does not affect many...

 

[John099]

Brave of you to disrespect the Apple gods! You are probably banned from the apple store now lol

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello Gagarin,
thanks for the reply, it is a strange behaviour, I hope that updates in Ventura might help. I did not know that there are v1 and v2 metal cards, what is the difference? which are v2 cards?
If I can find a v2 card I will try and check if the problem still exists.

Thanks again and I am hoping for some more reply, seems that this does not affect many...

Check this interesting blog post. If you translate this to the cards tested and listed here on the first post:

NVIDIA Kepler: Metal 1
AMD GCN1-4: Metal 2
AMD NAVI (RX 5500 XT): Metal 3