My (mid)2011 21.5" Apple iMac - 12,1
Upgraded
- 2TB HDD in original HD bay for Plex movies, photos, music etc replacing original HDD(thunderstorm death)
- 500GB SSD connected to second SATA 3.0 port with new cable replacing ODD (DVD drive stopped working a while back)< dual booting macOS Sonoma and Windows 11 home n
- Increased RAM to 20GB (2x8GB+2x2GB)
- Replaced original i5 2.7GHz CPU with a i7 2.8
- Replaced the original Radeon 6770M 512MB graphics card with an AMD FirePro M5100 2GB
Everything went surprisingly well considering my lack of experience.
The whole project/experiment snowballed and I became obsessed from just wanting to view 15 years of photo's of the kids growing up on the iMac I've had since new, to a big bloody journey.
I hadn't used the Mac much in the last 5 years as the HDD had been fried in a thunderstorm.
Thought I'd replace the HDD about 3 years ago with the 2TB HDD just to try get it going again. Restored from a TM backup. Hardly used it after that, was painfully slow and the fan on full tit was kind of annoying (eventually found out about the HDD temp sensor thing). The kids played a bit of Roblox on it apart from that it gathered dust. It also started having a problem where it was trying to update High Sierra but was stuck in a loop so didn't bother with it for another year or 2.
FF to the end of last year I had some time on my hands so thought I'd tinker with the old girl and managed to break the update loop by putting in safe mode and went on to fixing the issue (dunno how).
I also realised how outdated and old the computer and OS actually was now so did some digging around online and came across the brilliant Open Core Patcher so applied the patch and installed Big Sur. Then me, always taking things one step too far by pushing onto Monterey ended up crashing the system somehow, got an SOS alarm beeping upon every startup for a solid day or 2 and finding no help online, apart from reading about the diagnostic lights on the logic board so having nothing to lose at that stage I reached for the screwdriver.
I discovered the lights were all working after plugging in with screen off (apart from the screen indicator light), so that was good, 'then' I realised, it hadn't made the obnoxious SOS bleating alarm. Somehow me pulling the screen off and poking around inside it fixed the problem.
That had to be a sign. So away I went again, and decided I'd breath a bit more life into her and wacked in a new SSD and replaced 2 2GB RAM sticks with 2 8GB. That made a big difference. I then found out about the 2nd Sata 3.0 port so me being me wasn't going to settle for boring old Sata 2.0 speeds, ordered the new cable (hastily) and discovered I'd got the wrong one after pulling the MotherBoard out...so made sure and ordered the right one after that.
Monterey worked pretty good and looked great, so thought what hell I might as well try out Sonoma (skipped Ventura). I discovered photos weren't displaying full size in the new Photos app and found out the graphics card was incompatible with the new OS because of not having metal capabilities.. ..so down the wormhole of graphics card upgrading I went and ended up here.
Honestly, I tried to read the first page but got to this sentence : "There is a most compatible card, the M4000/M5100/W5170M" and thought meh, that's good enough for me I'll take the M5100 at a decent price, to go, thanks Aliexpress (I also ordered the CPU from AE too). So feeling pretty good about myself while I waited for the card to arrive I had a bit of space to fill so did some more reading and thought it wise, with limited abilities, to formulate a plan for installing the new GPU whence I went on to continue reading the first page of this thread and encounter the heart sinking moment by being slapped back to reality with the bold red sentence :
Sleep and wake, and cold boot is broken in iMac12,x 2011 system. Needs a PRAM reset on each cold boot - DO NOT USE IN 2011 iMac12,x systems. This problem does not depend on the BIOS in use, so even with an EFI BIOS the very same problems will show up!
And then this from the AliExpress seller directly below the buy now and also red in bright lettering :
Tests:
- iMac12,2: sleep/wake broken - black screen on cold boot needs PRAM reset each time
- iMac12,1: sleep/wake broken - black screen on cold boot needs PRAM reset each time
Too late to change my order for a WX 4130, a few hours after ordering : " Sorry, order shipped already" ffs.
Oh well I thought, too late to cry like a little girl. So I desperately scoured these pages in hope of finding something to put my pathetic mind at ease and found this : post
#19,059 from madvinegar and suddenly there was renewed hope.
Anyway to cut a long story short I put the CPU in that night the day they arrived, got beeping code after turning back on turned out just needed to put the RAM back in and then reseat it properly.
On the following day after trying to learn all that morning how to SSH incase I ended up with a blank screen or something, I decided to take the plunge. Installing was easy by that point as I'd already removed the logic board about 3 or 4 times, so after thoroughly cleaning the inside of my iMac, pulling the fans out and apart etc I put it all back together booted it in the guts and away she went, such a relief to hear the chime and see the apple.
So I signed in with password checked the settings, it said something like Radeon xxx 50MB. It was working but not as it should by any stretch. The graphics had stopped partially glitching that it used to do, but honestly it was performing like a not very funny joke.
Played around with OCLP still nothing, card wasn't recognised only said something like 50MB under 'About this Mac'. Also had to boot in safe mode otherwise I got a yellow screen.
I inquired reluctantly on this thread and got a coupleple of replies (ty). Someone mentioned this
#21,636 about following a specific sequence to build and install OC so I tried that and installed a new OS on a external HD but it was the same thing after booting in, card not recognised etc..shut down.
Ended booting up the main internal drive a while later and whallah it was working like a rock star. It would sometimes say in 'about Mac'- Radeon Wxxxx 2GB - something like that, but aways works perfectly, no graphical glitching, no sleep/wake issues, brightness control works perfectly, photos displaying perfectly in photos app, not 1 performance issue.
I also installed Windows 11 just to add another set of challenges, was a little tricky getting installed. Lots of BSOD's took a while to get it working smoothly. Installing the right drivers took some patience, and finding files that would cause the plethora of 'blue screens of death' that Windows seems to delight in handing out. Also little things like Apple bluetooth mouse and keyboard needed configuring to work with both OS's without having to disconnect then reconnect when going from one OS to the other, scroll direction on mouse etc. Windows 11 now works smooth as custard, better on the iMac than the near new HP laptop.
Only issue is when it goes to sleep and I wake it up with the mouse or keyboard it just restarts, which is also really quick. I could install windows 11 in my sleep now, I've had that many goes at it. Either MCTI or Rufus both work.
I also ended up installing MacOS 14.4 beta to try to fix an issue I had after forcing a restart where I was getting the same message that the computer shut down because of a problem... everytime I went into macOS.
-Didn't fix it.. and I lost wifi and bluetooth connection, but soon found the solution to fix both.
I also screwed up my EFI partition a couple of times which was touch and go but luckily found ways to boot up again.
I've attached some pics.
Thanks for reading. If there's anything I can help anyone else out with I'd be happy to lend a hand.