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dfranetic

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2020
250
345
I think the 2700K crashes MacOs, or at least it did on High Sierra... It will probably work fine on Windows/Linux.

Edit: there was a workaround about manually removing some kext, probably not worth the hassle if you plan to use MacOs.
I have had no problems using an i7-2700K in an (GPU upgraded) 27' 2011 iMac. I never tried High Sierra on that machine, though. (Of course, the price of an i7-2700K is ridiculous when compared to an i7-2600... I managed to score a bargain.)
 
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KNz

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2022
10
6
I have had no problems using an i7-2700K in an (GPU upgraded) 27' 2011 iMac. I never tried High Sierra on that machine, though. (Of course, the price of an i7-2700K is ridiculous when compared to an i7-2600... I managed to score a bargain.)
On what macos did you get that result ? Can you share a screenshot ? What are the temps under full load ?
 

m0bil

macrumors 6502
Sep 29, 2020
452
522
I have had no problems using an i7-2700K in an (GPU upgraded) 27' 2011 iMac. I never tried High Sierra on that machine, though. (Of course, the price of an i7-2700K is ridiculous when compared to an i7-2600... I managed to score a bargain.)
good to know :)

I never tried one myself, but recall many posts in the past (maybe not even HS but older versions of MacOS) about people trying it and having problems whit OS boot:


@KNz The 3770 would be a very nice upgrade (lower TDP and around 15% faster), but being Ivy Bridge currently does not work (unknown reasons) on the 2011 iMacs.
 
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dfranetic

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2020
250
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On what macos did you get that result ? Can you share a screenshot ? What are the temps under full load ?
Big Sur and now Monterey (via OCLP). I can't make a screenshot now. The temps are the same as with other 95W CPUs for that iMac, ie. as hot as Apple lets them cook. ;) (Do not use those 95W CPUs instead of 65W counterparts in 21.5' machines...)
 

coleshores

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2022
7
4
True, and an M1 would run circles around an upgraded 2011 iMac. That said, some folks like to tinker, some folks already have a 2011 iMac, and you can upgrade one piece at a time. You can also reliably run other OSes on the 2011.
Even then. An entry level $699 Mac mini gets you 8GB Ram, 256GB storage and 2.3TF GPU(Shared Ram). With my setup, I have 32GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, weaker CPU and 1.8TF GPU(4GB DDR5). The ancient Sandy Bridge CPU handles literally anything I throw at it and the GPU with Davinci Resolve renders all on the GPU.
$100 for 32GB ram
$42 for 512GB SSD
$120 for GPU
It's still more cost effective to upgrade a machine than replace it especially when using Linux, and it helps cut down on eWaste.
 
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profcutter

macrumors 68000
Mar 28, 2019
1,548
1,296
Even then. An entry level $699 Mac mini gets you 8GB Ram, 256GB storage and 2.3TF GPU(Shared Ram). With my setup, I have 32GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, weaker CPU and 1.8TF GPU(4GB DDR5). The ancient Sandy Bridge CPU handles literally anything I throw at it and the GPU with Davinci Resolve renders all on the GPU.
$100 for 32GB ram
$42 for 512GB SSD
$120 for GPU
It's still more cost effective to upgrade a machine than replace it especially when using Linux, and it helps cut down on eWaste.
Agreed. I think keeping machines out of the e-waste chain is an honorable practice. Intel did us a real favor by not innovating for so long, it gave all our machines impressive longevity!
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,133
14,562
New Hampshire
Even then. An entry level $699 Mac mini gets you 8GB Ram, 256GB storage and 2.3TF GPU(Shared Ram). With my setup, I have 32GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, weaker CPU and 1.8TF GPU(4GB DDR5). The ancient Sandy Bridge CPU handles literally anything I throw at it and the GPU with Davinci Resolve renders all on the GPU.
$100 for 32GB ram
$42 for 512GB SSD
$120 for GPU
It's still more cost effective to upgrade a machine than replace it especially when using Linux, and it helps cut down on eWaste.

I bought a 2010 iMac 27, i7 1 TB HDD, 8 GB RAM for $100 two weeks ago. Added 16 GB of RAM and SSD and it's great.

You also get a nice display, speakers, videocamera, microphones, SD card reader, DVD drive and no cable clutter.
 
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capuzino

macrumors regular
Jun 10, 2013
137
59
Finland
I have already upgrade my 2011 21.5in i5 to a wx4150 and replaced the internal hard disk with an SSD, it runs great! Would it be possible to upgrade the CPU to a Xeon E3-1270 or would I run in to power and TDP constraints or would there be too much power draw and the temps be too high for workstation and gaming use? I don't need sleep. I plan to just have the screen turn off after 10 minutes of inactivity and power off at night.
Thanks in advance!

I recently updated my 21,5" 2011 iMac with the Xeon E3-1270. It works great so far.

According to Intel Power Gadget, the CPU's power consumption has never gone above 68W. Though if I'm running something intensive like video encoding the CPU will run at 3,3GHz instead of the rated 3,4GHz, the max temperature being 86℃ but averaging at 80℃ after CPU fan starts running at full speed. Your mileage might vary.

I also have Quadro K2100M gpu which seems to be slightly (5W) more power hungry than WX4150
 
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coleshores

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2022
7
4
I ended up deciding to stick with my i5 2400S for now since it seems to only be about 6% bottleneck on the CPU when paired with that GPU(WX4150). I'm not going to nitpick over 4 Frames out of 60 when tied to a single thread, that is pretty balanced.
I think I will get more out of replacing the DVD drive with a 2TB SSD(even with it being SATA 2. On a SATA2 bus with an SSD, it's nearly 2X faster than a mechanical hard drive) and SSDs are so inexpensive these days.
 

KNz

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2022
10
6
2700k.jpg

I did it ! Not tested fully but seems to be working ok !
 

KNz

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2022
10
6
Does sleep & wake work on your system? The iGPU will be most likely disabled anyway. Just curious to know :)
Sleep and wake don't work, and I guess the iGPU is disabled since it is not shown in neofetch.

Ok upgraded to opencore 0.4.2 and sleep does seem to work now.
 
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KNz

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2022
10
6
Sleep and wake don't work, and I guess the iGPU is disabled since it is not shown in neofetch.

Ok upgraded to opencore 0.4.2 and sleep does seem to work now.
Spoke too soon, deep sleep does not seem to work. The screen lights up, but no picture.
 

dfranetic

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2020
250
345
Spoke too soon, deep sleep does not seem to work. The screen lights up, but no picture.
I've never had problems with sleep/wake with i7-2700K in my iMac12,2. Always used it with OCLP, never with the original GPU, but sleep does work with WX4150, WX4170, and now even with the 'testing...' one (see signature).
Screenshot 2022-02-02 at 13.29.02.png
 
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dfranetic

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2020
250
345
with macos 12.1 and opencore 0.4.2 ?
Not this weekend. ;) I think it was OCLP 0.2.5 and WX4150/WX4170 at the time.
(I'll do some more testing once I can. I do have another i7-2700K and another iMac12,2 to pair...)
 

DeletteUA

macrumors member
Jul 5, 2020
31
7
is there any manual to make gpu acceleration i5 iMac 27 2011 w6170m?
metalBench 14Mrays per second(tried Catalina / BigSur/ Monterrey)
 

dfranetic

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2020
250
345
I have upgraded another iMac12,2 with an i7-2700K, HP WX4150 and BT4.2/802.11ac WiFi.

As @m0bil mentioned, sleep/wake does not work with High Sierra. Backlight comes up after sleep, but there is no image. (I observed the same behaviour when I tried to upgrade an iMac12,2 with a Xeon E3-1270. But in the case of Xeon that failure to wake from sleep happened with BigSur/Monterey, too. This is of course known...)

However, sleep works with Monterey (via OCLP 0.4.2 built with default/detected settings on the tested machine). The longest sleep cycle was 20 minutes in today's 'quick' tests, but it is quite a bit more promising than High Sierra. (And this is also in line with my previous observations on a different machine upgraded with i7-2700K - sleep/wake works.) So, @KNz I'm not sure what we did differently. (Could the upgraded GPU/BT/WiFi also play a role?)

Edit: After installing Monterey to internal drive I can confirm that sleep/wake seems to work flawlessly. (iMac woke up without a problem after two overnight sleeps.)

(P.S.: Yes, I still have not-the-latest VBIOS on that WX4150...)
 

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clewis97

macrumors newbie
Feb 19, 2022
14
7
I am updating my 27" 2011 this weekend using a 1 tb ssd, Intel xeon 1275 and Nvidia k4100 M. Should be interesting. I am wondering about any software modifications I may have to make. Will the xeon be utilized properly?
 

clewis97

macrumors newbie
Feb 19, 2022
14
7
Is there any reason a Xeon 1275 would get about half the score in Geekbench 5 as the I5 2500? I thought this thing would outperform it by a mile, but these results are very disappointing.
 
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