iMac 2011 would Ivy Bridge CPU work

[Roman78]

as i am experimenting whit some older Apple hardware, i would like to know: would an Ivy Bridge i5-3570 work on an iMac from 2011?

I googled al lot but could not find any recent result, most are from 2012 saying there a Problems whit Lion and ML. But i would install some more recent OS. Also found out the logicboard would be the same in 2011 and 2012.

Is there a firmware update possible like for the Mini 1.1 or the MacPro 1.1 and 4.1? Or would it work out of the box?

 

[ScunnerDarkly]

The short answer is no unfortunately, or not easily at the very least. Claims have been made that it is possible but as you pointed out there are issues. The problem is while systems using the Sandy Bridge platform can be updated to support Ivy Bridge this is down to individual manufacturers to implement, and Apple have no incentive or reason to provide EFI/BIOS updates for the 2011 iMacs when they have the 2012 tapered-edge Ivy Bridge iMacs as a replacement.

Aside from finding a suitable CPU, modified EFI firmware and kernel would be required for everything to work as expected. I'll happily take this back when someone categorically proves it's possible without unexpected caveats, but as yet that's sadly not happened and it's unlikely to at this point.

Experiment away by all means but at this point it looks like SSD and RAM upgrades are the only options to boost performance (other than upgrading to a higher Sandy Bridge CPU), and unfortunately even those won't be enough to ensure full and native compatibility with macOS 10.14.

 

[Roman78]

I only asked because i get one whit an i5-2500S @2.7Ghz and have a spare i5-3570 @3,4Ghz here. So the CPU is there.

And i hoped that someone had made a Patch like for the Mini 1.1/2.1 or MacPro 1.1/2.1.