iMac late 27" 2009 seems to have broken. Suggestions on way to proceed?

[rjalex]

Dear friends,
yesterday as I was working with Lightroom the screen started corrupting and at the end as the menus became unreadable I had to poweroff with Ctrl-Ot-Cmd+Eject.
Aftetr that it boots to a stage in which the desktop picture appears as blurred but does not progress from there.
Tried resetting SMC, PRAM and tried building a bootable AHC stick but it does not seem to be working.
So decision point 1 would be guessing if it is a good idea trying to get it fixed. Cons are that the working OS was old and could not update it anymore without slowing it to a crawl and some new SW updates (eg Lightroom) could not be installed, and also the old CPU did not support containers which I sometimes wanted to use.
I am a bit cash strapped so just going for a new similar one is not easy at all.
So decision point 2 would be considering buying a less expensive Mac13 with a large screen for my photo work when at home and the advantage of being able to bring it along on trips.
Thanks for all suggestions.
Robert

 

[r6mile]

Dear friends,
yesterday as I was working with Lightroom the screen started corrupting and at the end as the menus became unreadable I had to poweroff with Ctrl-Ot-Cmd+Eject.
Aftetr that it boots to a stage in which the desktop picture appears as blurred but does not progress from there.
Tried resetting SMC, PRAM and tried building a bootable AHC stick but it does not seem to be working.
So decision point 1 would be guessing if it is a good idea trying to get it fixed. Cons are that the working OS was old and could not update it anymore without slowing it to a crawl and some new SW updates (eg Lightroom) could not be installed, and also the old CPU did not support containers which I sometimes wanted to use.
I am a bit cash strapped so just going for a new similar one is not easy at all.
So decision point 2 would be considering buying a less expensive Mac13 with a large screen for my photo work when at home and the advantage of being able to bring it along on trips.
Thanks for all suggestions.
Robert

It sounds like your GPU has fried. Assuming you have the i7 version, you can replace the GPU with a more modern one (see the thread misleading titled 2011 iMac graphics cards upgrade), if you feel technically up to it that is. It's not super difficult not risk-free either.

 

[rjalex]

Actually now that you remind me this same iMac already had a new GPU replaced 4 years ago since the previous one had fried too. Seems the CPU cooling capacity of this machine might have some problems ...
Thanks for your input but even assuming that was the source of the problem I would consider fixing it only if it was less than say 3-400 euros. Over that I would maybe try the 13 MacBook with an external USB-C screen for work at home.

Does this reasoning have some flaws I'm not appreciating?

 

[r6mile]

Actually now that you remind me this same iMac already had a new GPU replaced 4 years ago since the previous one had fried too. Seems the CPU cooling capacity of this machine might have some problems ...
Thanks for your input but even assuming that was the source of the problem I would consider fixing it only if it was less than say 3-400 euros. Over that I would maybe try the 13 MacBook with an external USB-C screen for work at home.

Does this reasoning have some flaws I'm not appreciating?

You probably had it replaced with another of the crappy Apple Radeons. If you feel confident technically, you can buy a K2100M 2GB on Aliexpress for about 80-100 euros. This will also allow you to run MacOS Catalina, as explained in the thread. It does require a little bit of tweaking to get it set up, but once you have it up and running it will work well.
What CPU do you have? If you have an i5 you could also go up to a i7 2.9 Ghz, that might help a bit with your CPU issues. And installing an SSD and more RAM, if you haven't already done it, will also help.

As I said, this requires a little bit of technical ability - people on this forum can help you through the process, myself included. But changing GPU, and possibly CPU/SSD/RAM, will add a lot of life to your iMac. If you don't have the ability and would have to pay someone to do it, then it's probably not worthwhile though.

 

[rjalex]

A good friend once told me "With a screwdriver in your hands you scare me " I am somewhat clumsy but I did upgrade the HDD from the original 1TB to an equivalent 2TB on this same iMac. It took me some time but it went well.
The CPU is the i7 2.9, the RAM is 16GB.
I did not go for an SSD replacement since I did not want to have problems with the cooling/sensors etc.
I live in Italy and getting those nice OWC cables and gimmicks is a bit hard
For the GPU replacement I did take a look to a couple of iFixit guides but frankly I don't think I am good enough to do that without breaking something that will be hard/costly to replace
Thank you so much for your input and will ponder if I can muster enough courage ...

 

[Fishrrman]

Unless you can do the repair yourself at minimal cost, it's probably not worth spending much money on an iMac that is now 11 years old.

Either go with your MacBook + external display idea, or, perhaps consider a current-model Mac Mini. They're quite capable little Macs.

 

[rjalex]

Yes I am converging on exactly that line of thought.
MacMini with i7+16GB+256SSD + external monitor would be roughly in the 2000 Euros range
Macbook 13 with similar specs + external monitor would be 10-15% more expensive but could bring it with me when traveling
Pondering....