Imac mid 2011 white screen of death no recovery options

[Proxts]

Hi all,

I am stuck with a fault I've never come across so hoping somebody can help me out?

I have a mid 2011 27" iMac running 10.13.x
The other day I was working and the screen 'glitched and shook'.
Shortly after a vertical row of black and white blocks ran down the left hand edge of the screen... and then the whole screen went white.

Now I cannot get anything to load... anything.
I have tried and failed;

- Safe mode
- Cmd-r recovery
- Cmd-opt-r internet recovery (shows globe and 75% into loading bar... white screen)
- d hareware scan

Nothing will boot. I cannot get to disk utilities, Terminal etc...
I have reset my PRAM, unplugged from mains and lots of other forum based suggestions but still no joy.

The only thing I can do is boot to the target disk selection screen but then I cannot boot to an internal OSX, external OSX (MacBook) or my time machine drive. About 75% through the Apple loading bar it white screens every time.

What I Can Do

- Launch iMac into target disk mode via TB and FW
- Use my MBP and boot as normal from my iMac SSD
- scanned iMac SSD on MBP using disk utilities... no errors found.

at first I was looking into a corrupt EFI partition but I'm stuck as what to do if I cannot boot to any recovery/utilities screen to try a fresh install.
It seems clear that its an iMac hardware failure but where do start?

Thanks in advance

 

[Fishrrman]

Sounds like either a GPU failure or a display hardware failure.

Seems to me I recall reading about some owners who took the GPU card out (assuming you have one with a removable card), "baking it" in the oven to re-flow broken solder joints, and then re-installing. The 2011 production year was problematic for this issue.

If the above fix works, great. Keep in mind that the problems may re-appear.

But, it's probably not worth putting money into an 11-year-old Mac.
Might be time to start shopping for a replacement...

 

[Proxts]

There are not enough sad emojis for my wallet to express

Thanks for the reply buddy
Much appreciated

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

There are not enough sad emojis for my wallet to express

Thanks for the reply buddy
Much appreciated

If you have some time to spend (a couple of hours), you can read the first post of the below thread and all the links from it to understand your situation and the options you have.

2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

iMac 2009 to 2011 MXM3 graphics card upgrade (Lastest update 10/13/2023 - this is the official documentation page - you found it finally!) This is the single and only documentation post. During the last years we constantly updated this post to reflect the lastet development of vBIOS and OCLP...

forums.macrumors.com

If you insist on spending no cents to fix your iMac, then I'm afraid it's a Mission Impossible. At least the removable GPU is dead.
Anyway, if you have another Mac to work on, turn-off the iMac, take the storage disk out and back-up your data first.

Then take sometime to think:
What do you want to do with your iMac?
- Restore it to functional situation; or
- convert it to another functional device (monitor only)

and how much money are you willing to spend for that purpose.

 

[Proxts]

Thanks for this too
I had a quick read and this would have been a great lockdown project but I just don't have the time at present.

Since my MBP is also considered an antique I was waiting for the MBP M2 to come out without having my hand forced.
Then I was going to do some business investment upgrades.

I think for now I'll look into a refurb Mini M1 and hook it up to my gaming monitor. Then search converting the iMac 27" into a monitor only

 

[macguru9999]

The 2011imac has a failed gpu daughtercard and its not worth repairing. baking them is a short term fix. There is a thread on macrumors of people who source the replacement cards and fix them but honestly you are better using a newer machine at this point ...

 

[vkd]

I followed the above-mentioned thread and put an nVidia K2100M GPU in my 2011 iMac. Its a bit better a card than the original, has Metal compatibility and breathed new life into the machine. I'm now running latest Monterey 12.5.1 and its going great. Its a cheap option for maximum utilisation.

 

[macguru9999]

I followed the above-mentioned thread and put an nVidia K2100M GPU in my 2011 iMac. Its a bit better a card than the original, has Metal compatibility and breathed new life into the machine. I'm now running latest Monterey 12.5.1 and its going great. Its a cheap option for maximum utilisation.

what did the card cost, did you buy a flashed one or flash it yourself, did you need to get a new heatsink as well ?

 

[vkd]

what did the card cost, did you buy a flashed one or flash it yourself, did you need to get a new heatsink as well ?

It was about US$50 I think, I bought it from AliExpress chinese site. I had to flash it, there's full info & tools on the page above, its quite straightforward. My iMac has an i5 CPU so comes with a lesser GPU and a heatsink for Type 'A' MXM GPU cards. The i7 iMacs have a more powerful MXM Type 'B' GPU which is a bit longer, so the heatsink is a bit different too. So I did the research and got a compatible card that didn't need heatsink mods.

 

[pshufd]

Maybe you can replace it with a used one like this. Much less work and maybe less $$$.

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) 24GB, 1TB disk - computers - by owner -...

An eleven year old iMac. Still Works but slowly. Bluetooth keyboard included. Mouse not included. 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 24 GB Memory 1 TB Hard Disk. MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6 This is the highest...

boston.craigslist.org

 

[macguru9999]

Maybe you can replace it with a used one like this. Much less work and maybe less $$$.

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) 24GB, 1TB disk - computers - by owner -...

An eleven year old iMac. Still Works but slowly. Bluetooth keyboard included. Mouse not included. 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 24 GB Memory 1 TB Hard Disk. MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6 This is the highest...

boston.craigslist.org

Its better to get a newer imac, the thin model. they are very reliable but of course you need to be able to install an ssd and deal with the screen adhesive etc. but 2013s do catalina, and 2015s onwards do monterey without patching. (get one with an ssd already fitted)

 

[pshufd]

Its better to get a newer imac, the thin model. they are very reliable but of course you need to be able to install an ssd and deal with the screen adhesive etc. but 2013s do catalina, and 2015s onwards do monterey without patching.

Well, maybe you'd be more interested in something like this: https://nh.craigslist.org/sys/d/lyndeborough-imac-27-late-2013-model/7518397615.html where you can just add an external SSD.