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It looks like the GPU in my iMac is dead.

E

EvanEiga

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2015
133
32
So first thing of 2018 that I have to take care of, it looks like the GPU in my 2011 27inch iMac has finally gave up.

I was browsing the web on Facebook and all of a sudden, the screen turned into vertical lines. Consider I upgraded the SSD inside about a month ago, I thought, okay perhaps it's just one of those bugs that are inevitable with aftermarket SSDs. No biggie, restart, booted into the system within seconds and all the windows were restored. within 5 seconds, the screen flicked into vertical lines again. At that point, the system will just constantly be rebooting. I could however press the option key and go into disk selection mode (or whatever you call it, but no recover options there).

I did a brief research and it looks like the GPU is busted and I could perhaps disable the GPU and enter the safe mode and save all my files before anything else.

Has anyone else experienced this before? I guess after now 7 years, it is appropriate to get a new iMac when it comes out, but this is still an otherwise perfectly fine machine that's capable of doing everything I do.

Also...do I need i7? I don't do any serious video/photo editing anymore but once in a while I do some stupid vlog video type of thing. oh and I play WOW :)
 
Sounds like your GPU is dead.

I assume you already try PRAM and SMC reset.

If you want to boot into recovery, try holding Command + R during boot. Option boot won't help.

Even the GPU is dead, may be you can still extract the data via target disk mode.

Since you upgrade the internal drive to SSD, may be you can open up the machine again, and check if the GPU and all the associated cables still looks good (just in case you accidentally damage something, or not connected properly. Also, I have no experience on replacing SSD on an iMac, but if you ever remote any heatsink. Did you correctly re-apply the thermal paste?) If nothing looks wrong, and you want to recover the data, it's nothing simpler than extract the SSD. In fact, even you give up the current iMac, I thing you still better keep the SSD for future use anyway.
 
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I agree, open it up and check the cabling to make sure all video cables are connected and tight. If the GPU needs to be replaced, you might find one on eBay but it will mean removal of the logic board to replace it. Also, depending on which GPU you have it might be expensive. There are YouTube videos showing how to do it and also how to do a reflow which sometimes works and sometimes does not. Check around.
 
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