Mid 2010 iMac Freezes and Fails - HELP

[alexkhaitov]

My Specs:
Mac (27-inch, Mid 2010)
2.93 GHz Intel Core i7
20 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB

Hey guys. I have been having this issue for about 3 years now. I know when I bought the compute, while it was on apple care, the motherboard failed and a few other things, which were replace by apple. Now, since I dont have apple care, i have been simply living with this issue. At some point I increased my RAM, and that helped for a few years. Maybe its a RAM issue now, I am thinking of buying new RAM chips, but maybe its a video card issue. I dont know. could really use the help. I refuse to give up on this iMac because it works like a BEAST, except when in just gets stuck.

Problem 1: Basically, it freezes completely. Sometimes it will restart it self, and most of the time I have to hit the power button and manually reboot it. Nothing to do if its on Chrome, or word, or excel, it just freezes. When I wake it up, the second i hit on anything, it will freeze. It seems to me that maybe the ram is just faulty, but i dont know.

Problem 2: I think its a video card failure, but I dont know how to fix it. My whole screen will go into what I call a "pixel seizure" and start flashing random pixels. I think its the Video card, because I look past this flashing, i can still continue to do what ever it is that I want to, until of course.. IT FREEZES and I have to reboot.

Please Help...

 

[Pockett]

Hello,

I actually used to own a Mid 2010 iMac 27", and one thing I can say about it is that it got very hot. Now from what I've seen especially with MacBook Pros and the older iMac systems, is that excessive heat is a huge factor when it comes to failing computer components (particularly the GPU). I'm not sure if this applies to you, but the model I had actually had a Core i3 CPU, and a Radeon 5670 GPU – even then, with lightweight web browsing, my GPU temperatures were in the 60-70 celsius degree range (It should only get this hot if you're doing something like video editing). This convinces me that your video card failure is due to the excessive heat that it's being trapped in. As for the freezing, if you haven't replaced the original hard drive that it came with, I would highly suggest replacing it with an SSD as it'll make everything run so much faster and smoother. Everytime you wake the computer from sleep, or browse the web, your computer has to access and write data to and from the drive.

About the RAM chips, I would say that there's nothing wrong with them. As far as I know, faulty RAM is very rare and you shouldn't have to worry replacing it. In fact, I believe that the computer wouldn't even boot up if one of the RAM chips were defective.

Now the nice thing about having an older iMac is that you can replace any of the components without having to buy a whole new motherboard. You can replace the Radeon 5750 video card, but there's a lot of steps to go through just to get access to the card. There are step-by-step guides on the web on how to replace these components made by OWC and iFixit, so if you're up to the task, you might as well try replacing them yourself if you don't want to speed $1000 to have a computer repair shop do it for you. If you've never opened and worked on a computer before, you might be puzzled after you crack the computer open. Take your time and don't pull too hard on any cables. If all goes well, I recommend installing fan control software that allows you to manually adjust the RPM of the cooling fans. It pays off in the long run to have your components run at cooler temperatures.