iM 4,1-14,4 USB 3 Dock on 2011 iMac via Thunderbolt

[Mac_Andrew]

Hi Guys,

I'm the proud owner of a mid-2011 iMac, which I use as my daily driver (besides my 2015 MacBook Pro which already has Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3). I have a few external USB SSDs that run at full speed on my MacBook Pro, but when I connect to my iMac it's throttle down to USB 2. Since I use my iMac for most of my workloads because it has a quadcore i7 and 32 GB RAM and an internal SSD, it still punches a lot of power for its age despite the fact it's stuck with High Sierra.

Now my question, I'm thinking about getting a Thunderbolt 3 dock with USB 3.0 ports so I can add USB 3.0 to my iMac. Before I go on Amazon and buy adaptors my idea is the following:

Get a Thunderbolt 3 (USB C) adaptor to Thunderbolt 2, get a Thunderbolt 3 Dock, and use its USB 3 ports.
Has anyone ever done that can confirm if it works?

Thanks

Mac_Andrew

 

[chrfr]

Hi Guys,

I'm the proud owner of a mid-2011 iMac, which I use as my daily driver (besides my 2015 MacBook Pro which already has Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3). I have a few external USB SSDs that run at full speed on my MacBook Pro, but when I connect to my iMac it's throttle down to USB 2. Since I use my iMac for most of my workloads because it has a quadcore i7 and 32 GB RAM and an internal SSD, it still punches a lot of power for its age despite the fact it's stuck with High Sierra.

Now my question, I'm thinking about getting a Thunderbolt 3 dock with USB 3.0 ports so I can add USB 3.0 to my iMac. Before I go on Amazon and buy adaptors my idea is the following:

Get a Thunderbolt 3 (USB C) adaptor to Thunderbolt 2, get a Thunderbolt 3 Dock, and use its USB 3 ports.
Has anyone ever done that can confirm if it works?

Thanks

Mac_Andrew

Yes, this will work, but keep in mind the Thunderbolt port on the iMac is only Thunderbolt 1, so 10Gbps. You may not get full performance from the SSDs but they’ll certainly be better than USB 2.0.

 

[joevt]

A Thunderbolt 3 dock may have USB 3.1 gen 2 ports (at least the Thunderbolt 3 port can do that). Since Thunderbolt 1 is only 10 Gbps, you won't be able to get max USB 10 Gbps performance (1050 MB/s), but it will be better than USB 5 Gbps (460 MB/s), maybe 820 MB/s?

The adapter you need to connect Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 or Thunderbolt 1 is the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter. Other Thunderbolt adapters are more expensive and only let you connect Thunderbolt 1/2 devices to Thunderbolt 3 host. The Apple adapter can work in either direction. You'll need a Thunderbolt 2 cable to connect a Thunderbolt 3 device.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

Yes, this will work, but keep in mind the Thunderbolt port on the iMac is only Thunderbolt 1, so 10Gbps. You may not get full performance from the SSDs but they’ll certainly be better than USB 2.0.

Yep, I get that but honestly, it will be way faster than USB 2. I just need to know if it works before I go and search ebay

 

[chrfr]

Yep, I get that but honestly, it will be way faster than USB 2. I just need to know if it works before I go and search ebay

It’ll definitely work. Just be sure to get the Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter and not a 3rd party one. You will also need a regular Thunderbolt cable to go from the adapter to your computer.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi Guys,

I'm the proud owner of a mid-2011 iMac, which I use as my daily driver (besides my 2015 MacBook Pro which already has Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3). I have a few external USB SSDs that run at full speed on my MacBook Pro, but when I connect to my iMac it's throttle down to USB 2. Since I use my iMac for most of my workloads because it has a quadcore i7 and 32 GB RAM and an internal SSD, it still punches a lot of power for its age despite the fact it's stuck with High Sierra.

Now my question, I'm thinking about getting a Thunderbolt 3 dock with USB 3.0 ports so I can add USB 3.0 to my iMac. Before I go on Amazon and buy adaptors my idea is the following:

Get a Thunderbolt 3 (USB C) adaptor to Thunderbolt 2, get a Thunderbolt 3 Dock, and use its USB 3 ports.
Has anyone ever done that can confirm if it works?

Thanks

Mac_Andrew

I remember @Vertical smiles has done it. He confirmed that it worked for him.
On a second thought, do you need to transfer files to/from your iMacs, which can't be done via LAN?

Other options to be considered about:

1) An iMac 2011 can be installed with 3 SSDs (1 to replace the stock ODD), if you put 2 of the SSDs on RAID 0, the read-writing speed will be about 1GB/s, which is higher than USB 3.0 or TB1.

2) 2nd hand thunderbolt 1 enclosure is still available somewhere around the world, price is not very expensive, too.
I already have the contact of the shop that sell Buffalo thunderbolt 1 box with RAID function. They unit price is 40$/box, including TB1 cable.

3) You can remove the ODD and add USB 3.0 port internally. But only good for data disks, not OS disks (sleep issue). KennyW has done it on his iMac 2010

USB 3 + Wifi ac + BT4.2 for iMac 27" mid 2010

There has been a thread on USB 3 for iMac 2009 and one on USB 3 for iMac 2011. The miniPCIe slot for wifi/BT is utilised to provide USB 3 connection at the expense of wifi and BT, which have to be changed to external dongles. Thus, I explore a similar idea from those threads to install USB 3 in...

forums.macrumors.com

Or iMac 2011 (not complete success, as he has sacrificed the Wifi module)

USB 3.0 for iMac mid 2011

Hello folks, I have been following the thread about graphics card upgrade 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade for some time, and someone mentioned that he has upgraded to USB3. So I started my own USB3 project, and succeeded, at a cost of around US$ 20, plus around 3 hours work. I replaced the...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[mdgm]

You can even boot off a TB3 NVMe SSD. Doing so is slightly faster than with a single internal SATA III SSD. I haven't yet tested USB3 with the dock for file transfers but presume that should work fine. The USB3 drives wouldn't be bootable though, I think, except off the iMac's USB2 ports.

My setup is mid-2011 iMac -> Apple TB(1/2) cable -> Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter -> TB3 dock -> TB3 cable (supplied with TB3 NVMe drive) -> TB3 NVMe drive.

Note you need to run an OS supported by the dock and the drive/enclosure, whichever is newest. So my dock requires at least Sierra and my TB3 enclosure requires at least High Sierra so I need to run at least High Sierra.

Open Core Legacy Patcher 0.1.7 (and newer) has beta support for graphics acceleration with the stock Terascale 2 GPU in the mid-2011 iMac with Big Sur. So finally these Macs with stock GPU are usable on a newer OS than High Sierra. I’m using OCLP with a mid-2011 iMac using the stock hard drive. I’m yet to test Big Sur with a TB3 dock, but think it should work.

OCLP is working on preparing support for Mojave/Catalina, but that's just for developer use. As to whether other patchers add support for Terascale 2 GPUs or whether Monterey support comes for these iMacs with stock TS2 GPU that remains to be seen.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

You can even boot off a TB3 NVMe SSD. Doing so is slightly faster than with a single internal SATA III SSD. I haven't yet tested USB3 with the dock for file transfers but presume that should work fine. The USB3 drives wouldn't be bootable though, I think, except off the iMac's USB2 ports.

My setup is mid-2011 iMac -> Apple TB(1/2) cable -> Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter -> TB3 dock -> TB3 cable (supplied with TB3 NVMe drive) -> TB3 NVMe drive.

Note you need to run an OS supported by the dock and the drive/enclosure, whichever is newest. So my dock requires at least Sierra and my TB3 enclosure requires at least High Sierra so I need to run at least High Sierra.

Open Core Legacy Patcher 0.1.7 (and newer) has beta support for graphics acceleration with the stock Terascale 2 GPU in the mid-2011 iMac with Big Sur. So finally these Macs with stock GPU are usable on a newer OS than High Sierra. I’m using OCLP with a mid-2011 iMac using the stock hard drive. I’m yet to test Big Sur with a TB3 dock, but think it should work.

OCLP is working on preparing beta support for Mojave/Catalina, hopefully soon. As to whether other patchers add support for Terascale 2 GPUs or whether Monterey support comes for these iMacs with stock TS2 GPU that remains to be seen.

I was thinking about using the patcher to upgrade to Catalina which is what my MacBook Pro is running, however since my iMac is running the dreadful and prone-to-fail Radeon 6750M, I will wait until the graphics die (knock on wood) before replacing the GPU and attempting to patch the Catalina installer and upgrade it, but since I use my iMac for web development and to run a few Virtual Machines, high Sierra seams to do the trick since its fully compatible with all my tools including Docker and the latest version of Parallels. I wanna use an external USB 3.0 SSD so I can speed up my VMs instead of using the dreadful USB 2.0 port.

 

[mdgm]

At this time the only OS that you can get GPU acceleration on with the stock GPU is Big Sur using the Open Core Legacy Patcher which puts back in the OpenGL framework needed for this GPU. It's still nice to know that some progress has been made in case some software you need to have up to date requires a newer Mac OS sooner than you think.

The experience on Mojave and later would obviously be better with a Metal GPU, preferably one of the much newer AMD GPUs in https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/

USB3 SSDs should work well for what you want to achieve.

As I have both a mid-2011 iMac and a 2011 Mini booted off TB3 NVMe drives I have no doubt that USB3 performance using a TB3 dock would be much better than the USB2 ports in the iMac itself even though TB1 would limit the performance to considerably below the full potential of the dock.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

At this time the only OS that you can get GPU acceleration on with the stock GPU is Big Sur using the Open Core Legacy Patcher which puts back in the OpenGL framework needed for this GPU. It's still nice to know that some progress has been made in case some software you need to have up to date requires a newer Mac OS sooner than you think.

The experience on Mojave and later would obviously be better with a Metal GPU, preferably one of the much newer AMD GPUs in https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/

USB3 SSDs should work well for what you want to achieve.

As I have both a mid-2011 iMac and a 2011 Mini booted off TB3 NVMe drives I have no doubt that USB3 performance using a TB3 dock would be much better than the USB2 ports in the iMac itself even though TB1 would limit the performance to considerably below the full potential of the dock.

The current GPU I have does not support Metal, if I install Big Sur will it have some acceleration? I tried Mojave once and it was painfully slow despite the fact I have an internal SSD and 32 GB RAM.

 

[mdgm]

If you do it through Open Core Legacy Patcher, yes. Beta graphical acceleration was added about a week ago in OCLP v 0.1.7.

Basically what you do is:
1. Backup your data e.g. a bootable clone or Time Machine or both.
2. Build and Install OpenCore Legacy Patcher: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/releases (you can install it onto a SD Card which if you don't use that slot regularly for other things has the benefit that if you mess up your OpenCore install you can remove it and then boot into High Sierra without OpenCore getting in the way - in any case a TB3 dock may have another SD card you could use for other uses of SD cards).
3. Download Big Sur and create a bootable Big Sur install USB key
4. Boot into Open Core and through open core select to boot off your Big Sur install USB key
5. Open Disk Utility and go to the disk level (you may need to select a show all devices to do this, you want to go to the disk level, not the volume on top of it) and create a new partition and format that with APFS. You'll use that as the drive to install Big Sur to.
6. Install Big Sur. This will be slow as you won't have Graphics Acceleration at this point.
7. Once Big Sur is installed open the Open Core Legacy Patcher, go into Patcher Settings, and set SecureBoot and SIP to disabled, rebuild and install OpenCore and reboot.
8. Open the Open Core Legacy Patcher app again and go into Patcher Settings and enable the Terascale 2 acceleration patches, and then go back to the main menu and install the Post-Install Volume Patch and follow the prompts and then reboot for the change to take effect.
9. As noted in the Release Notes "those prone to seizures are recommended to avoid or have another setup the machine due to initial colour strobing before forcing Million Colours on the display with SwitchResX or ResXtreme". I used ResXtreme as it's free.
10. You should be able to install OTA upgrades to newer versions of Big Sur and Big Sur security updates once feature updates stop, but they will all be about 12GB as the root volume has been patched. After they are installed you'll need to repeat step 8 to get graphical acceleration again.

The acceleration is in beta and it's not perfect, but it runs Big Sur a lot better than was previously possible with the stock Terascale 2 GPU. It's working well for me but YMMV.

OCLP currently doesn't support Mojave or Catalina, but they are working on getting that ready so then using some acceleration with Mojave or Catalina may be possible. The Terascale 2 patches are putting OpenGL stuff stripped from Mojave and later back in, so it's not going to be the same as Metal graphical acceleration, but it's a lot better than what we have had up till now.

The other ways to install Mojave and newer don't have the TS2 acceleration patches at all as yet, but hopefully that will change.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

If you do it through Open Core Legacy Patcher, yes. Beta graphical acceleration was added about a week ago in OCLP v 0.1.7.

Basically what you do is:
1. Backup your data e.g. a bootable clone or Time Machine or both.
2. Build and Install OpenCore Legacy Patcher: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/releases (you can install it onto a SD Card which if you don't use that slot regularly for other things has the benefit that if you mess up your OpenCore install you can remove it and then boot into High Sierra without OpenCore getting in the way - in any case a TB3 dock may have another SD card you could use for other uses of SD cards).
3. Download Big Sur and create a bootable Big Sur install USB key
4. Boot into Open Core and through open core select to boot off your Big Sur install USB key
5. Open Disk Utility and go to the disk level (you may need to select a show all devices to do this, you want to go to the disk level, not the volume on top of it) and create a new partition and format that with APFS. You'll use that as the drive to install Big Sur to.
6. Install Big Sur. This will be slow as you won't have Graphics Acceleration at this point.
7. Once Big Sur is installed open the Open Core Legacy Patcher, go into Patcher Settings, and set SecureBoot and SIP to disabled, rebuild and install OpenCore and reboot.
8. Open the Open Core Legacy Patcher app again and go into Patcher Settings and enable the Terascale 2 acceleration patches, and then go back to the main menu and install the Post-Install Volume Patch and follow the prompts and then reboot for the change to take effect.
9. As noted in the Release Notes "those prone to seizures are recommended to avoid or have another setup the machine due to initial colour strobing before forcing Million Colours on the display with SwitchResX or ResXtreme". I used ResXtreme as it's free.
10. You should be able to install OTA upgrades to newer versions of Big Sur and Big Sur security updates once feature updates stop, but they will all be about 12GB as the root volume has been patched. After they are installed you'll need to repeat step 8 to get graphical acceleration again.

The acceleration is in beta and it's not perfect, but it runs Big Sur a lot better than was previously possible with the stock Terascale 2 GPU. It's working well for me but YMMV.

OCLP currently doesn't support Mojave or Catalina, but they are working on getting that ready so then using some acceleration with Mojave or Catalina may be possible. The Terascale 2 patches are putting OpenGL stuff stripped from Mojave and later back in, so it's not going to be the same as Metal graphical acceleration, but it's a lot better than what we have had up till now.

The other ways to install Mojave and newer don't have the TS2 acceleration patches at all as yet, but hopefully that will change.

Oh wow!! I might give it a go using an external SSD so I won't mess up my current High Sierra partition.

 

[joevt]

If you try a version of macOS later than 10.14.3 then double check the performance of your VM apps.

 

[Ledgem]

Get a Thunderbolt 3 (USB C) adaptor to Thunderbolt 2, get a Thunderbolt 3 Dock, and use its USB 3 ports.
Has anyone ever done that can confirm if it works?

Yes. I wanted a NVME SSD drive connected over Thunderbolt and have a system with Thunderbolt 2 ports. Thunderbolt 2 SSD enclosures are difficult to find, and Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are powered by the Thunderbolt 3 port. Thunderbolt 2 does not provide power. So I bought a Thunderbolt 3 dock (self-powered; I chose the Caldigit TS3 Plus), connected that dock to my computer using the Apple Thunderbolt adapter, and have my Thunderbolt 3 SSD-bearing enclosure along with a number of USB peripherals connected through that dock.

When I was looking over Thunderbolt dock options, I am pretty sure I noted that all of them were self-powered. But I'd just emphasize again, make sure your dock has its own power supply, as Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 will not pass power through to your devices.

 

[joevt]

When I was looking over Thunderbolt dock options, I am pretty sure I noted that all of them were self-powered. But I'd just emphasize again, make sure your dock has its own power supply, as Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 will not pass power through to your devices.

Right. The Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter has enough power for the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter and the Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter but in that case the host is Thunderbolt 3 which has more power than Thunderbolt 2. I can't find documentation on the power output of a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

Thanks guys! The docks I'm looking at have their own separate power supply.

 

[Mac_Andrew]

If you try a version of macOS later than 10.14.3 then double check the performance of your VM apps.

I tried 10.14,10,15 and Big Sure and they all ran dreadfully slow on my iMac, even though it has a lot of power and memory and speedy SSD, but without any Metal graphics its incredibly slow so I'm gonna stick with High Sierra for the time being, all my apps and browsers still support it and I can still sync my iOS devices.

 

[joevt]

I tried 10.14,10,15 and Big Sure and they all ran dreadfully slow on my iMac, even though it has a lot of power and memory and speedy SSD, but without any Metal graphics its incredibly slow so I'm gonna stick with High Sierra for the time being, all my apps and browsers still support it and I can still sync my iOS devices.

Did you run 10.14.3 or a later version of 10.14?
10.14.3 = fast
10.14.4 and newer = slow

 

[Mac_Andrew]

Did you run 10.14.3 or a later version of 10.14?
10.14.3 = fast
10.14.4 and newer = slow

I downloaded it through Apple so I assume it was the last version of Mojave 10.14.6

 

[joevt]

I downloaded it through Apple so I assume it was the last version of Mojave 10.14.6

The earliest version of Mojave that Apple has available is 10.14.4. If you want Mojave, then you'll need to download it elsewhere (I think Macintosh Repository has 10.14 so you would just apply a 10.14.3 Combo Updater after installing 10.14.0).

 

[opuscroakus]

Same scenario as OP, thinking about an Apple Thunderbolt 3/2 adapter off of a 2013 iMac. Would a USB-C dock plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port of the adapter work?

 

[joevt]

Same scenario as OP, thinking about an Apple Thunderbolt 3/2 adapter off of a 2013 iMac. Would a USB-C dock plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port of the adapter work?

No, the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter only does Thunderbolt. You need to connect a Thunderbolt dock to connect a USB dock to a Thunderbolt 2 port.

 

[BadBiscuit]

Yes. I wanted a NVME SSD drive connected over Thunderbolt and have a system with Thunderbolt 2 ports. Thunderbolt 2 SSD enclosures are difficult to find, and Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are powered by the Thunderbolt 3 port. Thunderbolt 2 does not provide power. So I bought a Thunderbolt 3 dock (self-powered; I chose the Caldigit TS3 Plus), connected that dock to my computer using the Apple Thunderbolt adapter, and have my Thunderbolt 3 SSD-bearing enclosure along with a number of USB peripherals connected through that dock.

When I was looking over Thunderbolt dock options, I am pretty sure I noted that all of them were self-powered. But I'd just emphasize again, make sure your dock has its own power supply, as Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 will not pass power through to your devices.

UPDATE: I confirmed it works and boots without issue using a CalDigit TS4, and after contacting and working with CalDigit they concluded my TS3 Plus was defective. A replacement is on its way which is expected to work. I will provide a second update once confirmed, but wanted to post that my issue does not appear to be normal behaviour for a TS3 Plus in good working order, and that CalDigit Support is very helpful when you have issues with their hardware.
-------------------

I have this same arrangement, including a Caldigit TS3 Plus I bought off eBay. It works perfect at accessing the SSD if plugged in while already in macOS, but hangs if it is connected when I try to re-boot (or cold boot). What might I be doing wrong to cause that behaviour? Even when nothing is plugged into the dock it hangs on boot. Holding Option key does not show choices. Did I get a defective dock or adapter? I only have one of each to try, but have tried swapping out the Apple branded TB2 cable for others, and tried several different vintage TB2 Macs (2013 Mac Pro, late-2011 iMac, late-2013 MacBook Pro) without any change in behaviour.

BTW I'm attaching the adapter to the port labelled "Computer" on the dock, and it works fine with TB3 SSD and/or USB and USB-C pen drives, just not at boot.