... and that will come in handy when I start my new project, involving a 2017 12" Macbook PCB and a Cube
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What have you done with an early Intel recently?
- Thread starter Project Alice
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Good luck with your new project! Be sure to show us when it done.
Today, following the very nice teardown instructions from iFixit, I upgraded the CPU on my Late 2006 iMac to T7600 Core2 Duo 2.33 GHz. This is the fastest CPU that this mac supports. I am the original owner of this iMac, and it originally shipped with a 2.16 GHz T7400 CPU. The speed improvement is marginal at best, but I figured I'd have to clean all the fans and redo all the thermal paste at some point. So as long as I was going to do the tear down, it made sense to swap the CPU.
The most difficult step in this whole process is unlatching the bezel and neatly ungluing the EMI shielding. As a ham radio nerd, I place a lot of importance on preserving the EMI shielding, so I carefully replaced it and secured it neatly with kapton tape... Other than that, it's pretty straight forward. Another nice factor is almost all the screws in this iMac are the same, they sure don't make them anymore like they used to.
Pre-swap the CPU ran close to 70C most of the time. Now it's running at 40C as I type this and play iTunes. I think that is the result of cleaning out all the cooling fans and ducts and replacing all the thermal paste.
My next computer project is fixing the LCS on my Powermac G5 Quad, but that'll have to wait 'til next year.
The most difficult step in this whole process is unlatching the bezel and neatly ungluing the EMI shielding. As a ham radio nerd, I place a lot of importance on preserving the EMI shielding, so I carefully replaced it and secured it neatly with kapton tape... Other than that, it's pretty straight forward. Another nice factor is almost all the screws in this iMac are the same
, they sure don't make them anymore like they used to.Pre-swap the CPU ran close to 70C most of the time. Now it's running at 40C as I type this and play iTunes. I think that is the result of cleaning out all the cooling fans and ducts and replacing all the thermal paste.
My next computer project is fixing the LCS on my Powermac G5 Quad, but that'll have to wait 'til next year.
A "new" MacBook Air 2013 11"!
This is a project that I wanted to do for long time. I got this for really cheap, about $100 about 2 years ago. The battery was completely dead, screen was broken and lack of SSD.
So I had to go around to find components. Screen was sourced from eBay, battery was sourced from Amazon and SSD was sourced on local Facebook Market Place.
The SSD was the hardest part. As all we know, Apple like to use its own proprietary connector. I tried to purchased three adaptors and none of them fits properly or works out of box. And as far as I know, macOS are also pretty picky about which SSD. I understand that use some third party SSD, hibernation function won't work.
It took me a year to find a working SSD. So once I got all the components, I installed the battery, SSD and new screen.
Overall, I think I have overspent on this project. The broken screen was expensive, around $70 dollars.
Anyway, here it is, on top of the 15" MacBook Pro 2011
This is a project that I wanted to do for long time. I got this for really cheap, about $100 about 2 years ago. The battery was completely dead, screen was broken and lack of SSD.
So I had to go around to find components. Screen was sourced from eBay, battery was sourced from Amazon and SSD was sourced on local Facebook Market Place.
The SSD was the hardest part. As all we know, Apple like to use its own proprietary connector. I tried to purchased three adaptors and none of them fits properly or works out of box. And as far as I know, macOS are also pretty picky about which SSD. I understand that use some third party SSD, hibernation function won't work.
It took me a year to find a working SSD. So once I got all the components, I installed the battery, SSD and new screen.
Overall, I think I have overspent on this project. The broken screen was expensive, around $70 dollars.
Anyway, here it is, on top of the 15" MacBook Pro 2011
I own two 2017 MBA 13" and used NVMe adapters from different brands (Anyoyo and Vgol) without problems. Timetec sells brand new "Apple" blades if you don't want to mess around with adapters.
Writing this on the cMP 3,1 running Monterey via OCLP. As expected, Bluetooth as installed does not function. However, the machine is not getting in a tizzy about it, it's just turned its nose up at the stock card and is pointedly ignoring it.
To compensate, I removed from the Windows machine the dongle I've used in that for a few years now, a CSR 4.0 dongle. It plugged and it played and it just worked. These are still widely available on Amazon and eBay, so maybe another solution to this problem, and one I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. So, Cambridge Silicon Radio, now part of Qualcomm, I believe. Well worth getting hold of one of these for a non-invasive upgrade.
This post also on the Mac Pro forum.
To compensate, I removed from the Windows machine the dongle I've used in that for a few years now, a CSR 4.0 dongle. It plugged and it played and it just worked. These are still widely available on Amazon and eBay, so maybe another solution to this problem, and one I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. So, Cambridge Silicon Radio, now part of Qualcomm, I believe. Well worth getting hold of one of these for a non-invasive upgrade.
This post also on the Mac Pro forum.
I can’t upload for some reason. No matter how much I compress the image, it always tell me too big!Where?
I found the most difficult part in working with that model getting it open. It must have taken me and hour, maybe more. The flimsy alu foil latches just laughed at my attempts to unlatch them. Never before I have seen anything so difficult to open. When I finally got in I upgraded all I could and I hope I don't have to do it again any time soon.😵😜Today, following the very nice teardown instructions from iFixit, I upgraded the CPU on my Late 2006 iMac to T7600 Core2 Duo 2.33 GHz. This is the fastest CPU that this mac supports. I am the original owner of this iMac, and it originally shipped with a 2.16 GHz T7400 CPU. The speed improvement is marginal at best, but I figured I'd have to clean all the fans and redo all the thermal paste at some point. So as long as I was going to do the tear down, it made sense to swap the CPU.
The most difficult step in this whole process is unlatching the bezel and neatly ungluing the EMI shielding. As a ham radio nerd, I place a lot of importance on preserving the EMI shielding, so I carefully replaced it and secured it neatly with kapton tape... Other than that, it's pretty straight forward. Another nice factor is almost all the screws in this iMac are the same
Pre-swap the CPU ran close to 70C most of the time. Now it's running at 40C as I type this and play iTunes. I think that is the result of cleaning out all the cooling fans and ducts and replacing all the thermal paste.
My next computer project is fixing the LCS on my Powermac G5 Quad, but that'll have to wait 'til next year.
View attachment 2466614
In contrast opening a iMac G5 takes about 30 secs with a simple screwdriver. Marvelous design.
And one of my next projects is also going to be the G5 Quad LCS. I already took it out of the machine and have bought the parts to do it but have not gotten into actually doing it.
As noted on the Mac Pro forum, using the later builds of OCLP on these early machines results in one processor being disabled/ignored. Open OCLP, select settings, and on the lower right is the workaround if you're using macOS 15+. Deselect that, and bingo, all eight cores back in action.
After a week of using Ventura on this little old 2010 MBP, I have learned several things.
Aoligel is right (from another thread about OCLP and the 2009 MBP) that changing up some minor settings makes a serious difference on a C2D machine.
4GB of RAM is actually enough to:
I think the biggest speed boost to this thing will be getting an SSD put in. I've tried opening large documents three ways. From the 320GB 5400rpm hard drive, from a 256GB microSD card, and from a 128GB USB 2.0 thumb drive. Of these, the SD card is fastest. So changing that out for the SSD should be a noticeable change.
I'm still happy with a $38 machine working this well. I may still go for Sequoia after the RAM and SSD upgrades but I'll take any and all advice on how to dumb it down so it uses less resources and CPU time. Changing things like the window minimization animation and turning off other "beautification" features will be my goal.
Aoligel is right (from another thread about OCLP and the 2009 MBP) that changing up some minor settings makes a serious difference on a C2D machine.
4GB of RAM is actually enough to:
- have a half dozen browser tabs open
- OR have some LibreOffice documents open
- OR play around in GarageBand
- OR watch a YouTube video in 720p full screen
I think the biggest speed boost to this thing will be getting an SSD put in. I've tried opening large documents three ways. From the 320GB 5400rpm hard drive, from a 256GB microSD card, and from a 128GB USB 2.0 thumb drive. Of these, the SD card is fastest. So changing that out for the SSD should be a noticeable change.
I'm still happy with a $38 machine working this well. I may still go for Sequoia after the RAM and SSD upgrades but I'll take any and all advice on how to dumb it down so it uses less resources and CPU time. Changing things like the window minimization animation and turning off other "beautification" features will be my goal.
Wow. You are brave to install Ventura onto a machine with 4GB!
This is mine 2011 MacBook Pro 15" with 10GB of RAM looks like. With 1 Safari tab only, I am already at 5.09GB. I have zero idea why and how.
My $65 2010 MacBook Pro 15" is coming in few days (I got this because it has the anti-glare finish).. This came with 4GB of RAM. I would try installing Ventura on it..
I found the most difficult part in working with that model getting it open. It must have taken me and hour, maybe more. The flimsy alu foil latches just laughed at my attempts to unlatch them. Never before I have seen anything so difficult to open. When I finally got in I upgraded all I could and I hope I don't have to do it again any time soon.😵😜
In contrast opening a iMac G5 takes about 30 secs with a simple screwdriver. Marvelous design.
And one of my next projects is also going to be the G5 Quad LCS. I already took it out of the machine and have bought the parts to do it but have not gotten into actually doing it.
I have zero experience with PowerMac at all. All I know is G5 Macs run slow and hot. I am curious to see what can be done with G5 iMac in this day and age.
I mean I tried to use my old Acer laptop with Intel Core Duo (before Core 2 Duo) with 2GB DDR2 and I find it doesn't run well. I don't know what G5 machine can do at this time,
Seems almost 5GB of your used RAM are cached things that can be flushed if needed, though.
Has anyone tried to reflow the AMD GPU on the 2011 MacBook Pro 15"? After reading this article
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/reflow-on-hd6750m-graphics-card.2102329/
I am debating if I should try to reflow the GPU.. I think it is a bad idea, anyone can chime in?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/reflow-on-hd6750m-graphics-card.2102329/
I am debating if I should try to reflow the GPU.. I think it is a bad idea, anyone can chime in?
That is probably an excellent idea for every hacked system. Possibly many reports of OCLP systems being very slow are only throttled?
That's what macOS is doing. I have a machine with 16 GB of total memory and with just this one Safari tab open the system using 9 GB. On a Mac with less memory it would purge unused resources more aggressively.
I have a 2014 mini with only 4 GB of memory. It runs Sonoma better than my 2010 MacBook with 16 GB of memory (both using SSDs).
... and that will come in handy when I start my new project, involving a 2017 12" Macbook PCB and a Cube
Don't even attempt use this. I have the Disable Firmware Throttle enabled today, the MacBook Pro 15inch late 2013 starts to crash. It is extremely unstable. Sometime it will run for a hour without issue and sometime the system will crash immediately after reboot.
If you want a functional system, either just use it as is. The CPU is throttled down from 2GHz to .8GHz, but it is stable system or you gonna need a battery.
I had to turn off this feature.
P.S. Even the Core i7 running at 800Mhz.. it is still running at acceptable speed... Plus the bonus is that the fan is not running at all...I would still get a new battery, but that is not going to happen in few months... I spend all my budgets on hobby staffs..
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I took out the battery on the 2013 MacBook Pro 15". The process is easier than I thought, took some 99% alcohol and two credit cards (expired credit cards) and some dental floss.
I am now waiting for new battery to shipped from Amazon. I found an Amazon gift card in my drawer and it has some value.
I am now waiting for new battery to shipped from Amazon. I found an Amazon gift card in my drawer and it has some value.
I meant, use it with an acceptable battery. Firmware Throttle has other reasons to throttle too. Without battery the built-in power supply may not be powerfull enough to cope with every consumption peak, hence the instability.
I got the late 2013 MacBook Pro 15 inch for like $130, due to dead battery and missing one key on keyboard.
I have a battery ordered, it will arrive on Friday. I will install it.
I took out the original battery, it is truly dead. I have the laptop on charger for like 5 days. I used multimeter to measure the voltage, it gives 0V.
I still cannot understand why the laptop won’t function properly without battery. The 85W charger should be enough to power the laptop. I checked the TDP for the Core i7 is around 47W, which means there should be around 38W left.
I have never seen laptop behavior such way. I have had tons of Windows laptop, with and without battery installed. All of them aren’t throttling the CPU without functional battery.
So it is either Apple not providing adequate power supply or it is bad design.
Why would Apple design a notebook without a battery? It´s most likely just disabling PROCHOT variable in UEFI and it´s an Intel standard. Apple follows suit, as it should be and is meant to be. Just disabling PROCHOT can be dangerous, you may kill your motherboard.
On the white Intel iMac, you have to not force anything. I found that there's a sweet spot where if pressed just right, the latch will release. I'm sure Apple had a special tool to do this reliably every time, but I haven't seen it. I used the credit card method. But once the bezel was off, I found the iMac to be very easy to work on.
Yes, I agree the G5 iMac was a better mechanical design.