I got lucky on a pawnshop find and have a 27in late 2015 5K iMac for $350, no locks, no damage, nothing and it came with the bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse 2. I think I made out pretty well. I enjoy these videos quite a bit and encourage you to keep it up, they are getting better with each release!
I never thought I was gonna be lucky enough to get my hands on a cheap iMac, I got one for 20$ bucks!, I first watched your 2011 iMac videos 2 years ago and now Im upgrading my own imac as well, I can't be happier
I have the option to go for a mid 2010 21.5" iMac for only $50, including shipping. I know I can upgrade it like crazy compared to today's models, so with this video (and a few of your other ones like it) as a guide, I'm going to go for it!
Very cool! I just replaced a failed HDD on an old 2008 model iMac. That gave me the confidence to replace the 5400rpm 2.5" drive on a 2013 iMac with an SSD, and upgrade the RAM while I was in there. Enjoyed the video -- keep up the good work!
Note: If you want to add an MXM Type A card into a Mac the Firepro M5100, Quadro M1000M, M2000M and M1200 Mobile are all great options. The Quadro M2200M is usually $200+ dollars so that would be unreasonable, but the Firepro goes for between $30-40 and is about as strong as Vega 8 integrated desktop graphics. The three lower-end Quadro MM series cards sit in between Vega 11 integrated desktop graphics and the GTX 1050 mobile variants, with the M1000M at about the same performance as a HD 6850 desktop GPU and the M2000M slightly stronger than a HD 6950. The M1200 Mobile is basically the same as the M2000M but produced one year later, alongside a reduced TDP of 45W and some clock shifting by like 20 MHz or so. The M1000M sits at between $65-80 and the M2000M and M1200 compete at between $100-175. Check both of these on EBay as sometimes one is cheaper than the other. The M2200M is actually stronger than a desktop GTX 1050 but commands a much higher price tag. I do not know if there is a whitelist on graphics cards but if not then these are all MXM Type A cards that would easily fit in any laptop or iMac that would fit MXM Type A standards. I found out about these from Dell Precision 4000 series laptops in the early-mid 2010s and unfortunately these cards are not as popular as before. Hope this helps anyone who needs compatible graphics card advice.
Idk, these prices have changed a little over the years, as well as the configs. This is especially true for the Nvidia cards, since they were already limited to Mojave. That was only a few years old when the video came out, but now it's really feeling its age. Otherwise, the performance metrics are the same.
Filter for local pick up only - a lot of people don't want to deal with postage for items that are only worth a few dollars. I've found this work for me on a few occasions :)
If I wanted to be annoying I could say No it’s not that good of a machine BUT! Apple optimises it’s software so well that a baseline Mac mini can outperform my $2000 dollar (AU Dollar) Helios 300 laptop when surfing the web or document editing. And plus I love the Mac mini because it’s nice and small. If you need to pack it away you just unplug the cables and shove it in a bag!
Well I guess one may debate whether the MAC Mini is a good value or not? My Mac Mini is from 2009 has been upgraded about 5 years ago to 8 Gigs of RAM chips and all the rest of the hardware has remained the same. Software updates as needed. Definitely thinking of adding a new solid state hard drive, repasting and another thorough cleaning. I'ld say go for it!
@@philipohmes9395 Definitely go for an upgraded SSD. I have an early 2011 MBP that came with 320 GB HDD and 4 GB of ram. I've upgraded it since to 16 GB of ram and a 1 TB SSD (fastest one I could find). Didn't cost much either. Starts up in about 12 seconds compared to a couple of minutes like it did before.
I recently did a similar project. I bought it as broken of Facebook and fixed it. Here are the specs and details; 27" Mid 2011 iMac, i5 2400, 16gb ram, 500gb SSD (I upgraded this for $55 on Amazon), AMD 6970m (Was bad and I baked it for a ghetto reflow fix). I bought it for $50 and spent about $65 on upgrades so I am all in at $115! I got lucky and I may have to replace the graphics if it fails again.
Hey. You inspired me to buy a borked iMac for $150 bux and restore it using an old SSD and some cheap ram i bought online. Now it's great! Keep the vids coming!
You deserve so many more subscribers then you have like wtf.... How have only 68 thousand people figured out how amazing your content is? Your easily one of the best tech-related UA-camrs out there, keep up the good work!
I upgraded my iMac 21.5 mid-2011 with an i7, k1000m, 32 GB RAM and 500gb dual-boot SSD. It’s a great machine and would really recommend it! Thanks for your videos Luke!
Im thinking about upgrading my daughters 2011. It has and i3 and only 4gbs of ram. How much did it costs you to upgrade to those specs? Did you do it yourself?
@@superdave3506 Because I'm "cool", I recorded what I spent. £480 in total. CPU i7 - 152 GPU k1000m - 154 RAM 32gb - 112 SSD 500gb - 59 I've got it running Big Sur now, and have edited video no problem. It beats spending £2k! I followed the guide on Tech It Out...
Thank you so much, now I am purchasing a iMac on ebay 😃 My first one, by the way. Thank you for your videos and your channel. I am a Windows user since 1998!
Grabbed one of these this week for $50 on CL. Added a $25 500GB SSD from Micro Center, used Open Core to install Ventura, it already had 8GB of Ram and thing is awesome.
Always amazing videos from you Luke. Can you though for once show how you put the OS on the hard drive before you "pop" it into the new computer? As my teachers always told me, show your work. I just want to see where you get the OS file(s), how you put them on a hard drive you are about transplant into another Mac. Thank you.
Just picked up a 2009 imac w 8gb ram and 256gb SSD with Magic Keyboard/Magic Mouse for $150 in perfect condition. Considering starting a channel talking about all the deals I've been finding
Dude you should tackle the continuity issue with MP 5,1. I’ve got the MP to use exclusively my ASUS BT 400 dongle and now I have Bluetooth 4.0 ( used a apple developer app Bluetooth explorer). Do you think a WiFi dongle with 802.11 ac capabilities will finally enable the continuity function without buying the expensive OSX chips or using CAT and disabling SIP? I think this would be a great revisit for your channel .
Congratulations Luke. That's a great upgrade and I am glad you didn't have the issues with this one like the 27' iMac. This is awesome for down the road upgrading a 2011 iMac. (:
HEY LUKE...I like you because-YOU DO YOU...you don’t need to have other video reviewers or “famous” people on your show...YOU ARE THE BEST REVIEWER!!!!
I'm upgrading my 2010 to the max ram (32GB), the cpu from an i5 to an i7, update to a 1TB SSD, and the GPU to the 770M. Thanks to you and many others for posting these update videos.
For the 2011 MBP, the drive bay on some of them (not sure which) were SATA III allowing for some crazy RAID0 numbers natively. If this iMac supports SATA III in that drive bay - $10 for the caddy and another $25 for a second SSD and we can have the RAID 0 >$250 iMac!!
This is really cool🔥. To answer your question as to whether or not you would have been better off buying an upgraded version, I think it depends. You paid only 200$ for it, but then how much time you spent on the upgrade. You also have to calculate the time spent researching the parts, shipment, etc. For a student, this would be a no-brainer to do the upgrade, or for someone who wants to showcase his skills, but for a busy working professional, I would prefer paying extra for the upgraded version.
I bought the exact model from offer up claiming it had bad hard drive then took it home reset it and it started to work again. It was a steal. It came with 12gb of ram too.
By removing the hard drive you also removed the thermal sensor. The HDD fan will run at full speed, if you do not use some fan control software. Instead you should have replaced the optical drive with the SSD using a $3 adapter from AliExpress.
Petri Krohn yes, you could do that, and also you can connect up to 3 drives with the SATA data and power slots inside the motherboard. The problem with the DVD is that it runs at SATA 2 speeds, not SATA 3. You lose about 33% of your SSD’s performance right there.
That's not always the case. I upgraded my MBP with an SSD to replace the HDD from factory and it came with a thermal sensor on it. It depends on which brand you go with.
The built rocks. Best value for money. Personally I would have also changed the CPU with an i7, just to get the machine as top specs as I could. Maybe you should consider it. It will still be a hell of a deal. (Especially if you then sell the i5 to cut down on the budget). Think about it.
Yes I also upgraded my iMac 12,1 with a new Samsung 850 evo 250GB ssd and an used i7 2600s and an used NVIDIA K2000M graphics card. It cost me about 100€ here in Germany, including sell the changed parts (I didn’t sell the original gpu). I don’t know if newer MXM3.0a cards would also work, I would also give a try if they could.
Now that you put in this card that supports Metal, you can patch your device to the latest version of macOS without causing problems! It's basically a modern machine now!
It was worth it , loved the video. You make me want to go through all the computers and laptops in my house and upgrade them lol . Keep up the great job…
🙂 a 770M has a passmark of 2658 which is a little bit stronger than a Desktop 1030 so u can definitely do plenty of low spec gaming yes that form factor is great for any operating system, if ur handy with power tools after u take it all apart u can take the rear chassis outside and make a couple holes, one to run a hard drive extension cable to the outside so u can swap out hard drives easily, including a windows drive and a linux drive, kinda like on a mac pro, also make a big hole where the ram slots is if u plan on upgrading the ram again or if u want to later on test ur ram if and when ur ram fails. Thanks for the MOD video 😍
I know it would be a hastle, but could you please make a video on how to upgrade the graphics card? I had been doing a ton of research and until I found his video, I didn’t know you could change it on a 21.5”. But now I do and I found a guide on ifixit, I just wish you were more specific about what bracket you had to cut. Other wise good video, but could you explain how you had to break the bracket better?
I mean, if you or someone you know is dead set on a Mac, I think that's a damn good option, if not the best, solution especially for the price! Great work as always!
CPU performance increase is related to 100% fans speed, not better airflow. If you replace the original hd with the thermal sensor, your fans are goint to full speed. (to avoid this we had to buy an expensive OWC ssd)
I have a late 2009 27" iMac and after two failed HDDs (one under warranty, the other not), I bought a 1TB SSD and had it installed. Love it and after 11 years it's still going strong. I reckon I will have it for the rest of my life. I'd like to change out the screen though because there are some faint vertical lines on it that you can see only on a dark screen. But they are so faint it doesn't bother me that much.
You won’t see this probably but can I just say you make some of the best videos on UA-cam i have seen better preparation quality exact then channels with 3 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS you deserve more then 3 million subscribers but keep it up! You do great work!
For anyone doing this: Mxm-a cards are better in the 21.5”. A common card people use is the Nvidia Quadro K2100. The power supply and GPU heat sink are bigger in the 27” i7 (not i5 27”) iMacs to accommodate the larger mxm-b cards. Many people get kernel panics when they put a Mxm-b in the 21.5 iMac.
I'm a complete amateur who just didn't have the £ to upgrade. I have this very model and following this video, and a few others, I installed an i7 processor, 32 Gb RAM, 2gb K1000m GPU and Samsung SSD. All very doable. It's now great for video editing, sound production, and does everything pretty well tbh. Still running High Sierra as it's fine. Dual booted Windows too (separate story and quite tricky. All good!
@Roop Singh Rai I couldn’t get it working, no. Then again, I just use a screensaver and turn it off when not using. It boots so quickly (now into Big Sur) that there’s no hassle at all.
I have never been a "Mac" guy. Mostly due to my specific work flow. However, after being introduced to your channel a few months ago, I find myself thinking about getting into one of these machines for use as a kiosk machine for our living room. Something that the kids or their guest (they are teenagers) could use for school work or looking up info. Also, if nothing else, to give me a chance to expand my knowledge of Apple hardware and systems.
Just bought a 2008 iMac pre-installed with 6gb of ram and 120ssd.. Was a bit skeptical at first considering it was only $100 but it came in original box and almost original condition. Take your time and eBay can be a happy place!
2:25 "I'm just going to go ahead and call it close enough." I truely agree. I would love to do a graphics card upgrade, which my skills would allow, but I'm just afraid of that exposed PSU.
I find plugging those cables back in a bit challenging.. You underestimate yourself Luke. I seen a video that one guy did where he took out the optical drive and put a second SSD in and RAID them together. The 21" 2017 iMac I just bought for my wife only has 2 RAM slots where the older ones pre 2012 had 4
I just got a late 2013 27in iMac with 1t or storage and 8gig ram, my friend gave it to me when they got a new one, they told me that it was incredibly slow and annoying to use so I figured I would need to put an Ssd in it, I booted it up and got it to Catalina and it runs like a brand new computer, I was surprised something so old (for a Mac) worked so well, I got about 4000 photos downloaded from an external hard drive in just a minute or two. Im excited because it doesn't look like I will have to open it up or anything !!
What a relief... I feared you will show how much faster is your 200$ 21"iMac compared to my new 2019 iMac that I recently bought based on your review of the new lineup. :D :P Great job. iI think I might search for such 21 for my Mother. She will love the form factor and looks and for 200-300 USD it will be a great gift for her birthday.
I just scored 3 of these machines for $0. All had attempted HDD to SSD swaps and the fans kicked on and they'd kernel panic. The OWC Temp sensor fixed it all.
U're the MASTER of budget Macs :) I didn't knew this "world" before reaching your very interesting channel. Thanks to you, some weeks ago I purchased a very good used MacBook Pro mid 2015 15 inches top of the line for a very good price! 2.8 i7 4cores/8threads 16gb ram 1TB SSD AMD TO 370x Thanks a lot for your videos!
I bought my 27" iMac in Jan 2011 and it had the ram slots behind a panel on the bottom of the unit and I doubled the ram from 8 to 16 GB. Took out two small screws. And FTR my 8+ year old iMAC is still going string. Even runs X-Plane
Let me just say I broke plenty of PC and laptop computers trying to do upgrades but I never broke an iMac or MacBook. Apple definitely builds their machines way better
I did the SSD upgrade on my iMac 2011 same model as Luke's but - and here's a big warning to anyone planning on doing the same : Be very very careful with the gold connector and cable LCD LVDS Display Screen Cable 593-1350B as I was almost finished with just this to reconnect BUT my stupid fingers managed to wreck both the cable and logic board connector. This has now turned my cheap iMac into a costly one as I'm having to fork out £130 ($150) for a decent local tech to replace the connector on the logic board. Just be careful and don't make my dumb mistake. Every other part is easy as Luke shows in vid but this one connector managed to spoil my whole month.
Perhaps someone else asked, but you didn't mention Apple's proprietary hard drive switch... my drive failed in a 2011 (late) 21" imac... and I use an external ssd hooked up to the thunderwire or whatever back there. And the reason is, that if I detach the internal (non-working) drive, the machine's fans throttle open full speed and stay there. Did you not run into that problem removing the internal drive?
Thanks for the awesome video luke! Would LOVE to get a pro advice from you. I have a 27" late 2012 iMac and thinking of running it via external drive to boost performance via the thunderbolt 1 port or the USB 3.0 port. Would love to know what is the best option? 1) an external USB 3.0 SSD like the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD External Hard Drive 2) an NVME drive with a case to the USB 3.0 port? 3) an NVME drive and case with the apple adapter from USB 3.0 to thunderbolt. (the late 2012 imac has a thunderbolt 1). Would love to know what is the faster option here considering the bottlenecks of the thunderbolt 1 and USB 3.0 ports. happy to also hear about any other idea..thanks so much!
Great video! So happy you had success with the Frankenstein lite. Loved your reaction when it booted up. 😂 thanks for the vid and the so much fun entertaining content.
Hey Luke, did you have to clearance any metal from the GPU heat sink plate? Attempting to use 765Ms on 27” iMac 2009 and 2011, the “R22” components up toward the top corners are higher than similar components on the AMDs, so the MXM board won’t sit flat against the plate. Wondering if you experienced that on the 21...
nice job!! nice idea of removing the dvd drive for better cooling! how is the performance? Is it any laggy? for the fan control, you use any program to observe it?
I would say if the power supply has like 205W and you say you removed the HDD which draws much more power than a SSD. I wouldn‘t say that the airflow gave you more cpu power, i think the cpu managed to get more power from the power supply which helped improve the single and multi core performance
Gambler53877 as someone doing this, do the iMac. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro and an iMac 2011 and the iMac is hands down easier, especially if you have to do the screen later
I want to live in the region where apple used products created a pretty affordable market to play/work/mess with :D In my country I just cant buy used/cheap macs and repair them cuz it is not a saturated market. I love your hobby!
I did the same thing a few weeks ago, Found a $200 2011 iMac, Had a old laptop laying around that had 2x 2gb sticks of identical ram, and I put in a 256gb SSD I had pulled out of another dead laptop, 3D Printed a drive holder that I found off thingiverse so it's not flopping around. So I guess I spent $200 in total as well. The other parts were free!
My son was just gifted a 2011. With an i3 I thought about upgrading to an i7 and SSD. But I decided to leave it as is. He will just use it for school work anyways and as it sits it 100% better than the chrome book they gave him.
I really like the way you explain and your videos! 👍🏻 I Would like to see the same type of video, upgrading a MacBook Pro 13, late 2009 from 4g ram to 16g ram and any other modification that you will find doable and not expensive
Videos are getting better and better. Is the 2011 the only suitable candidate for upgrading? The 2011s seem to fetch daft money on flea bay in the U.K.
An Intel i7-860S worked for me on a 2010 21” iMac set-up. About $50± on eBay - they only draw 82w so you’re good for power consumption. An i7-870s will also work, but they’re much harder to come by.
Luke, really enjoying this old iMac upgrade jaunt you're on at the moment. Keep it going. I did have a question regarding how you're preparing your SSD or HDD with a macOS prior to installing in these machines you're upgrading?
the CPU is also upgradable; if Im not mistaken this iMac comes with an intel Core2Duo around 3Ghz; it would be interesting if someone can successfully upgrade to an i3 or i5 to get some SERIOUS performance boost; and while you're at it, the internal superdrive uses a special "compact SATA" connector (includes power + data in a unique connector); but there's a usb-to-compact sata cable/adaptor to repurpose your internal SD into an usb-external superdrive (although it's usb2 to the best of my knowledge); for manual cooling you can install SMCfan control and tweak your fan settings for gaming sessions too; nice video!
![I bought a huge PILE of 32 MacBooks for cheap. Can I fix them? [Part 1]](/img/n.gif)
I got lucky on a pawnshop find and have a 27in late 2015 5K iMac for $350, no locks, no damage, nothing and it came with the bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse 2. I think I made out pretty well.
I enjoy these videos quite a bit and encourage you to keep it up, they are getting better with each release!
Luke, I am NOT your father, but, I'm proud of your work, anyway. Always top shelf content. Thank you.
Luke i'm your father
It was obvious...
lmao
William, you are his father.
Very nice choice of words 👍
I never thought I was gonna be lucky enough to get my hands on a cheap iMac, I got one for 20$ bucks!, I first watched your 2011 iMac videos 2 years ago and now Im upgrading my own imac as well, I can't be happier
I have the option to go for a mid 2010 21.5" iMac for only $50, including shipping. I know I can upgrade it like crazy compared to today's models, so with this video (and a few of your other ones like it) as a guide, I'm going to go for it!
Very cool! I just replaced a failed HDD on an old 2008 model iMac. That gave me the confidence to replace the 5400rpm 2.5" drive on a 2013 iMac with an SSD, and upgrade the RAM while I was in there. Enjoyed the video -- keep up the good work!
After doing that could you upgrade to the latest operating system (Mojave?)
Note: If you want to add an MXM Type A card into a Mac the Firepro M5100, Quadro M1000M, M2000M and M1200 Mobile are all great options. The Quadro M2200M is usually $200+ dollars so that would be unreasonable, but the Firepro goes for between $30-40 and is about as strong as Vega 8 integrated desktop graphics. The three lower-end Quadro MM series cards sit in between Vega 11 integrated desktop graphics and the GTX 1050 mobile variants, with the M1000M at about the same performance as a HD 6850 desktop GPU and the M2000M slightly stronger than a HD 6950. The M1200 Mobile is basically the same as the M2000M but produced one year later, alongside a reduced TDP of 45W and some clock shifting by like 20 MHz or so. The M1000M sits at between $65-80 and the M2000M and M1200 compete at between $100-175. Check both of these on EBay as sometimes one is cheaper than the other. The M2200M is actually stronger than a desktop GTX 1050 but commands a much higher price tag. I do not know if there is a whitelist on graphics cards but if not then these are all MXM Type A cards that would easily fit in any laptop or iMac that would fit MXM Type A standards. I found out about these from Dell Precision 4000 series laptops in the early-mid 2010s and unfortunately these cards are not as popular as before.
Hope this helps anyone who needs compatible graphics card advice.
should be a pinned comment
Idk, these prices have changed a little over the years, as well as the configs. This is especially true for the Nvidia cards, since they were already limited to Mojave. That was only a few years old when the video came out, but now it's really feeling its age.
Otherwise, the performance metrics are the same.
Not sure if I'm ebaying correctly, I can never find these deals...
Me neither
@@Peter-lm3we just look beter i bought a macbook pro retina 2015 13inch for 410 euro
just wait... then snipe :D
Filter for local pick up only - a lot of people don't want to deal with postage for items that are only worth a few dollars. I've found this work for me on a few occasions :)
@@-xYz--nk1gm Dang! That's insane
After the iMac series you should do the Mac Mini! Its another great and even more affordable option for people who want a good value mac.
If I wanted to be annoying I could say
No it’s not that good of a machine
BUT!
Apple optimises it’s software so well that a baseline Mac mini can outperform my $2000 dollar (AU Dollar) Helios 300 laptop when surfing the web or document editing.
And plus I love the Mac mini because it’s nice and small. If you need to pack it away you just unplug the cables and shove it in a bag!
Well I guess one may debate whether the MAC Mini is a good value or not? My Mac Mini is from 2009 has been upgraded about 5 years ago to 8 Gigs of RAM chips and all the rest of the hardware has remained the same. Software updates as needed. Definitely thinking of adding a new solid state hard drive, repasting and another thorough cleaning. I'ld say go for it!
Yes pls
Yes, I second this. Please update a Mac Mini, Luke. (:
@@philipohmes9395 Definitely go for an upgraded SSD. I have an early 2011 MBP that came with 320 GB HDD and 4 GB of ram. I've upgraded it since to 16 GB of ram and a 1 TB SSD (fastest one I could find). Didn't cost much either. Starts up in about 12 seconds compared to a couple of minutes like it did before.
I recently did a similar project. I bought it as broken of Facebook and fixed it. Here are the specs and details;
27" Mid 2011 iMac, i5 2400, 16gb ram, 500gb SSD (I upgraded this for $55 on Amazon), AMD 6970m (Was bad and I baked it for a ghetto reflow fix).
I bought it for $50 and spent about $65 on upgrades so I am all in at $115! I got lucky and I may have to replace the graphics if it fails again.
Would be interested to see your most cost effective 27 iMac build for 4k video editing.
Luke?
Yas!!!
Some pics of that hdd mount mod for the gpu would have been really helpful.
Plzzzzzz
Man, those machines were total workhorses. Thanks for these videos!
Hey. You inspired me to buy a borked iMac for $150 bux and restore it using an old SSD and some cheap ram i bought online. Now it's great! Keep the vids coming!
You deserve so many more subscribers then you have like wtf.... How have only 68 thousand people figured out how amazing your content is? Your easily one of the best tech-related UA-camrs out there, keep up the good work!
I upgraded my iMac 21.5 mid-2011 with an i7, k1000m, 32 GB RAM and 500gb dual-boot SSD. It’s a great machine and would really recommend it! Thanks for your videos Luke!
Im thinking about upgrading my daughters 2011. It has and i3 and only 4gbs of ram. How much did it costs you to upgrade to those specs? Did you do it yourself?
@@superdave3506 Because I'm "cool", I recorded what I spent.
£480 in total.
CPU i7 - 152
GPU k1000m - 154
RAM 32gb - 112
SSD 500gb - 59
I've got it running Big Sur now, and have edited video no problem.
It beats spending £2k!
I followed the guide on Tech It Out...
Thank you so much, now I am purchasing a iMac on ebay 😃
My first one, by the way.
Thank you for your videos and your channel. I am a Windows user since 1998!
sell it and invest your money back in another imac untill you can build the ultimate imac
Grabbed one of these this week for $50 on CL. Added a $25 500GB SSD from Micro Center, used Open Core to install Ventura, it already had 8GB of Ram and thing is awesome.
Always amazing videos from you Luke. Can you though for once show how you put the OS on the hard drive before you "pop" it into the new computer? As my teachers always told me, show your work. I just want to see where you get the OS file(s), how you put them on a hard drive you are about transplant into another Mac. Thank you.
Just picked up a 2009 imac w 8gb ram and 256gb SSD with Magic Keyboard/Magic Mouse for $150 in perfect condition. Considering starting a channel talking about all the deals I've been finding
Where do you find these deals?
Dude you should tackle the continuity issue with MP 5,1. I’ve got the MP to use exclusively my ASUS BT 400 dongle and now I have Bluetooth 4.0 ( used a apple developer app Bluetooth explorer). Do you think a WiFi dongle with 802.11 ac capabilities will finally enable the continuity function without buying the expensive OSX chips or using CAT and disabling SIP? I think this would be a great revisit for your channel .
Clickbait title. $201 spent.
davenz000 hehehe
Imac 27" 2009 core 2 duo, 200$? Is it a good deal?
@@mohammedelazery5310 isnt
Philippe Azevedo he was asking a question
@@vangular6978 and i said that isnt a good deal.
Congratulations Luke. That's a great upgrade and I am glad you didn't have the issues with this one like the 27' iMac. This is awesome for down the road upgrading a 2011 iMac. (:
HEY LUKE...I like you because-YOU DO YOU...you don’t need to have other video reviewers or “famous” people on your show...YOU ARE THE BEST REVIEWER!!!!
I'm upgrading my 2010 to the max ram (32GB), the cpu from an i5 to an i7, update to a 1TB SSD, and the GPU to the 770M. Thanks to you and many others for posting these update videos.
How’s the performance?
You must have spent a fortune.
For the 2011 MBP, the drive bay on some of them (not sure which) were SATA III allowing for some crazy RAID0 numbers natively. If this iMac supports SATA III in that drive bay - $10 for the caddy and another $25 for a second SSD and we can have the RAID 0 >$250 iMac!!
This is really cool🔥. To answer your question as to whether or not you would have been better off buying an upgraded version, I think it depends. You paid only 200$ for it, but then how much time you spent on the upgrade. You also have to calculate the time spent researching the parts, shipment, etc. For a student, this would be a no-brainer to do the upgrade, or for someone who wants to showcase his skills, but for a busy working professional, I would prefer paying extra for the upgraded version.
"Oh what the fu-" - Luke 2019
5:36 for those wondering
I'm sure he said "what the fun".
I bought the exact model from offer up claiming it had bad hard drive then took it home reset it and it started to work again. It was a steal. It came with 12gb of ram too.
It's crazy how many 'bad hard drive' or 'bad ssd' listings can be fixed with a simple wipe + reinstall!
By removing the hard drive you also removed the thermal sensor. The HDD fan will run at full speed, if you do not use some fan control software.
Instead you should have replaced the optical drive with the SSD using a $3 adapter from AliExpress.
Petri Krohn yes, you could do that, and also you can connect up to 3 drives with the SATA data and power slots inside the motherboard. The problem with the DVD is that it runs at SATA 2 speeds, not SATA 3. You lose about 33% of your SSD’s performance right there.
That's not always the case. I upgraded my MBP with an SSD to replace the HDD from factory and it came with a thermal sensor on it. It depends on which brand you go with.
You can also fix that by using a SATA power splitter. Don't know why this works but it works for me and many others.
I don’t even own an iMac and I’ve watched several of your iMac videos. Love your vids.
The built rocks. Best value for money. Personally I would have also changed the CPU with an i7, just to get the machine as top specs as I could. Maybe you should consider it. It will still be a hell of a deal. (Especially if you then sell the i5 to cut down on the budget). Think about it.
Yes I also upgraded my iMac 12,1 with a new Samsung 850 evo 250GB ssd and an used i7 2600s and an used NVIDIA K2000M graphics card. It cost me about 100€ here in Germany, including sell the changed parts (I didn’t sell the original gpu). I don’t know if newer MXM3.0a cards would also work, I would also give a try if they could.
Nothing ThinkAbout läuft catalina bei dir ?
@@vince2345678 Ne, wegen der Driver bin immer noch bei High Sierra. Werde ich auch nicht empfehlen.
Now that you put in this card that supports Metal, you can patch your device to the latest version of macOS without causing problems!
It's basically a modern machine now!
Steve Job's soul was looking at you snapping that piece off the chassis and decided to come back down to give this iMac a little push.
So tired of these reviewers who are over-produced and try to yuck it up. Your videos are a breath of fresh air in this wasteland.
It was worth it , loved the video. You make me want to go through all the computers and laptops in my house and upgrade them lol . Keep up the great job…
Were you able to upgrade to Mac OS Catalina or Mojave? I'm stuck on High Sierra due to the graphics limitations..
Patch
5:43 best part of video
😒
🙂 a 770M has a passmark of 2658 which is a little bit stronger than a Desktop 1030 so u can definitely do plenty of low spec gaming
yes that form factor is great for any operating system, if ur handy with power tools after u take it all apart u can take the rear chassis outside and make a couple holes, one to run a hard drive extension cable to the outside so u can swap out hard drives easily, including a windows drive and a linux drive, kinda like on a mac pro, also make a big hole where the ram slots is if u plan on upgrading the ram again or if u want to later on test ur ram if and when ur ram fails. Thanks for the MOD video 😍
I know it would be a hastle, but could you please make a video on how to upgrade the graphics card? I had been doing a ton of research and until I found his video, I didn’t know you could change it on a 21.5”. But now I do and I found a guide on ifixit, I just wish you were more specific about what bracket you had to cut. Other wise good video, but could you explain how you had to break the bracket better?
I mean, if you or someone you know is dead set on a Mac, I think that's a damn good option, if not the best, solution especially for the price!
Great work as always!
Thanks for the service. You really should practice anti-static protection, especially since you are teaching others how to modify systems!
CPU performance increase is related to 100% fans speed, not better airflow. If you replace the original hd with the thermal sensor, your fans are goint to full speed.
(to avoid this we had to buy an expensive OWC ssd)
you can buy the sensors for 5 bucks and stick it on the ssd it tricks the mac into thinking it can read the temps
Hey, Mr. Miani! Thanks a bunch for posting this. It was very very helpful to me. I'm trying to breathe some life into my 2010 27". Awesome video, sir.
I have a late 2009 27" iMac and after two failed HDDs (one under warranty, the other not), I bought a 1TB SSD and had it installed. Love it and after 11 years it's still going strong. I reckon I will have it for the rest of my life. I'd like to change out the screen though because there are some faint vertical lines on it that you can see only on a dark screen. But they are so faint it doesn't bother me that much.
I'm looking at iMacs on eBay.. what are the limitations of having your os limited/not upgrading anymore?
You won’t see this probably but can I just say you make some of the best videos on UA-cam i have seen better preparation quality exact then channels with 3 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS you deserve more then 3 million subscribers but keep it up! You do great work!
For anyone doing this: Mxm-a cards are better in the 21.5”. A common card people use is the Nvidia Quadro K2100. The power supply and GPU heat sink are bigger in the 27” i7 (not i5 27”) iMacs to accommodate the larger mxm-b cards. Many people get kernel panics when they put a Mxm-b in the 21.5 iMac.
Haha, we sell these mid 2011s with 16gb ram, 1TB hd, & Mojave OS , for $500. CAD! Still very capable machines & stand the test of time well. 👍🏻
I'm a complete amateur who just didn't have the £ to upgrade.
I have this very model and following this video, and a few others, I installed an i7 processor, 32 Gb RAM, 2gb K1000m GPU and Samsung SSD.
All very doable.
It's now great for video editing, sound production, and does everything pretty well tbh.
Still running High Sierra as it's fine. Dual booted Windows too (separate story and quite tricky.
All good!
@Roop Singh Rai I couldn’t get it working, no. Then again, I just use a screensaver and turn it off when not using. It boots so quickly (now into Big Sur) that there’s no hassle at all.
people love these.. modified is nice.. and you can even patch these now for the boot screen & brightness control & I hear put Catalina on there
I have never been a "Mac" guy. Mostly due to my specific work flow. However, after being introduced to your channel a few months ago, I find myself thinking about getting into one of these machines for use as a kiosk machine for our living room. Something that the kids or their guest (they are teenagers) could use for school work or looking up info. Also, if nothing else, to give me a chance to expand my knowledge of Apple hardware and systems.
Just bought a 2008 iMac pre-installed with 6gb of ram and 120ssd.. Was a bit skeptical at first considering it was only $100 but it came in original box and almost original condition. Take your time and eBay can be a happy place!
Do a follow up video where you change the cpu aswell
bro love your videos keep the great vids coming.
2:25 "I'm just going to go ahead and call it close enough." I truely agree. I would love to do a graphics card upgrade, which my skills would allow, but I'm just afraid of that exposed PSU.
I find plugging those cables back in a bit challenging.. You underestimate yourself Luke. I seen a video that one guy did where he took out the optical drive and put a second SSD in and RAID them together. The 21" 2017 iMac I just bought for my wife only has 2 RAM slots where the older ones pre 2012 had 4
I just got a late 2013 27in iMac with 1t or storage and 8gig ram, my friend gave it to me when they got a new one, they told me that it was incredibly slow and annoying to use so I figured I would need to put an Ssd in it, I booted it up and got it to Catalina and it runs like a brand new computer, I was surprised something so old (for a Mac) worked so well, I got about 4000 photos downloaded from an external hard drive in just a minute or two. Im excited because it doesn't look like I will have to open it up or anything !!
What a relief... I feared you will show how much faster is your 200$ 21"iMac compared to my new 2019 iMac that I recently bought based on your review of the new lineup. :D :P
Great job. iI think I might search for such 21 for my Mother. She will love the form factor and looks and for 200-300 USD it will be a great gift for her birthday.
I just scored 3 of these machines for $0. All had attempted HDD to SSD swaps and the fans kicked on and they'd kernel panic. The OWC Temp sensor fixed it all.
I run my 2012 27” on Ventura with opencore legacy patcher and a 512 SSD drive. €250 machine works like a charm!
U're the MASTER of budget Macs :)
I didn't knew this "world" before reaching your very interesting channel.
Thanks to you, some weeks ago I purchased a very good used MacBook Pro mid 2015 15 inches top of the line for a very good price!
2.8 i7 4cores/8threads 16gb ram 1TB SSD AMD TO 370x
Thanks a lot for your videos!
Interesting but I feel like we could at least have seen some photos of the GPU install... Did it sit to the heatsink okay...etc?
Not sure if I'm ebaying correctly, I can never find these deals...
I'm just getting into Mac's as projects like this. Thank you for the video.
I bought my 27" iMac in Jan 2011 and it had the ram slots behind a panel on the bottom of the unit and I doubled the ram from 8 to 16 GB. Took out two small screws. And FTR my 8+ year old iMAC is still going string. Even runs X-Plane
Let me just say I broke plenty of PC and laptop computers trying to do upgrades but I never broke an iMac or MacBook. Apple definitely builds their machines way better
The opposite happens to me
Tell that to Louis Rossmann.
Hyrum Lowry what the fu-
fatih nararya Louis is heavily biased. 100% of the macs he sees are faulty, he doesn’t see the ones that take abuse and last nearly a decade
I did the SSD upgrade on my iMac 2011 same model as Luke's but - and here's a big warning to anyone planning on doing the same : Be very very careful with the gold connector and cable LCD LVDS Display Screen Cable 593-1350B as I was almost finished with just this to reconnect BUT my stupid fingers managed to wreck both the cable and logic board connector. This has now turned my cheap iMac into a costly one as I'm having to fork out £130 ($150) for a decent local tech to replace the connector on the logic board. Just be careful and don't make my dumb mistake. Every other part is easy as Luke shows in vid but this one connector managed to spoil my whole month.
Perhaps someone else asked, but you didn't mention Apple's proprietary hard drive switch... my drive failed in a 2011 (late) 21" imac... and I use an external ssd hooked up to the thunderwire or whatever back there. And the reason is, that if I detach the internal (non-working) drive, the machine's fans throttle open full speed and stay there. Did you not run into that problem removing the internal drive?
This is addressed in this video I believe.
ua-cam.com/video/ZH55iTNJXH4/v-deo.html
All this time I thought I was subscribed for the past year!
Well... fixed now :)
Thanks for the awesome video luke! Would LOVE to get a pro advice from you. I have a 27" late 2012 iMac and thinking of running it via external drive to boost performance via the thunderbolt 1 port or the USB 3.0 port. Would love to know what is the best option? 1) an external USB 3.0 SSD like the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD External Hard Drive 2) an NVME drive with a case to the USB 3.0 port? 3) an NVME drive and case with the apple adapter from USB 3.0 to thunderbolt. (the late 2012 imac has a thunderbolt 1). Would love to know what is the faster option here considering the bottlenecks of the thunderbolt 1 and USB 3.0 ports. happy to also hear about any other idea..thanks so much!
Sweet luv luke's mcguyvers approach to apple upgrades
Great video! So happy you had success with the Frankenstein lite. Loved your reaction when it booted up. 😂 thanks for the vid and the so much fun entertaining content.
Plus you have to really like his style of color choices to wear... those orange shorts with the blue shirt!
I'd like to see the GPU install :o
me too :)
same here
Hey Luke, did you have to clearance any metal from the GPU heat sink plate? Attempting to use 765Ms on 27” iMac 2009 and 2011, the “R22” components up toward the top corners are higher than similar components on the AMDs, so the MXM board won’t sit flat against the plate. Wondering if you experienced that on the 21...
The cut off was just amazing 😂
Well Worth It I Run SSDs In All My Macs Specialty The Vintage Macs Makes Them More Snappy
SSD in a Macintosh SE?
Sign me up :D
Hey Luke. Great video!! Does the graphics upgrade work on a 2011 iMac 27” too?
nice job!! nice idea of removing the dvd drive for better cooling! how is the performance? Is it any laggy? for the fan control, you use any program to observe it?
Do some gaming benchmarks under bootcamp please!!
5:42 that was gold!
I would say if the power supply has like 205W and you say you removed the HDD which draws much more power than a SSD. I wouldn‘t say that the airflow gave you more cpu power, i think the cpu managed to get more power from the power supply which helped improve the single and multi core performance
Can you take us through installing macOS on a drive BEFORE putting it inside the iMac?
tallkevin01 Attach it to a Mac (internally or externally) and install macOS to it.
flatfoot1983 I would need an enclosure or some type of hub, right? That’s the step that I’m missing.
@@tallkevin01 Exactly. Sorry for the late reply.
Damn your content quality is far beyond every youtuber , keep it up . Please do some cheap hackintosh video
Hey Luce!
Thx for all these nice videos.
Do you recommend a DIY iMac or a DIY Mac Pro for a nice mac at home !?
Thx
Gambler53877 as someone doing this, do the iMac. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro and an iMac 2011 and the iMac is hands down easier, especially if you have to do the screen later
ThanksLuke for this and many videos. I just got my 20111 iMac for $150
I want to live in the region where apple used products created a pretty affordable market to play/work/mess with :D
In my country I just cant buy used/cheap macs and repair them cuz it is not a saturated market.
I love your hobby!
I did the same thing a few weeks ago, Found a $200 2011 iMac, Had a old laptop laying around that had 2x 2gb sticks of identical ram, and I put in a 256gb SSD I had pulled out of another dead laptop, 3D Printed a drive holder that I found off thingiverse so it's not flopping around. So I guess I spent $200 in total as well. The other parts were free!
My son was just gifted a 2011. With an i3 I thought about upgrading to an i7 and SSD. But I decided to leave it as is. He will just use it for school work anyways and as it sits it 100% better than the chrome book they gave him.
I really like the way you explain and your videos! 👍🏻
I Would like to see the same type of video, upgrading a MacBook Pro 13, late 2009 from 4g ram to 16g ram and any other modification that you will find doable and not expensive
Also would it be possible to connect a second SSD since you removed the optical drive?
Sure, you can connect any SATA SSD instead of optical drive, just like in unibody MacBook Pros :)
Yes. You can buy an optical drive sized ssd bracket that fits inside an iMac or Macbook.
Neat! This would be a great upgrade option, especially since SSDs are becoming so much cheaper. Thanks for the replies people! :D
Videos are getting better and better. Is the 2011 the only suitable candidate for upgrading? The 2011s seem to fetch daft money on flea bay in the U.K.
An Intel i7-860S worked for me on a 2010 21” iMac set-up. About $50± on eBay - they only draw 82w so you’re good for power consumption. An i7-870s will also work, but they’re much harder to come by.
Luke, really enjoying this old iMac upgrade jaunt you're on at the moment. Keep it going. I did have a question regarding how you're preparing your SSD or HDD with a macOS prior to installing in these machines you're upgrading?
He formats them in disk utility then he runs the installer itself :D
Always the most practical videos. Great work. Great presentations, great idea to DIY the Macs .
the CPU is also upgradable; if Im not mistaken this iMac comes with an intel Core2Duo around 3Ghz; it would be interesting if someone can successfully upgrade to an i3 or i5 to get some SERIOUS performance boost; and while you're at it, the internal superdrive uses a special "compact SATA" connector (includes power + data in a unique connector); but there's a usb-to-compact sata cable/adaptor to repurpose your internal SD into an usb-external superdrive (although it's usb2 to the best of my knowledge); for manual cooling you can install SMCfan control and tweak your fan settings for gaming sessions too; nice video!
There is zero way to upgrade a core 2 CPU to a i-series CPU
When i watch your videos im always motivated to work on my iMac!!!
Another great video.
What OS did you say you upgrade to? And did you use the DosDude patch? Thank you.
Any chance to get AirDrop on the older iMac?! missing that the most of all features...
I bought a 27 inch thunderbolt display for 100 dollars. Awesome deal
I'm watching this on a mid-2011 iMac .... how cool is that?! Cheers .........