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Comment by windowsrookie | Hacker News Reader

The problem is it adds quite a bit of thickness to the device. The framework 16 solution where it slides into the back is better, but we will see how well upgrades are supported.

Surprisingly the older iMacs are very upgradeable because of their socketed CPU and MXM GPU. I recently received a free 2010 iMac and was able to upgrade the dual core i3 CPU to a quad core i7, which then boosted the RAM limit to 32GB. I also grabbed an $8 FirePro M4000 MXM GPU from a dell laptop and flashed it for MacOS compatibility .

This old 2010 iMac now has a quad core cpu, 32GB RAM, and a metal capable GPU running the current version of macOS Sonoma. It's running great, and I can essentially run every app on the machine without ever hitting swap, unlike my 8GB MacBook Air.

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Where is your blog about this??

So I can post it to hacker news :/

No seriously I have a could have 2010 iMac laying around. How much was the i7?

I have thought about blogging a bit but there are already many people blogging who are much more knowledgable than me. :)

This iMac is the 21" model, they have a smaller PSU and cooling, so the most powerful chip you can install is the i7-860s (82W CPU). I paid $25 from aliexpress.

If you have the 27" iMac you can install the i7-860 (without s) that is a 95W CPU and can boost to higher clock speeds. This is also a more common chip so likely cheaper than the i7-860s.

Both chips should boost the default max of 16GB RAM to 32GB RAM.

Would you happen to have a breakdown on how to flash the gpu?

This thread on MacRumors has everything you need to know.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card...

Ha, I remember that thread!

I did the same with a dumpster find in 2020. I saw the guy hauling and depositing it, so I asked and got it (2011 iMac 27" with maxed out specs at ordering time - radeon 9800, i7, 16gb ram, ssd+2tb hdd. Almost mint condition).

It had of course 2 issues:

- backlight was dead on one half of the screen

- infamous radeon BGA soldering issue, intermittent glitches & os freezing when it had warmed up

I resoldered the backlight connector (apparently broke off the pcb under mechanical stress) and swapped in a used $20 Nvidia Quadro that I had flashed with nick's hacked rom from the above thread.

I did not want to do some hackintosh mods to the OS so i went with (iirc) mavericks and sold it on classifieds for $430 after noone in my circle wanted it. I was also able to sell off the mxm radeon 9800/2GB for $30, placed the ad just for curiosity about it's resale value in such a broken state. :)

The money was just by-catch, the real joy always comes from resurrecting broken things (for me).

Damn, that's a sweet set of upgrades. And shoving in a decent SSD too?

I just got given a 2010 MacBook Air with 2GB of RAM, and well, it's kinda sad :(

Thanks haha and yes I also installed an SSD. Unfortunately this iMac is only SATA II, so that limits the speeds a bit, but it is still much faster than an HDD.

Apple's desktops of that era were quite upgradeable, but those old MacBook Air's were the beginning of what Apple devices became today.

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