Old iMac CPU Upgrade Options?

[SteveIsBeast302]

I have a Mid 2010 27'' iMac with the i7-870. Its still totally capable, and I'm planning on doing some upgrades. Anyone tried other CPUs than the ones Apple says are supported? I'm thinking like an i7 875K or i7 880, has anyone tried any of those? And the Radeon 6970 2GB from the 2011 Macs are said to work. It says it only supports 16GB RAM but that's BS, I've seen 32GB running just fine. And dual drive with a boot SSD and storage HDD. And I'm thinking of 3D printing brackets to stick Noctua fans out the back, I've done similar mods to Mac Pro towers but never an all in one. Any other suggestions?

[mr cheese]

An i7 880 would work on paper, I don't think you'll get that much more mileage out of it but if you're already ready to drop >$100 USD on upgrades why not I suppose! I'm not too sure with how well iMacs support their CPUs being swapped out like this, and i doubt you're gonna get a noticeable improvement from an 880 over an 870 worth the money you want to spend on it...

 

Any GPU ever supported by an iMac should work OOtB in these machines. Theoretically this means you could throw up to an RX 580 in one of these and be smooth sailing.

Here's a great macrumors link to a thread dedicated to upgrading GPUs in these 2010 iMacs!

 

32GB of RAM would work but... I wouldn't recommend it. The system is too old to really make good use of that before being bogged down to the ground.

Noctua fans would also work for intake but smcFanControl has kept my 2009" iMac nice and cool under full loads just fine with the OEM cooling. YMMV with that one too, wouldn't hurt to have extra case flow to the blowers!

SSD a huge yes. The HDD in my 2009 is going bad and I'm only just now getting around to throwing in an SSD and it may be too late soon. Do that and it'll fly like new.

 

I will say, at this age the amount of money you'd be spending on this could be thrown at a used tower from your local classifieds that could very well hackintosh. I've got 5 towers in my living room, one I got for $100 and 4 for $70 total, the latter being about how much you could expect an i7-880 to go on eBay. If you want to keep this machine alive I absolutely will not take that away from you!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, SteveIsBeast302 said:

I have a Mid 2010 27'' iMac with the i7-870. Its still totally capable, and I'm planning on doing some upgrades. Anyone tried other CPUs than the ones Apple says are supported? I'm thinking like an i7 875K or i7 880, has anyone tried any of those? And the Radeon 6970 2GB from the 2011 Macs are said to work. It says it only supports 16GB RAM but that's BS, I've seen 32GB running just fine. And dual drive with a boot SSD and storage HDD. And I'm thinking of 3D printing brackets to stick Noctua fans out the back, I've done similar mods to Mac Pro towers but never an all in one. Any other suggestions?

Considering you already have what is essentially one of the highest end Core i7s of that generation, the gains will be almost un-noticeable with today's demanding workloads on an aging system. 

 

8 minutes ago, mr cheese said:

32GB of RAM would work but... I wouldn't recommend it. The system is too old to really make good use of that before being bogged down to the ground.

Noctua fans would also work for intake but smcFanControl has kept my 2009" iMac nice and cool under full loads just fine with the OEM cooling. YMMV with that one too, wouldn't hurt to have extra case flow to the blowers!

SSD a huge yes. The HDD in my 2009 is going bad and I'm only just now getting around to throwing in an SSD and it may be too late soon. Do that and it'll fly like new.

32GB actually might not work. Looks like the maximum for this CPU is 16GB unless Apple is doing some trickery.

[mr cheese]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

32GB actually might not work. Looks like the maximum for this CPU is 16GB unless Apple is doing some trickery.

I neglected to check Arc, thanks for the fact check

[SteveIsBeast302]

I tried the Hackintosh methods, but honestly I wasn't too impressed, I ended up running Arch Linux on all my PC's since then. I suggested the i7-880 because I have one sitting around, I might as well? Apple is known for the RAM trickery, I had a 2011 iMac with 32GB RAM that ran fine, but I think you're totally right it might not be worth it because software doesn't know what to do with it, so I'll probably stick with 16. I'll take a drill press to the back and drill some fan holes and replace the blowers, they sound like a jet engine. My original plan was to try water cooling and have a reservoir and radiator mounted to the back, but a 1st gen i7 and a mobile Radeon GPU don't get hot enough to justify it, IMO. Stock temps aren't awful, I'll stick to liquid metal on the GPU and higher flow fans. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 hours ago, SteveIsBeast302 said:

Apple is known for the RAM trickery

Actually there might not be any possible trickery since this would be a strict limitation of the memory controller on the CPU.

7 hours ago, SteveIsBeast302 said:

I had a 2011 iMac with 32GB RAM that ran fine

Those 2011 iMacs ran second generation Sandy Bridge chips which did support 32GB of RAM.

[jaslion]

The difference between the 870 and 880 is like 2%

 

Ram is max 16gb with max dimm capacity being 4gb.

 

For 300$ 2015 imacs are an option or even those 8th gen mac mini's

 

AVOID AMD HD 5000 and 6000 SERIES MAC AT ALL COST THEY ARE ALL DEFECTIVE.

 

 

I'd just use the money you have to buy another mac device instead of upgrading this one.

 

Also don't mess with the airflow in these the fan pulls air over all the components if you mess with the airflow and that stops the other components will suffer

[OhYou_]

it's been tested tons of times that a 4x8GB config on memory does work and does give you 32GB. 

I would just overclock it vs messing with cpu upgrades. 

 

[DogKnight]

On 2/15/2023 at 5:18 PM, SteveIsBeast302 said:

I have a Mid 2010 27'' iMac with the i7-870. Its still totally capable, and I'm planning on doing some upgrades. Anyone tried other CPUs than the ones Apple says are supported? I'm thinking like an i7 875K or i7 880, has anyone tried any of those? And the Radeon 6970 2GB from the 2011 Macs are said to work. It says it only supports 16GB RAM but that's BS, I've seen 32GB running just fine. And dual drive with a boot SSD and storage HDD. And I'm thinking of 3D printing brackets to stick Noctua fans out the back, I've done similar mods to Mac Pro towers but never an all in one. Any other suggestions?

 

On 2/15/2023 at 6:28 PM, mr cheese said:

 

Any GPU ever supported by an iMac should work OOtB in these machines. Theoretically this means you could throw up to an RX 580 in one of these and be smooth sailing.

Here's a great macrumors link to a thread dedicated to upgrading GPUs in these 2010 iMacs!

 

Some of this is what I am looking at doing for a 2011 iMac my daughter uses. 

That MacRumors thread is a great resource for GPU upgrades. Be aware that there are different physical sizes for the MXM GPU's (MXM-A and MXM-B). Depending on your existing spec will depend on what GPU heatsink you have in your device and will determine what fits or what needs to be modded to make it fit. 

The other forum covers a lot of this in a lot of detail, so definitely read up on it.

 

The biggest problem holding these machines back is the GPU's. Not due to power, but the support for the metal API. When Apple introduced the requirement for metal support, it dropped support for any iMac prior to the 2012 model. This limits the OS to 10.13.x. By upgrading the GPU, depending on the model, you can update the machine to a current version of MacOS. This of course brings in support for newer apps across the board. 

 

Another neat upgrade you can do is to upgrade the internal WIFI / BT card. If you are going down the GPU route I would invest in this. Allows for features such as handoff and airdrop to be supported. 

 

Installing a SSD is the best upgrade you can do if you haven't already. Just be aware when changing drives in these machines they have unique temp sensors for the drives and you will need to get a compatible one for the replacement drive or all the fans will just ramp to max all the time. OWC had kits where you could get a replacement temp sensor. Otherwise the fans can be controlled via software once the OS boots (Mac Fan Control). 

CPU upgrades can be a bit tough. Need to make sure the replacement CPU has the same TDP / Power Draw as the model you're replacing. Definitely research this one more before you go and order one. 

 

I have recently ordered a WX7100 GPU and a replacement WIFI/BT card. Will see how the upgrade goes.