Small tip for when you're replacing the lcd screen... The long ribbon cable is a real pain to fix to the motherboard - really tricky to get into the socket where it's positioned. I managed to break a couple of the tiny connectors on one attempt. However, at the screen end, you can carefully peel off the sticky tape that holds the cable down and underneath that is a connector for the other end of it (ie. the cable doesn't disappear into the lcd). It's much easier to fix the cable to the motherboard first, then connect the screen end once that's in place. Just did my 6th (I think - losing count now) successful bake yesterday, and have now kept the iMac going for over 2 years since the initial failure.
Thank you for your suggestion. Just to confirm, you are recommending to (1) disconnect the wide ribbon cable at the back of the LCD, (2) attach the opposite end of that wide ribbon able to the motherboard, (3) start to put the screen in place, (4) attach the wide ribbon cable to the LCD, (5) then attach the small ribbon cable in the upper left, is that correct?
@@JDW- Yup, that's it. I worked it out after I broke the connectors on the original cable, looked to see if it could be replaced and found that it had connectors both ends. When you've got the screen balanced on your chest it's a lot easier to reach the socket near the top of the lcd than the one down towards the bottom of the motherboard and, obviously, a lot easier to connect the motherboard end when you can get at it easily. I only half pull off the tape from the LCD, and stick that back in place once the connectors in. And thanks for making the videos, and for the thermal paste recommendations. All much appreciated
@@nickbrennan7280 Thank you for confirming your tip, Nick. It's an excellent tip indeed, so much so that I've made it a PINNED comment that will perpetually appear at the top of all comments for everyone to see. That ribbon cable is the single most bothersome part of reassembly, so your excellent advice can help everyone who does the bake! THANK YOU!
Yesterday I was able to revive a late 2009 21.5” iMac using “the bake.” Wonderful, albeit challenging experience! I really can’t thank you enough. Mahalo
Mahalo nui loa! I am thrilled to hear your story of success with the bake. Your perseverance paid off! Best wishes to you and your newly resurrected iMac!
I got an Mid 2011 27-inch iMac recently with a freezing problem at booting. With your nice information, I just baked my RADEON HD 6970M 2GB VRAM card yesterday and put it back to my iMac. It worked and my iMac works fine now. Will see how long it will last. Thank you!
Hey, something I can help with! A couple months ago I repaired the 6970M in my own 2011 27" iMac using a heat gun. I can't get to it right now, but when I can I will get the model information. This was my first reflow attempt (well not really, but the first that I actually thought might work. I first tried it a couple years ago on a dead Radeon HD 5450. It's still dead.) so I wasn't exactly sure how I needed to do it, but my method was as follows (and yes, I know it's a bit scary): 1) Turn heat gun to highest heat setting 2) Wait for it to completely heat up 3) With GPU sitting on concrete I just moved the heat gun constantly over the GPU for about 7-8 minutes.I kept the heat gun a good distance away from the card as I knew it was going to be close to melting the solder. There was no set distance that I used. Instead I varied my distance, from a few CM away to around 10 inches or so. Like I said, this was the first time I had done this so I just tried something and it worked perfectly for me. 4) Once done I just turned the heat gun down to low and kept moving it over the GPU for another minute to cool the GPU more slowly. 5) Let the GPU cool, put it back in the iMac and tried it out. It worked! I performed this method back at the beginning of August and so far it has held up great. I tested the iMac extensively as it was new to me (I had been repairing it for a customer when they decided to leave it with me), and it worked perfectly. The only thing I want to do to the iMac now is upgrade to an SSD. Everything relating to the GPU seems to be perfectly fine. It still performs exactly as it should and it's been very enjoyable to use. For the majority of the time since it was repaired the iMac has sat on my desk running. I have been leaving it running 24/7 as sort of an extended stress test, and it's done great. When I can I will get more information about the heat gun I used and I can try to do a more detailed description of my methodology. I wouldn't recommend it to someone doing this for the first time though as it is extremely easy to completely mess up the GPU. It's just what I did and it happened to work out for me. I hope this is helpful!
Thank you for watching and for providing details about your heat gun experience, Jamie! That information will be very useful, especially when you add details about the model of your heat gun. I just now expanded the SSD content inside the text description under my video to include the 2011 iMac. You may or may not be aware of what's needed. I provided links to all the relevant hardware and software to do the upgrade. An SSD is the single best upgrade for older iMacs, hands down!
Thanks for the update on the iMac. I still need to fix the 27" iMac that I ripped the main connector off the motherboard, picked up a replacement board after giving the model info so that I get the right replacement board which I will need to review your video on, so many connectors to hook back up to it. I did end replacing the video card with another AMD Apple video card that was also used after my 1st bake on the original card failed again after a short period of time. The sad part is since I can't use the original main screen cause of the broken motherboard connector, I can still use an external screen through a connector on the back. I replaced just the screen glass to keep the dust-out and it is sort of cool that you have an x-ray view of the insides of the computer. Hopefully this winter I will get the time and courage to replace the new/used motherboard so I can use the 27" screen. Enjoy your videos very helpful.
Thank you for sharing that, Robin. I hope you can get that motherboard connector fixed soon. And although getting the connector fixed will mean putting the screen back on, maybe you can shoot a photo of your iMac’s internals so you can use that as a background image to retain that X-ray look! :-)
Hi, JDW. Greetings from the UK, and huge thanks for helping me to bring my 27" late-2009 iMac back to life. As you mentioned in another of your videos, with times as tough as they are at the moment buying a replacement Mac simply isn't an option for many of us, so a fix - no matter how temporary - is the best we can hope for. But who would have imagined that a failing graphics card would emerge phoenix-like from a 200ºC oven? Thanks to your clear instructions, I managed to undertake the whole job (including a thorough, much-needed clean) in the space of an afternoon. My only regret is that I didn't have a tame squirrel monkey on hand to help with the plugging back in of the sensor cables rather than having to rely on my own sausage fingers. :-) But the joy of seeing the desktop appear minus artefacts and grey bars made all the effort worthwhile. I really can't thank you enough. Annoyingly, the Mac crashed again some 24 hours after coming back to life, the cause of which I now suspect to be overheating. Since then I have, on your advice, installed Macs Fan Control which seems to be keeping the temperature in check. Just one query: what do you consider the optimal temperatures to be for the CPU, GPU and HD? Opinions seem to vary, with some users happy to let temperatures top 70ºC while others insist on keeping them to 30ºC max. Thanks again, and my very best wishes to you and your family. I hope good fortune comes your way this year - you certainly deserve it.
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing details of your experience, Paul! I suggest setting your fan control app to the highest speed your ears can endure. When I first started, I set all 3 fans to 1800rpm. Japan is a fairly noisy place, so I really couldn't hear that increased fan speed in a way that annoyed me. Later on, when I saw just how much my son was playing games on it, I upped the speed to 2000rpm. It's more noticeable, but since he is using it a lot of the time now, it's really the best choice. When you say "crash" I assume you mean the same sort of freeze you had prior to the bake? If so, having that happen only 24 hours after the bake concerns me. Assuming you used the same 2 types of thermal paste that I recommend (K4 Pro on the GPU and K5 Pro on the memory chips), then it could just be that you need to boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility to repair any errors on your boot drive. After that, if you can run the machine without freezes for more than a week of regular use, then the bake is likely good to go.
@@JDW- Thank you for the follow-up suggestions, JDW. I did indeed use the K4 and K5 Pro pastes you recommended, and have run First Aid from Recovery but found nothing untoward. The initial post-bake freeze (while listening to streaming radio) and crash (as you described - as if someone had pulled the plug) have not reoccured, so I'm hoping I can put them down to one of life's unresolved Mac mysteries. As to fan speed: living in rural Worcestershire, as we do, where the loudest noise is birdsong, I would like to keep the 'roar' of the fans to a minimum. So I have been experimenting with Macs Fan Control, and have discovered a setting that seems to work for general usage, although I've yet to test it with the GPU under pressure. I'm assuming that the GPU is cooled primarily by the ODD fan, so I've set that one to respond to an increase in temperature over 40C. The HHD and CPU fans are also set to ramp up when and if required. Fingers crossed, it seems to be working, although I'm sure that some tweaks will be needed down the line. Finally, during my trawl of the internet to find out more about my Mac, I discovered a copy of the Apple Technician Guide for this particular model tim.id.au/laptops/apple/imac/imac_27_late09.pdf . I'm sure it won't tell you anything you don't already know, but I thought it might prove to be of some help to those of your followers who might benefit from some Cupertino words of wisdom as well as exploded views of their machine. Thank you again for your commitment to helping those of us who have been using Macs since the days before Steve Jobs discovered turtlenecks. Keep safe, my friend.
It’s always nice to converse with veteran Mac users such as yourself. Like me, you probably started with Macs back when Jobs actually wore a necktie now and then! :-) It seems that you did everything correct with your bake, paste, and fan speed settings. Please feel free to Report back again in a few months to let everyone know how your machine is doing. Best wishes!
At 4:40, re the fans blowing at full speed. Yes a cable may have not been engaged at all or improperly but you can try an SMC reset first because it is a quick reset that may actually solve the problem, if the cable mentioned was in fact reconnected correctly.
Of course, you are correct with that experienced advice, Alex. Sometimes that can resolve issues. But I said what I did in Q2 based on Q&A in the comments section under my previous videos. I read and reply to every single comment, and I came to understand that almost everyone who had fans running at full blast either had not reseated the connector properly during reassembly or they had in fact broken the cable or connector itself. So if you decide to do the bake, take care when handling the cables and be sure to seat them properly and recheck each one more than once before you close and test the iMac.
I am happy to report that my late 2009 27-inch iMac is back in top operating form after languishing for 4 years. She's got a new 1 TB SSD (OWC Mercury Electra 3G), new optical drive and 32 GB of RAM. I didn't buy a new graphics card because I was determined to try the bake approach. I used K-4/K-5 Pro thermal paste, baked the card for 9 minutes at 392 degrees F and cooled it on the open oven door. I also diligently cleaned the card's heat sink (a zillion "black as the night" swabs). A million thanks for your detailed videos. They provided me with the inspiration and instruction I needed to keep going!
It really does take a lot of swabs, doesn't it? :-) I'm so glad to hear your bake and subsequent repasted worked great, Gayle. The bake doesn't last forever, but I do hope you can get at least the same 2 years and 9 months that I got from my 2nd bake. That makes the trouble worthwhile. Best wishes!
I fixed my 2011 iMac 27. Baked 400F for 10 mins. Can’t believe it works! Thank you! My 2011 iMac 27 comes with SSD. After open the case, it looks Apple put the SSD behind the optical drive, which basically blocked the airflow. I removed the optical drive, attached the ODD temp sensor to the SSD. All good now.
Thank you for sharing your success story, Tianyuw! The Apple SSD option for the 2011 iMac was interesting. Apparently, if you did not order the iMac with the SSD, no cable or mounting bracket was included. They did it that way to give the user the option of also having the spinning platter hard drive too. It's one of the few setups where you could get 3 drives in an iMac: HDD, SSD & DVD. But as you point out, airflow is restricted by the optical drive. This is why companies like OWC make their bracket to replace the optical drive for the purpose of installing a third party SSD instead. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're up and running again!
@@tianyuw6330 When doing nothing, mine idles in the low 50°C range, but keep in mind it is still winter here in Japan. When my son is playing Roblox, it rises into the 60°C range, but with the all 3 fans set to 2000rpm, the temperature normally doesn't rise past 70°C now, especially not in the winter months. Are you really able to use yours in a stable condition at 88°C? That 88°C is your GPU temperature? Could be thermal paste. What kind of paste did you use when you repasted? (You should have used 2 types.)
@@JDW- I hit 88C when using default OS fan control while running unigine heaven in high quality. It’s the stock 6970m. I got the temp reading from Mac fan control. I think Mac fan control is a must as you can let ODD fan to monitor GPU temperature.
@@tianyuw6330 I just checked my iMac this evening after my wife had been doing email and web browsing for a couple hours. The 6970M GPU temperature was a cool 36°C. The thermal paste used and how it is applied impacts operating temperatures quite a bit.
Hello at 35:30 you mention the sudden power off issue which has been what I have been dealing with for the past 2years until today when vertical lines appeared at restart outer one of those sudden power off in this case the screen went blank and then attempted to reboot with no success. Now I get verticals lines at restart that move on to a blank screen as it continue to reboot. As I look for a solution I found your videos. I wondered if the sudden power off I have been having were a symptom of this btu issue it seems I may have.?
Israel, thank you for watching and for your reply. I've been trying to get data from other 6970M video card users, but unfortunately, you are the first person who has confirmed that you too have the same sudden power-off problem that I have. However, is your 6970M the stock graphics card that came in your 2011 iMac? If so, then I'm not sure what to think because it appears that the card I purchased was in fact a PC video card that the seller flashed, even though the seller said he did not do that. It was therefore my thinking that perhaps the power off problem might be firmware related. However, if your card is a stock Apple card, then my theory goes out the window! So I'm sorry to say that the only advice I have for you is how to get rid of the vertical lines. Namely, you will need to follow my 2nd Bake video and bake your card. If your card has never been baked before, then the bake should resurrect it, at least for a time. The bake is not permanent, but then again, no fix in this world is. Please be sure you use a turkey thermometer or similar to verify your oven temperature is correct. Some people have reported their ovens are not accurate, which can cause problems. You must also clean off all thermal paste before your bake, then apply the two different types of paste that I recommend after your bake. Here's the link to my 2nd bake video: ruclips.net/video/6BJGLFCigdA/видео.html
Unfortunately, I've not amassed info on iMacs prior to 2008. Few people discuss them in comparison to 2008-2011 models, for reasons unknown. Maybe because the 2006 and 2007 models have fewer video card related issues? So long as there are no aluminum electrolytic capacitors on your video card, assuming you indeed have graphics issues, you really have nothing to lose by following my Bake videos to see if baking it would do some good. Everything I say about thermal paste in my videos would apply to your card as well. No guarantees because I lack experience and knowledge about your card, but you can try it at the same temp and duration I recommend and see if it works. Just make sure it doesn't have electrolytic caps on board. I can't seen to find a photo of your card to confirm that point.
Thank you so much for documenting your findings and results. I’m going to bake once the paste comes in the mail, hopefully I can get another two or three years out of it! Worst case scenario, it’s got plenty of space behind the screen to shove a MBP/mini motherboard or windows build for a hackintosh setup!
Thank you for your comment, Bryan. I’m afraid I won’t be much help if you ultimately decide to put a MacBook Pro inside your iMac’s enclosure, but I can say that the bake works well for most people who try it and many people get well over a year of use out of it. So it’s definitely worth your time. Please be sure to report back and let me know how it goes!
Thank you for your good work in helping other computer users, James! (I've been doing the same since 1983 when I first started using 8 bit Kaypro computers) I will offer several ideas for improving the cooling of iMacs: When I noticed my late wife's iMac running hot, I encouraged her to keep the area immediately under the computer clear of small stacks of paper, which, I think, had limited upward air flow past the memory slots. When it became clear that more cooling was necessary, I put an upward directed fan on the floor behind the computer desk, running at low speed. This fan seemed to have reduced the ambient temperature behind the computer by allowing the aluminum case to contribute more to heat transfer out of the computer. I also got a high quality 3 or 4 inch fan of the type that is used in desktop computer towers and fashioned a draft tube out of cardboard the length of the iMac's exhaust slot below the top of the machine. I connected the fan to my own low power external power supply and affixed the assembly to the iMac case with Velcro strips. This updraft 4th fan really cooled down the iMac! I didn't know about fan-speed control programs like SMC Fan Control at the time. This hardware hack cost almost nothing and extended the life of the video card by 10 years. Thinking later that this hanging contraption was an inelegant kludge, I removed the external fan system that I had fashioned and, subsequently, my video card failed. I'm a psychotherapist not a computer engineer but humans and computers seem to thrive better when you encourage them to vent. Stephen
Stephen, please forgive me for not having seen your wonderful comment until day. I usually reply when I get email notifications of new comments, but for some reason your comment never generated a notification! It was only when I manually browsed comments today that I saw it. I appreciate your excellent advice. Thank you very much for posting it and for watching my RUclips channel content.
Oh ya, I'm also cleaning the inside, looks like it's never been opened. Pulling out and reinserting the mainboard was tricky, especially screwing the LCD back as I had to struggle with the magnets. Then I bought Kryonaut, now it's as cold as fridge, thanks again and God bless You Sir!
@@agus.leonardi Thank you for letting me know your success, Agus! But just to confirm, you did a bake 8 months ago, and then a second bake today? Or were you saying that you never did the bake 8 months ago and tried it for the first time today?
Thank you for all the info, and all of the detail and effort you put into your videos. I hope you do a video on using the best flashed PC Card sometime. I have a 2011 27” iMac, and I am very interested in installing a much faster, cooler card, to be able to run Catalina. What are the best resources available, that you are aware of, for doing this?
Thank you for your kind words. I've read about people installing Nvidia cards in iMacs that they've pulled from Windows PCs, but you need a Windows machine to flash them for use on the Mac. Even then, you won't get a faster CPU, and when running a modern OS like Catalina, I think that really matters. In other words, just because you can run Catalina (by means of a patcher, and with a special video card), doesn't mean you should. I think the overall experience will be rather lackluster, to be honest. And I personally dislike Catalina anyway. I love my 32-bit apps. That's why I still run High Sierra on all my Macs at home and the office. High Sierra is officially supported on your iMac, so no patcher or special video card is required. The older OS's run more smoothly on older hardware too.
I was given a 2009 27" iMac. It was working great for a month then got the screen artifacts. I found your videos and bought K5 and Grizzly, I baked my card at 200 for 9 min. It's running great so far, day one, aside from losing my Bluetooth.
Thanks for sharing your successful bake experience, Bill! Congrats! As to the loss of Bluetooth though, if it worked prior to the bake but not after reassembly, it means you must have disconnected the antenna wire from the Bluetooth card, located in the upper left corner, sometime during your disassembly or reassembly. But if that cable is indeed secured properly, then it would seem that perhaps your bluetooth card itself is in need of replacement. I hope this helps!
My IMAC 2008 started stalling when using Logic Pro, then it did no boot, and never passed the grey screen, only boots on safe mode. I will install an SSD Disk to see if that fixes the issue, in not, baking it is!
Very clear instructions.I preheated the oven at 200 for 12 mins. first. 8 minutes worked for the smaller 256Meg 4650M, and cured the green stripes, but, It just didn't work for the larger 1Gb 6790M with the pink stripes... Maybe it needs a few minutes MORE because of the larger surface?? Your opinion?
Be sure to shine a flashlight into the display on your 6970M iMac to see if you can observe anything. If nothing, then the video card is indeed the problem. But if you can see something with the flashlight, it means the backlight is your problem, not the video card. Now, if it is the video card, it could be that you didn't use an oven safe thermometer to confirm the temperature of your oven. Not only do you need to confirm the temperature, but you need to confirm the temperature is stable. The 6970M especially needs a consistent 200°C for at least 8 minutes. If the temperature drifts too much below that 200°C, then it could be the reason the bake didn't work. Never try to boost the temperature up much higher than 200°C though because you don't want a case where components become desoldered, as the components on the bottom would then fall off the board. One last thing I can think of is that the bake many have worked fine, but during your assembly, you may have not full secured the widest ribbon cable, which will result in a black screen. So before you try another bake, please reconfirm all your connections.
Toaster ovens are probably harder to regulate the heat. So long as the heat is all around, top/bottom doesn't matter. My oven has a fan to move air around, which I think helps. You would need to put an oven-safe thermometer in your oven of choice, then set the temperature and watch the thermometer over the course of 9 minutes. If the temperature is correct and stable, then you could use it. But if the temperature fluctuates higher than the specified temperature, you could find components falling off on the bottom side. You must make sure the temperature is correct and stable throughout the duration of the bake.
@@BlueSky-bx5tf Okay, but don't forget to put a turkey thermometer (or similar) inside your toaster oven (without the card in there) to first confirm (1) the temperature is correct and (2) that it is stable during a 9 minute span of time. If the temperature is fluctuates too high, components on the bottom side may fall off. If it fluctuates too low, then it could be the bake wouldn't have the desired effect. I repeat these precautions to you only because most people (including myself) have only used a regular oven. Because I lack experience with a toaster oven, using a thermometer to test it is the only safe course of action prior to your actual bake. Without a thermometer test first, I wouldn't advise doing it.
@@JDW- it was scary but so worth it I’ve been trying to get the app for the fan speed but can’t seem to find it Could you please share what its called? Thanks again!
Thanks for your videos and channels - I've got a 2009 iMac which I love and I replaced the GPU/heatsink about 18 months ago and then got the dreaded Black screen of death a few weeks later. Finally replaced the backlight inverter card which solved the BSOD but alas last night the machine locked up and I haven't been able to restore it. I'm using the Mojave DosDude patcher and I can get it to install but as soon as it boots back up, I'm getting a bright yellow screen which then fades to grey so definitely pointing to the GPU. I ordered the K5/Grizzley paste you recommended so will wait for those, but I've just got a couple of questions: I have the original Video card as well as the one that is in the machine so should I bake them both at the same time or separately? My second question is whether you're using the patcher solution as well or perhaps you have another approach for the clean load? You do amazing work - thank you again. I'll let you know how the bakes go.....
I still run High Sierra on my iMac because I honestly don’t get much by moving to Mojave or even Catalina. About the only thing I would get is a bunch of nagging dialog boxes in Mojave complaining about the 32-bit apps I love, while Catalina kills them off entirely. I still have High Sierra running on my late 2015 iMac 5K at the office for that reason, and my high school age kids still run it on their 2017 MB Airs. When testing, it might be helpful if you had a High Sierra external drive to boot from so you know any display issues are definitely not OS related, seeing High Sierra is the last supported OS on the 2009 iMacs. With that said, your description does indicate a bad GPU. Yes, you can bake both graphics cards at the same time in your oven. Just make sure the temperature is correct and make absolutely sure you put a turkey thermometer or some other oven safe thermometer inside during the preheat time to verify the temperature is 200°C or 392°F and not much more than that. If the temperature is much more, you risk desoldering the components, which would be a major problem. Very few people have reported that, but some have, which is why I mention it. I fully realize that some ovens in the USA will only let you said 400°F, but that really is the upper limit of the temperature you should use. Before you bake, be sure you follow my video and clean off all of the old thermal paste first. Watch my 2nd Bake video to see how to properly apply the new thermal paste after your card cools down after your bake. Lastly, take great care when replacing all of the connectors before closing up your iMac because a fairly large number of people report their fans spinning at full blast and the reason that happens is because a connector wasn’t fully seated in its socket. You can fix that with a fan control app, but I feel it’s better to avoid the problem altogether by properly reconnecting all the connectors you disconnected. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Good luck!
@@JDW- SUCCESS - I followed your video to the letter and my 2009 Imac is fixed! I also go the ISTAT app and set my fans to 2000 rpms with the hope that I'll be able to tell what is happening. What do you suggest I set the alerts to in terms of the upper temperature limits. i'm just not sure what TOO HOT means, so any insight you have with that is appreciated. Thank You again. The hardest piece was the reattachment of the temperature sensor but the use of a set of hemostats works well.
The maximum temperature for the chips being monitored is 100°C, so setting your alerts to that temperature would be about right. With all 3 fans running at 2000 rpm, you will probably see temperatures in the range of 50 to 60°C most of the time. Only in rare cases when you’re running something really GPU intensive for a very long time should you see temperatures rise to the 70s. I have never seen sustained temperatures in the 80s or 90s.
There is a shop where I live offer the professional reballing service for 60$. It will last much longer if it is reballed properly. By reballing, I mean the shop will desolder the GPU chip, clean-off the old low-melt solder, apply new high-melt solder and solder it back to the card, with professional machine (chips rework station)
@@oantalaroan Actually, that is what the shop told you. But if you watch my videos on this topic, you will see that even a BRAND NEW CARD lasted only 3 years for me. The stock card that came with my iMac lasted exactly 3 years, then I had Apple installed a brand new replacement card which too lasted only 3 years. It was after that I did some research and discovered the Bake. I tried it, filmed that, found success, and shared the information here on RUclips. Despite what some people say, the root problem is a defect inside the GPU chip, not the solder balls under the chip. In the process of recalling, you heat the chip sufficiently to solve the problem, at least for a while. How long that "heat fix" will last varies, but usually it is not beyond 3 years. This is why most people who try the bake find success, just like people who pay to have the chip reballed. All said, the bake is the cheapest means of solving the problem. Reballing is fine, but it accomplishes the same thing as baking the card and will probably last as long. In other words, reballing is no more a permanent fix than baking the card because the defect is inside the GPU, not the solder balls. Even so, some folks just don't want to worry about it so they take the entire Mac to a shop, which does the entire job for them. So if that is your feeling, and if you don't mind paying the shop to do that job, then of course that can be a good solution for you. I hope this information helps.
@@JDW- Thanks a lot for your dedicated answer. Didn't expect to receive response that fast. For me, I would just use my HD4850 for now until it dies. I have got a Quadro K1100m 2GB, and a WX4150, both flashed and run well in High Sierra, and tested as perform well under hacked Catalina and Big Sur, saving for the future.
I have watched all your videos on how to fix this problem, and have concluded that I don't want to go through all the time and trouble of doing this myself. If I were to take my iMac to a repair shop what would be the average cost to replace the video card?
I certainly appreciate your having taken the time to watch all my videos on this topic. Because I do not live in United States, I cannot accurately say what the cost would be. Most likely, the shops would do something called “reballing the GPU,“ which involves removing the GPU chip and then re-soldering it. That effectively heats the chip sufficiently to solve the problem inside the chip and ensures the solder points under the chip are good as well. That will not fix the problem forever but hopefully it will allow you to get another 2 to 3 years of life at least. I suspect that shops would probably charge anywhere between $60-$100 for that procedure. If they’re charging a lot more than $100, and if you’re not in a major city like San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York, then I feel that the price would be a bit on the high side. But again I don’t live in the USA band therefore don’t know how much inflationary pressure has been put on Mac repair shop pricing. I do hope this helps though.
@@JDW- Thank you for your input, I plan on taking the imac in for repair later this week and I will report back to their findings and cost to repair for anyone who might be in a similar situation. If I can get another few years out of this computer it would be well worth to fix for under 100 bucks.
@@JDW- I got my iMac repaired for $150 and he said he replaced the video card, whether it's a new, used, or black market part off Ebay or something is anyone's guess. I asked him about reballing the card and he said it would only be $90 but he said he couldn't guarantee if would last a week or a few months. He initially wanted $200 for the repair but when he knew I wasn't willing to pay that much his price went down. I could have shopped around but I just wanted it done, and $150 seemed worth the risk. Thanks again for all your great info, and hopefully this will help more folks out there when this happens to them. Cheers!
@@oldkid6 Many repair guys want to reduce their liability by saying a reball may not last a long time. My guess is that it would last a long time (perhaps up to 3 years?) because not only are you heating the GPU chip and temporarily fixing the problem internal to the chip, but you are also ensuring the solder balls under the chip are perfect too (if the repair guy does that job perfectly). But at some point the GPU chip will stop working again. That is my experience having replaced the 4850 card with a brand new 4850 card from Apple, only to have the same problem occur 3 years later. In other words, a reball of a 4850 (or similar) card would probably last as a long as a new card or a working used card. Because longevity is unknown, I recommend the bake for most people, since that is the cheapest solution most people can do themselves at home. But once the bake stops working, then one must consider a reball or card (or Mac) replacement. Anyway, I'm glad you got a replacement. Please feel free to post updates over time so we can know how long the replacement lasts.
Just a couple questions: 1º I baked my 4850 recently and seems to be working ok. I have installed two SSD: one with macos and the other with windows. when running macos i can control the 3 fans to keep temperatures (cpu and gpu) low. But in windows i dont see how can i do that, so ....i´m worried the temperatures could go too high and burn cpu or gpu. What do u think? 2º.- Is there any card compatible with my Imac that allows me to run catalina? Why did u buy Radeon 6970M? I mean what improvements do u get over the 4850?
Hi, Tomas. Installing Catalina is possible using a patcher even with the stock video card, but the stock card doesn't offer Metal graphics acceleration which means Catalina isn't that usable unless you change the graphics card. Here's the patcher: dosdude1.com/catalina/ Here's info on Metal-compatible cards: bit.ly/333WqfS I personally do not run Windows (via Boot Camp) on my Macs, but apparently SMC Fan Control will do the trick as per this: ask.metafilter.com/246258/iMac-Windows-7-and-fan-speeds
Thanks for the video. Unfortunately I must have done something wrong, as I am only getting a pitchblack screen now with the fan on turbo. No sound, nothing. Any clue where the mistake might be?
I honestly have no idea. And that is precisely why I decided to use K5 pro, which is a thermal pad replacement paste. Because it’s so difficult to measure accurately the thickness of an actual thermal pad you need, K5 Pro comes in very handy. You just put a bit on and any excess will squeeze out the sides. Works great.
@@JDW- Thanks i kwn this Thermal Putty, but i dont like this, because i like it clean to. i think i have to go again with this K5. But how u handle rest of the PCB? Also K5 on the Chips okay maybe its 0,5mm but he rest? its maybe 1-1,5mm i need a lot to get contact to the surface. Sorry for my bad engl
@@grape5465 You can see my application of K5 Pro at 10:48 in my 6970M repasting video here: ruclips.net/video/n2a8oEI2y6U/видео.htmlsi=SLJZfZMrTUUxFlHK&t=648
@@JDW- dude i have now add Thermal Putty on this GPU. because i damge with the pads :D so i baked this for like 8min 180° and well its work the temps are like on mid 30 drive.google.com/file/d/13PLiBEchjnly7kKDBg-LNdSrYlw06LGz/view?usp=sharing
My Panasonic Oven I just now set to 220C on pre-heat with an eBay Oven thermostat inside, that reads 180C... Wife swears the Pansonic is underreading when we cook food so we set 10C higher (not that it proves anything). How can I be confident I am not OVER or UNDER cooking my GPU when I do it... I dont want to cook assemble test and repeat many times cos its a pain in the backside to disassemble so many times. Would a real 220C kill the card???
The bake temperature should be 200°C or 392°F~400°F. If indeed your temperature is 220°C, that is too hot. The best thing to do is buy a turkey thermometer, or similar oven-safe thermometer. Put that in your oven during the pre-heat time to confirm the temperature is both CORRECT and STABLE. Only then should you put your card inside. If there is temperature fluctuation, it's better it fluctuates down rather than up. You don't want a situation where components on the bottom of your card get desoldered and drop off. If the temperature is a fairly solid 200°C/400°F, there is no fear components will drop off the bottom of the card.
Thank you for your "iMac baking" youtube video series, I found it very thorough and helpful! Have you tried removing the optical drive to see if it helps cooling because it is located right below the heat grill for the GPU? I did some search, some people say removing it will help the air flow because it creates more empty room, but other people say the optical drive is needed there to channel the air from the fan belows it. I just wonder if you have any thoughts on it or did any experiments to compare. I don't use my optical drive at all so I have no problem removing it. Thanks.
I have not tried removing the optical drive because I still use mine. I’m also skeptical if it really would make the graphics cards’ heat sink read that much cooler because the ambient temperature inside the iMac is still quite warm even without that drive installed. I don’t think it will hurt anything if you want to remove yours though.
glad to know your 6970M is working fine... I'm really considering upgrading mine (which still works - 4850 on iMac 27" i5 late 2009) but I feel like the upgrade would be a nice touch... it's 2021, any updates? Ü thanks a bunch!
My only update is to say the 6970M still works fine. But the key to getting it to work right in the late 2009 iMac is (1) repasted the card using the two types of paste I recommend (you need a thermal pad replacement paste for the memory chips but a good CPU/GPU paste for the GPU chip), and (2) set all 3 iMac fans to a higher speed like 2000rpm in order to keep the card running cool.
Great videos! Thanks for sharing. I now have a completely disasembled iMac on my desk ;oD. One question though: I live in Argentina so the available products are limited. I can get Arctic MX 4 and Kryonaut, but if I understood correctly those are both for the processor and not the memory chips. Could I use Arctic thermal pads for those? I can get those in variable thicknesses from 0.5 to 2 mm. Also, why two different thermal pastes? I've never ever done anything remotely like this, so I have no knowledge about what their differences are. Thanks!!!
I recommend two types of pastes because one of those is a thermal pad replacement paste. I choose K5 Pro for that because it's easier to use than thermal pads. To use thermal pads, you have to measure the gap thickness between the memory chips and the heatsink. I found it next to impossible to do that accurately. Another problem is that on my card anyway, the card was ever so slightly warped and so the gap between some chips wasn't exactly the same as others. With K5 Pro, a varying gap distance is not an issue at all, but with thermal pads it might be. If there was no gap, you could use normal thermal paste on the memory chips. It's only because of that silly gap that we are forced to use something else. Regular thermal paste will not remain thick enough over time. It is intended only for "no gap" applications. The company who makes K5 Pro is located in Greece, so perhaps they would sell and ship it to your country. If not, then your only option is to try thermal pads, but again, I'm not exactly sure about the thickness required. www.computer-systems.gr/en/content/product/k5-pro-60g-3x20g
Hi I've just come across your channel thanks for the great tutorial I have just completed the bake and since I have reassembled when I power on the imac I get a black screen no chime bit all fans are running and hard drive is working I can hear starting up I have noticed I only have 1 led lite on the main board I have rechecked my connections do you have any ideas thanks in advance Gary
Hi Gary, thank you for your question. It's important to consider which of the LEDs is lit versus those which aren't. Here are two sources of information about the LEDs on your model iMac: www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/126233/Where+are+the+diagnostic+led's+on+this+model's+logic+board discussions.apple.com/thread/7031064 Please let me know if this helps.
@@garychadbond1182 This is the complete guide which describes the LEDs: drive.google.com/file/d/1Bs7Th2tfCaXTPC1LXzHFvwRQIgy3_CaQ/view?usp=sharing Page 26 describes the Startup Sequence. As mentioned there, because you aren't getting the 2nd LED after pushing the power button (regardless of fans spinning), you either have a cable connection problem or the power supply needs to be replaced. The video card being bad is the most common cause of a black screen, but a power supply that is unable to supply full power is also a reason. There is obviously enough power to run the fans and drive, but not the entire computer. If after checking all your cables you cannot get the machine to power on, then the power supply needs to be replaced. I know that is not what you are wanting to hear, but since you have already baked your video card, you can be more assured that you iMac will run after you replace the power supply. Please let me know if this helps.
@@JDW- Thanks again for your Help. it turned out my GPU had been baked many times and was shorting out the motherboard.fitted a Nvidia card and allis good
I replaced the video card from my late 2009 27" iMac with an AMD Radeon HD 6970. The Mac was out of commission for quite a good couple of years until I got round to it. I also took the time to replace the 2Tb hard drive with a 4Tb model, and replaced the DVD superdrive with a compatible Blu-Ray burner. But - since putting it all back together; when I switch on the Mac, it will restart several times. Sometimes before the boot process has begun. Sometimes more randomly. It usually stabilises after about 20 minutes, and I can get on with things - though it did restart after coming out of sleep mode the other day. I normally switch off the Mac at night. Running the iMac in safe mode, and it hasn't restarted once, and I hadn't changed anything in the configuration of my software, so I have to assume it's graphics cards related - even though it passes all the hardware tests. Is there anything I can do to stop the restarting, or do I have to dig out my old graphics card, apply new thermal paste put it back in?
Thank you for your comment. It seems you did all those upgrades at once, rather than one at a time. While that saves time, it also opens the door to a more complicated troubleshooting scenario when problems like yours arise. Running in Safe Mode alone doesn't necessarily determine your video card is the fault here. The most bullet proof way to test the video card is to eliminate the new HDD and DVD from the picture. If you disconnect both of those and then boot from a known good external and still have the rebooting problem, you can safely say it is indeed the video card. In my case with a 6970M though, I didn't have that problem, so it cannot be said the 6970M is incompatible with a late 2009 27" iMac. But it could be that your 6970M has issues, either stemming from a bad GPU or non-stock firmware on the video card itself. If you are able to disconnect the HDD and DVD and boot just fine from an external HDD, then you must troubleshoot the HDD and DVD. My guess is the trouble would probably be on the HDD rather than the DVD. But perhaps there is some conflict between the DVD and HDD. The point here is that you will need to troubleshoot each component you modified in your system to determine which one is at fault. It's bothersome, I know, but necessary.
At ~6:40 and running fans at full speed, there is a caveat to cranking up fans - dust. Even if you live in a fairly clean home without much dust, you will find that more dust accumulates the higher the fan(s) RPM is set. There is a balance I suppose but I believe Apple's default are a balancing act in that they try to reduce fan noise, moderate airflow accompanied by thermal disputation by taking advantage of the aluminum design (considering the Mac is not in direct contact with sunlight) and finally I would guess there is some energy savings with lower fan RPM. Generally though, I do agree with ramping up fan RPM beyond Apple's default through software.
There is yet another option that Larry Pina presents in one of his books -- an external fan (floor fan) blowing at the hot Mac in question! :-) Even better would be more religious use of A/C. Use both A/C and the floor fan for even more cooling! Or we could just throw in the towel and get a fanless M1 Mac and call it a day!
_ 18:34 and the black screen - just a point or two. Reset SMC and reset PRAM or both to see if either or both contribute to resolving the black screen issue, these are both quick steps and much faster than checking the ribbon cable.
Very true. However, in almost every case of a black screen that follows a bake and reassembly, the culprit is in fact the wide ribbon cable. But I agree, it takes a little effort to try your excellent suggestion first. It’s just that the probability of it being the cable is significantly higher than a problem caused by the machine needing an SMC reset. I know this not simply from my own personal experience, but from reading and replying to every single comment under all of my bake videos and knowing how people are resolving the black screen issue. That wide ribbon cable is a real troublemaker!
I may have a few more comments but I knew that this would be one of the videos to watch because a few hors ago my 2011 27" iMac displayed a solid blue screen in the middle of work and then rebooted spontaneously. While restarting it displayed five evenly spaced green vertical lines over a grey background, all of the lines were between 3-5cm or so. The iMac is now in a reboot loop it seems. In an effort to resolve the issue all external devices have been disconnected and a clean install with no time machine back up restored. The issue persists. The moment I saw the blue screen I immediately suspected a hardware issue. Right now the iMac is simply switched off but I have to say … James thank you for this in depth FAQ, it really set my confidence high, particularly at 30:18 - just try the bake … Thank you James!!
Thank you, Alex. If the problems you have are consistent and never go away, you have the same problem I did originally. At that stage, you really have nothing to lose to try the bake, other than a Saturday of your time and a few bucks spent on thermal paste. I look forward to hearing how your bake goes!
@@JDW- One more quick comment, unrelated to your reply (oddly I am unable to comment today for some reason so I will use a reply) … under the assumption that heat is causing the requirement to bake, it would seem reasonable to me to replace rotational drives with an SSD whenever possible. Also, if the internals ambient temperature is too high it can affect mechanical drives as well. So folks should be advised to install an SSD while the machine is open to encourage cooler operation. This might allow for a slight reduction in fan speed as well yielding quieter operation. -Best, Alex
@@santospoland Another reason I went with K5 Pro (a thermal pad replacement paste) rather than thermal pads is that if there is any kind of warping at all on the video card circuit board, the actual distance between the tops of the memory chips and the bottom of the heatsink would not be a 100% perfectly consist 2mm. K5 Pro allows you to put gobs atop each memory chip. That gob could be 2mm, 3mm or even 4mm tall and when you press down the heatsink it will just spread out horizontally and fill whatever gap there is between the memory chips and the heatsink. With fixed height thermal pads, you must hope and pray the gap width is consistent. If it isn't, some pads may not make contact at all or make only partial contact. So in my opinion, K5 Pro is the best approach, even though some may deem it more unsightly at first than a thermal pad. But I assure you that when you press that heatsink down on it, it will become out of sight, out of mind, and do its job just as well as any fixed height thermal pad can do. Regarding an SSD, I agree. I put lots of links and info about that in the text description.
@@JDW- Good observation, I will skip the pads and go with K5 Pro for the VRAM chips and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for the GPU. Thank you for pointing out this important point and for your support James.
I saved this video, worth gold! I would add that to prevent damaging connectors as I have!, lay your imacs down and place a wedge to keep the LCD panel raised enough so you can use both hands to effectively get the video cables in parallel to the connector :D it takes no force just even parallel movement. Wow I grew up in Cali! I know what you mean about heat! love California its my real home! someday! thank you for this video!
Thank you for adding that tip, Cam! It's hard indeed to get that wider ribbon cable properly back in its mating connector on the motherboard with only one hand while your other hand holds the display, all the while staring down into dark shadows that make it impossible to see what you are doing. Getting that particular cable in place is one of the more frustrating parts of the reassembly process. Following your advice should make it easier. Thanks!
Worked for late 2009 21.5" iMac! I've had the iMac sitting in my basement rec room ever since the video went on the fritz three or four years ago. I had looked into replacing the card at that time, but too expensive even if you could find the card. I recently happened on your videos about baking the card, and decided I might as well give it a try - either that or take it for recycling, which seemed like a shame as it's a great machine except for this one issue. (No, not as nice as a 27", but still a nice machine.) Your video, like all the other similar ones for this particular problem, all seem to deal with the 27" model though (I didn't find any specifically for the 21.5" model). So the innards of this one are a bit different (not a lot) and it's more compact, but doable. The card isn't quite the same, but not wildly different either. I watched a few other videos about taking apart a 21.5" for other issues (hard drive, etc.) to get familiar with the interior, and then went to it and extracted the video card. When I did the bake, the cookie sheet that the card and its aluminum pyramids were on warped a bit from the heat so the card was baked a bit off-level. In this case, that doesn't seem to have hurt it. After re-assembling it all, it booted right up and no more video problems! I also installed a fan utility to keep the chips cool, as you recommended. I'm now updating the OS to High Sierra, and look forward to getting more use out of this iMac. Many, many thanks to you!
That's wonderful to hear, Phil! Thank you for making time to share your detailed experience. There have been a number of other people who have reported success with the 21.5" iMacs, so it's nice to see your case is no different. Baking the card at an angle isn't a problem as you discovered. The bake won't last forever, but it can last a long time. My 2nd bake lasted 2 years and 9 months. Please feel free to report back over time on how your iMac is doing. Best wishes!
What is your opinion about the GTX 765M ? I have a mid 2010 iMac. My graphic card was recently baked but I'm afraid someday it will stop working. Therefore i was thinking about buying the 765M cos they say you can install catalina on it (metal support). Do you have an opinion about this?
Hello question if i do this and it works will all my files be still intact or by doing this will I lose all my files that I have in the computer? thanks!
I have an 2009 imac with screen problem: the screen goes black within a few seconds after power on. Sometime the screen stays until the login window appears, sometime during the boot progress bar, sometime just right a few seconds. I can still connect to the imac from a laptop. When I plug an external monitor to the imac, the login window appears on the external display as usually. Is there a way to find out what is broken: the logicboard, the graphic card, or the board on the display? Just to check before I give the bake method a try.
Hi, Tony. When the screen goes black, if you shine a flashlight into the display, can you see anything? If a flashlight reveals no content at all, then without any doubt whatsoever, it's your graphics card, which means you need to either proceed with the bake in accordance with my videos, or replace the card. I recommend the bake over replacement as it is the lowest cost method that doesn't hurt to try. Sure, it costs you some hours of your time on a weekend, but it works for the vast majority of people who try it. It won't last forever, but even a brand new card of the same type doesn't last forever in my experience.
@@JDW- Hi, thank you for your kind reply. I checked with a flashlight as instructed above and didn't see anything. So it's likely the graphic card waiting for a bake. However I am puzzled, since the external display seems to work just fine. Can a faulty graphic card drive an external screen?
@@tonyhahn1955 Yes. Just like when you boot into Safe Mode and the internal display sometimes seems fixed. Symptoms of the bad video card problem vary from machine to machine. Also, your flashlight test proved its not the backlight, and if one contends it is the logic board, then one would expect it to happen with the external display too. The logic boards rarely fail relative to the video card, so the evidence I see points to it being the video card.
Hi, i'm'going to prepare my gpu for baking...one question, i removed all the parts that could burn in to the hoven. Such as two frame made of, i suppose, one of rubber and the other of hard paper. After baking, is it necessary to past them yet on the gpu?thank you!
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. On my 4850 card there was a black foam piece surrounding the GPU chip, which of course I removed before the bake. Normally, you would put it back after the bake. However, that foam piece is not required for proper operation. Most likely it just acts as a filter so dust doesn't collect around the GPU chip. The video card will work normally without it. As to your "rubber" and "hard paper" pieces, I would love to see a photo showing exactly what you mean. If you are referring to anything on the heatsink though, then of course you would not bake that because you need to completely remove the heatsink, then clean off all the old thermal paste on both the heatsink and the graphics card, and then you would bake ONLY the graphics card.
Hi JDW, I hope your doing well. I baked my 4850 512mb a few months ago and have received a black screen problem. When I have the computer on anything above 4-5 brightness the display will shut off. While the display turns off the computer will still run. Sometimes my computer will last 30 seconds between blackouts and sometimes 3 weeks. I can reset the display by using hot corners and turn of display. While I can still do this I would like to use higher brightness and was wondering if you could help me out.
I read and reply to most all of the comments under all my graphics card bake videos, and I must admit your case is quite different than anything I heard before. It almost sounds like you have a backlight going out, rather than the video card. The graphics card problem has a variety of symptoms, but normally if the screen goes dark, the computer freezes and cannot be used. If you can shine a flashlight into your screen and see the screen when the screen goes dark, then it is definitely a backlight problem. The fact that brightness settings trigger your problem gives even more evidence of a backlight inverter issue. The inverter is the card found in the upper left corner of your 27" 2009 iMac. Here's a link to a replacement part on Amazon USA (affiliate link): amzn.to/3jPipy8 Now I am not giving you a 100% guarantee it is the inverter, but your description of the problem leads me to believe that very well could be the root cause of your trouble.
@@JDW- I will get on that thank you for the suggestion. I also have a problem on youtube with stutters. If its anything 60fps the video stutters. 720 60fps stutters but not 720p 30fps.
@@reececlegg9374 I would recommend rebooting and testing that again in Safari, Firefox and Chrome to see if it is a consistent stuttering across all browsers. If it is, check what Login items you have (what programs auto load at boot time). Sometimes programs running in the background can drag down CPU and GPU performance such that stuttering occurs. But that wouldn't have anything to do with a bad backlight inverter though.
I had the same random shut downs with my 5750 in my 2009 IMac when it got too hot. After taking the machine apart again and looking at the card and heatsink I noticed that the thick paste on the VRAM chips was keeping the GPU Die from making proper contact with the heatsink. After using a more thin spread of paste on the VRAM modules the random shut downs stopped happening. Not sure if this is the same case with your 6970M but it sure helped me. GPU is runner a lot cooler now. Although the 6970M is much hotter card than the 5750 in the first place of course. I don't know if you did this already but removing the Superdrive also helps get more airflow to the GPU since this partly blocks airflow to the GPU in the first place. Fan of your detailed content!
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I did repaste and found it increased the temperature at which the card triggers a sudden power-off condition. I increased internal fan speed and try to keep the ambient room temperature cool to avoid shutdowns.
Thank you for your very impressive and helpful RUclips Channel! Maybe you could help me for one strange fact, after I followed everything and put everything together and the bake worked perfect! There are on the left and bottom edge of the display a gray line and on the right site a blue thin line. That’s very strange. Do you think a VRAM reset could help? Or is it the display cable? Cheers!
Are you saying those lines never go away? I've honestly never heard of that before. If possible, could you take a photo and upload it to Flickr, DropBox, Google Photos, etc. so I can take a look? (I don't mind if you post links in comments.)
@@JDW- Thanks! Sure, here you go! www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/04QTnFs_HNoonlBGwFQmy9Mqg#iMac_2011_Display_Issue_ I didn’t had time to check everything yet but I will do it this night.. (german timezone) ;-)
@@TheHollabyWaldfee Thank you for taking those 4 photos. I must admit I've never seen anything like that, nor has anyone commenting under my videos ever mentioned anything like that. It looks like a white line showing at the very edges of the display. Even stranger is your photo of the bottom left corner. The white line looks curved, not a 90° angle like I would expect. You didn't drop the LCD or strongly bump it when you removed it or put it back on, did you? I am guessing you did not. In that case, my only recommendation is one you are not going to like. You need to reopen the iMac and check that all the cables are firmly seating into their mating connectors. Make sure none of the cables or connectors are broken. The little ribbon cable in the upper left corner is very easy to break, and some people have reported the head of that connector falls to pieces when they remove it. But the hardest connector to seat into place is the wide ribbon cable in the middle of the computer. It's short too, which makes it difficult to seat properly in its matching connector on the motherboard. My guess is that it could be that connection. Normally you get a black screen if that wide ribbon cable is partly disconnected, but perhaps yours is 99% connected with only a single wire not making contact. It is rather odd that a bad connection would cause a white line around the screen through. Again, I have never seen that before. I'm sorry there is not an easier solution, but resetting the machine is highly unlikely to cure this kind of problem. You really do need to check all your cable connections inside. Be very careful when you do that so you don't accidentally break any cables when you remove the display again. Please let me know if that helps solve the problem.
@@JDW- Hi James! Thank you for helping me out. Unfortunately it still not working. I just followed your steps.. but still keeping this strange edges on screen. I found out something really strange too. I put the sleeping mode on and wake up. After the screen is back, the bug in the left bottom corner disappears but still keep on the left vertical side. Do you think it could be the bake? Maybe I did not right? Or just a cable could be broke? - I did another try with a second iMac screen I got and switched the display it comes to life but still keeps the issue. Just a second question for you I hope you could help me! The second iMac I got has the problem, the screen still stays black! Do you understand this problem? Because I did the bake too and it didn’t work for this one - still black screen. If I changed the display from the black screen iMac to the first with the “crazy edges” the display works. But I found out, that the display disappears after a few minutes on that iMac -> first iMac also black. So I switched back and the first iMac works fine except the Stranges edges ;-) So my question is, what do you think about the black screen iMac? Maybe the bake was not correct or is it again the cable? Still hope you could help me! Thank you very much for your time! I hope my massage is not to confuse! Cheers and kindly regards!
@@TheHollabyWaldfee You provided me with a lot of information. I need to first make sure I understand exactly what you told me... 1. You have 2 iMacs. 2. You baked the video cards of both iMacs. (I will assume you repasted correctly.) 3. One iMac has the "strange white line around the display" problem. (Let's name this: "White Line iMac.") 4. The other iMac constantly has a black screen. (Let's name this: "Black LCD iMac.") 5. After sleeping and then waking your White Line iMac, the white line in the bottom left corner is not present, but the white line on the left side of the display is present. 6. You mention something about "switching the display" but I don't really understand that. Did you remove the LCD from the Black LCD iMac and put that in the White Line iMac and have the same white line problem? If not, could you please explain what you "switched"? If you switched the LCD, are you saying the white lines remained the same on the White Line iMac? I am very confused about point 6 above, but everything else I think I understood. What I can say for now is this... A. I've never seen anything like your White Line iMac EVER. That is so odd. I honestly have no idea what is wrong with that. Maybe after you explain 6 above I can offer more advice. B. As to your Black LCD iMac, you must shine a flashlight into the display after powering on the iMac. If you hear a boot chime and if you see something on the display while shining a flashlight at it, then it means that iMac has a backlight problem. It could be the backlight inverter board is bad. But it also could be bad solder joints on a connector attached to the back of the LCD unit, which is very bothersome to fix. I personally have never fixed that, but I have seen a video on it. Many people opt to just swap the LCD rather than try to fix bad solder joints. It's not an issue of people not knowing how to solder. It's a problem of not being able to easily access the points you need to resolder. But I don't know if your iMac has that problem. If you shine a flashlight but see no display content, it means a cable problem. Most likely it is the wide ribbon cable in middle of the machine.
Hi, my imac, imac11,3, 27'' mid 2010 i7, has gone probably fort gpu fault. I dont' find the ati 5750 1gb, the question is: can i put the 6970m? does the graphic card frame matches with the 6970 gpu card? thank you
The 6970M works in my late 2009 27" iMac, so it will work in your 2010 model. I don't have a 2010, so I cannot say if you need to cut plastic exactly as shown in my video. It should be about the same. Just make sure you have the triple-heatpipe heatsink. Never use a 4850 card heatsink. Here's my video on that: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html
@@nuelberry You can see both types, side-by-side, here: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html Even with the triple-heatpipe version, the 6970M gets quite hot. As such, it cannot be sufficiently cooled using the dual-heatpipe heatsink. If a seller of the 6970M includes the dual-pipe version, they are deceiving you because the dual-pipe version came with the 4850. The triple-pipe version came with the 6970M (in the 2011 iMac).
Hello James, James Day using wife's laptop to connect to you. Well, my 2011/6970 card bake lasting about 10.5 months and over a week of use with white bars/lines finally locked up with that look on screen flickering with entire screen white. This was a second fix which is likely about average last of the card. Now my question is do I rebake again or try to find a new 6970 card which seems very risky as there are no new cards unless perhaps if I bought one from Apple. Price prohibitive. Or just buy a new iMac, or a later model one off eBay. Any suggestions? Thanks, your feedback is always helpful. I lost your email, etc.
Hi James. It’s good to hear from you. I’m sorry to hear your last bake only worked for just over 10 months. In the case of my iMac, I got two successful bakes, but the two bakes after that only lasted a week each, so I gave up and replaced the video card. Doing another bake is a lot of trouble, to be sure, but it might actually work and give you a few more months of life out of your existing iMac. By the way, you can find my email address by clicking on my JDW name and then on my channel page click the About tab and scroll down and you’ll find access to it. I’ve read about a lot about people buying an MXM card for PCs, and then flashing it for the iMac, but that’s a lot of trouble and requires a Windows PC, so I never wanted to do that myself, and that’s why I don’t make it a strong recommendation for others either. A used 6970M video card - even one that’s a flashed PC version card by a Hong Kong seller- is still the cheapest overall solution. The cheapest solution isn’t necessarily the best solution, but you pay more for the best solution, which is of course to buy a new iMac. And as much as I love my late 2015 27 inch iMac at the office, which doesn’t have any kind of video card problem, it is now exhibiting a ring of pink around the outer edge of the entire screen, which is extremely disappointing. So definitely don’t buy a used 2015 model. Buying one of the newest iMacs with the M1 chip is very forward-thinking, but I personally prefer larger display size, and I really dislike the white bezel around the screen on the 24 inch model. If Apple comes out with a black bezel version of their larger iMac using Apple silicon, that very well may be the most prudent choice if you decide to replace your entire iMac. I hope this helps. Feel free to email me anytime.
We would be grateful for your opinion on baking my wife's late 2009 27" iMac video card and if you think it islikely to extend its life, before we embark on the exercise. That is, do our symptoms imply this is an appropriate 'cure' (albeit temporary). While we are thankful that the machine has run so long, pretty well faultlessly, we aren't that keen on the cost of a new equivalent, so if we can keep it going another year or two that would be good. Recently we had noted that the iMac was getting pretty hot along the top, then a week or so ago it froze with pixelation on the screen. On restarting it we got no further than the apple logo and pixelation. Viewing your first bake video was daunting, not least in the degree of labelling and extent to which the machine needed disassembling. But we thought we would at least take a look inside. It was pretty dusty, and after a clean we wondered whether, with the addition of SMC fan control, we could keep it cooler and not need to do the bake - prehaps not quite yet being in the position of 'having nothing to lose'. I should add that my wife uses the machine for correspondence and spreadheets, and other than perhaps looking at images of fabrics, doesn't tend to do anything graphics intensive (and no-one else uses the Mac). It has been used at least a couple of hours a day over the last decade. After reassembly we installed the fan control, not without issues arising from not running it from the applications folder, and though it ran somewhat noisily, it did not read over 40C. But on looking at fabrics it immediately pixelated and froze, and on restart wouldn't go past the logo screen. We had understood that the issues were in large part down to over-heating, but we are having problems at quite low temperatures. We left it a day, and my wife has been using it today for a couple of hours without any issue, and it has stayed cool. So, do we carry on fingers crossed we shall have minimal problems, or is a bake realy desirable - hence we should order the K5 etc. I watched the FAQs hoping that there might be more about quite what a bake could fix, and when to do it. Finally, though an early Apple afficionado - from ][ through ///, Lisa and transportables to IIcx, work meant I had to become a Windows user - I can no longer say I'm familiar with even basic aspects of the Mac iOS. Thanks for all your valuable advice. My wife loves the way you chat so personably and explain everything in such detail. Wow what a commitment/interest you have.
Thank you for your kind words, Martin, and for providing extension details about your iMac. Based on what you said, I can say without any doubt that you have a graphics card problem. Your machine is technically not "overheating" because this era of iMac all run very hot to the touch. The root problem is a design flaw in the GPU chip of graphics cards used in 2008 through 2011 iMacs. You were blessed in having gotten so many years of trouble-free use from that iMac, but now the problem has surfaced, and the old solution is to either bake the card or replace the card. The easiest and cheapest approach is the bake. If you don't care about replacing the PRAM battery on the back side of the motherboard, you can follow my 2nd bake video and not have to worry about removing the motherboard. I strongly recommend K5 Pro for the memory chips on the graphics card, and either K4 Pro or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on the GPU chip only. That is to be done only after having cleaned off all the stock thermal paste and after your bake. When you preheat your oven, put a turkey thermometer inside and make absolutely sure your oven temperature is a solid 200°C or roughly 400°F. Anything too much hotter than that and components can start to fall off the video card, which is not what you want to happen. Put the card on tin foil stand-offs as shown in my video. I used a convection oven with a blower fan, but a regular oven will work fine too. Do not use a toaster oven though. After everything is reassembled, you can use a fan control app to keep all 3 internal fans running at as high an rpm as your ears will allow. You can start off with 1800rpm, and then try 2000rpm if it's not too bothersome. The bake is not a permanent fix, but it does often last long enough to make the bake and repasting job worthwhile. Please be sure to let me know how it goes after your bake, repaste and testing is complete!
@@JDW- Many thanks for your confirmation, we shall assemble the materials we need. Having watched your first bake video, where you mentioned Arctic Silver, we had purchased some Arctic MX-4. Is this an acceptable alternative to the K4-Pro/Kryonaut for the GPU? (It is non-capacitive). Arctic offer thermal pads for the memory chips - is your argument against these because of the difficulty in knowing what thickness you will need?
@@martiningham1064 MX-4 is fine for the GPU. If you can accurately measure the gap, you of course can use Arctic thermal pads. In the case of my 4850 though, the heatsink did not lie perfectly flat. It was almost flat but not 100%. As such, the gaps between some memory chips was very slightly different than other chips. But since I used K5 Pro, it didn't matter because there is no defined thickness with K5 Pro. To use thermal pads, you need to make sure you (1) know the gap height, and (2) make sure the gap is consistent across all the memory chips. I hope this helps!
@@JDW- We have now carried out the bake, got it all back together and initial impressions (yesterday) were good, thanks to the videos and your other advice. Today we moved the iMac back into our study and started it - it works okay - but the fan(s) seem to be running at max speed and are noisy. The fans come on instantly when the power is started. SMC fan control reports 0C and 0rpm. All we can think it that one of the cables wasn't seated correctly, and may have come loose when we moved it. Any suggestions as to which to look for when we reopen the machine, as we now must? Must admit that when reassembling we found it very difficult, as you indicate, to refit the cable from the GPU stat on the underside of the motherboard - we undid the motherboard screws as the video showed to give a little extra space. Is this cable the most likely culprit, or might we have dislodged something else? When in the video you say that the two pins must face up is this towards the top of the screen, and is the push then towards the motherboard from underneath? Also wondering if there is anything we should look at (software-wise) before opening the iMac up?
@@martiningham1064 There have been a few other people who have reported the fans running at full speed. The reason, in every case, is a cable that wasn't full seated into its matching connector. There are only two solutions for that: (1) open the iMac again and check all your connections (the best solution), (2) use a fan control app to set all the fans to a speed that your ears can handle (a satisfactory solution that is also the easiest solution). Now, as to that little connector on the back side of the motherboard, I show how to fit that into its connector here: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html
Hello There! I have a iMac 21.5'' Mid 2011 and I baked my 6770 graphics card. Afterwards my iMac no longer boots up. The chime launch sound is gone. However all fans power on full blast none stop. I removed the LCD screen and only see one green light on my logic board with my power cord plugged in. The other three lights are off. What does it mean? I checked all the cables and made certain I connected everything back correctly. I've gotten so attached to this iMac. It's like I lost my best friend. Not sure what else to do.
Here are two sources of information about the LEDs on your model iMac: www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/126233/Where+are+the+diagnostic+led's+on+this+model's+logic+board discussions.apple.com/thread/7031064 Please let me know if this helps.
Try to boot your iMac with the graphic card removed (LCD removed, too). If it chimed in, The issue lie on your graphic card. It may dead, or some components touched the heatsink, causing short and system panic.
Hello there. congratulations for your great videos! I have a 27" late 2009 imac with a dead 4850 GPU that keeps the mac rebooting. It was warranty reviewed by the repair workshop several times but they finally gave up ( I suspect now they were just baking the card over an over again). Now the computer has been broken ever since... I was very excited when I saw your first video and like you got the wings fallen from my heart on the second one. But now I am really considering your recomendation. The most demanding tasks I did on the iMac was photorealistic rendering. I have a couple of questions for you... I know it sounds a crazy thing but...What do you thing about water cooling system for the chips? just for the sake of it Looking on ebay for the the 6970M that you used I found the Nvidia GTX 675MX video card with 4GB RAM + Metal... that I quote "replacesRadeon 6970M. What you think about this? Thank you in advance and again congratulations!
Thank you for your kind words, Humberto. If you paid someone to repair your 4850 in the past, you should have the right to ask if they either baked it or "reballed" the GPU. Reballing is what most repair shops do. They desolder the GPU chip and then resolder it. I personally think the root problem is not the solder balls but instead something inside the GPU chip itself. But when you desolder the chip, you heat it just like the bake, so repair shops think it is the solder balls. It probably isn't. And in my experience, I could only bake my card twice. The 3rd and 4th bakes failed, lasting only 1 week. That's why I switched my video card. I didn't choose an Nvidia card because I do not have a Windows or Linux computer that is required to flash the card. You would need to do that, or have the card's seller do that. Keep in mind that the Nvidia cards may be able to run Catalina, but your CPU is still old and slow. And those Nvidia cards are kind of slow too compared to modern GPU cards. As such, you may find that your overall experience using Catalina is slower than you like. I personally still use MacOS High Sierra on all my Macs, even my 2015 Macs which can run Catalina without problem. High Sierra runs faster, and it is much more stable too. I only run Catalina on an external SSD attached to my mid-2015 15" MBP to run the newest version of FCPX so I can edit my RUclips videos. The newest version of FCPX runs much faster than the version that runs under High Sierra. But I also find Catalina less stable overall than High Sierra. I upgraded my son's 2017 MacBook Air from High Sierra to Catalina and he hated it because it killed off all his 32-bit games. I restored his drive from a backup and then installed Mojave, and he seems content with that. I also upgraded my daughter's MacBook Air to Catalina, and although she still uses it, she says apps crash much more. I am telling you all this so that you know Catalina on an old Mac won't necessarily be the best choice for you, even if an Nvidia card supports it. Regarding my 6970M card, I didn't have to use a Windows machine to flash it. It doesn't support Metal or Catalina, but that doesn't bother me because I like High Sierra. The only other thing I do not know is how perfectly the stock heatsink will fit the Nividia cards. Perhaps the seller can provide you details about that. It probably is ok, but I have no first hand experience with it. As to water cooling, such is not possible in an iMac. Sure, there are people who don't mind drilling holes in the Mac, but that is not me. I would never do that. And if you do not drill or otherwise mod the case, I don't see how water-cooling would be possible. I hope this helps!
Hi JDW This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this year. I'm delighted to report that my late-2009 i7 iMac is still chugging along, 9 months after I followed your lead and baked my video card. Although this 13-year-old machine is still doing all I ask of it, I am considering replacing it with an M1 Mini, if only to benefit from the added security that comes with the newer iterations of OS. But rest assured, the old workhorse will still have a place in our home undertaking lighter, less processor hungry duties. Which, I imagine, is the retirement we all aspire to. :-) Thanks again for helping to add an extra year's life to a machine that, otherwise, would have been heading for landfill. I'm much obliged to you.
Paul, I sincerely appreciate your time spend on posting that update. It's great to hear your bake is still going strong. I suspect that many people are in your shoes, pondering whether to do the bake on their own old iMac or go for one of the new M1 Macs. M1 Macs certainly are compelling, and goodness knows my own RUclips video editing process could be benefited by the speed and power they offer. Even so, for people who have the desk space for them, old Macs can still be fun or even productive to use. As such, the bake still may prove useful for those folks moving forward. Best wishes!
Hello JDW! I replace the gpu card on a 21”5 iMac,I bought the original card on eBay pre own but in working condition the seller gets nothing but good reviews however when I put these cables back I got the black screen issue I hear the welcome sound but the screen is black,and I was watching your FAQ video where you mention if the long ribbon cable is not seated properly you could have this issue.I check it and it seems to be seated right,however the 4 pin ribbon cable that connects to the upper left I notice one of the pins seem like a pice of the copper foil is missing do you think this cable could be causing the black screen or is the longer ribbon cable? Thanks for the advise.
The small ribbon cable in the upper left is V-sync. The iMac will work without it but there will be noise or jitter, so if you're is broken, you should buy a replacement (link in text description). Shine a flashlight into your screen with the machine powered on. Do you see an image? If so, your backlight driver board needs replacement. No image with a flashlight? Well, you said you confirmed the wide ribbon cable, but make sure you check both ends of it (the place behind the LCD too). That is almost always the cause of a black screen. If you are 100% positive it is NOT that wide ribbon cable, then you should pull out the video card and reseat it, making absolutely sure it is fitted into it's connector on the motherboard. If you still get a black screen, then it must be a bad graphics card. It cannot be the power supply because you said you can hear sounds (booting). Even EBAY sellers with great feedback can see defective items at times, so it's not outside the realm of the possible. I hope this helps.
@@JDW- you know what I discover the ribbon cable did not chip a piece of the copper foil like I had thought looking through it with my magnifying glasses I found out it just curl up I un curl it and putted back in its original place but is like you said it should still work but I thought maybe that ribbon cable is suppose to activate the inverter board and turn on the back lights of the screen, I was going to ask you even if the graphics card is defective the screen should still light up but not show and image right? I am going to shine a lot on the screen to see if I see the image I’ll let you know.but I think the guy from eBay might of sold me defective video card.but the good thing is I have the original card witch I could do the bake method and still have a chance of getting it to work the only thing I hate is that I have to remove the motherboard to get the graphic card out not like some model Macs you don’t need to remove the motherboard is easier.once again thanks for your advice is always highly appreciated.
@@garylove2836 You said you checked the wide ribbon cable. So if you did the flashlight test with the power on and could not see any image, then I would say with certainty it must be the graphics card.
@@JDW- yes that’s correct I check the longer wide ribbon cable to make sure it lock into place because it has to clips that lock the cable in place,I pull on it just a little bit to see if it would detach and it didn’t I also check the other end that connects to the lcd and is also lock into place.i turn the light off in my room and shine my iPhone light especially at the middle where you would see the apple logo and nothing I was thinking of connecting by dell monitor to the IMac to see if I get video on the external monitor but I need a thunderbolt to DVI to HDMI adaptor witch I don’t have.I have to agree with you is the graphics card at this point. today I messaged the eBay seller so he could give a refund for that dud he sold me😡JDW I am going to bake my graphics card from my iMac but you said you have to first let your oven get hot. And bake the video card at 290 degrees for 9 minutes I was going to ask you which is the best thermal paste I could use for the gpu chip and the memory chips I would appreciate the advice thanks again.
As luck would have it, I picked up a free Late 2009 iMac 27 with video issues. Pretty sure the stock ATI HD4850 would bake out but I have a 1 GB 6970M needing a home so in it went. Install went smoothly. First turn on, screen stayed black for several minutes before finally showing question mark folder. Subsequent boots have been normal. Thinking this is the SMC adjusting to the new GPU. Anyways, the machine is a top spec i7 2.8 GHz with 32GB RAM (and not a 4GB C2D) so feeling fortunate. On a side note, this machine did not come with a HDD so had to install a non-Apple unit. Used a temp sensor from a broken ODD on the HDD. The connector is the same. Fans spin normally in Auto mode so it appears to be working.
Wow. You can't beat "free"! :-) Glad to hear you have the machine up and running. Since it seems you added a regular hard drive, I do have one piece of advice for you. It's definitely worth the money to swap out that spinning platter HDD with an SSD. It's absolutely without a doubt the single best speed enhancement you can add to your late 2009 iMac, hands down. If you click SHOW MORE to expand the text description below my video, scroll down to where I say "
@@JDW- Way ahead of you, lol. The ODD sensor takes care of fan over speed so SSD is in the cards. I have SSD in my Mid 2011 27 and totally agree on the benefits. What is nice about the 2009 is that there is a header on the mobo for the HDD temp sensor. In the 2011, the sensor input is part of the SATA cable so OWC or some other work around is needed for auto fan mode to work right.
between the failings gpu’s on the imacs and the macbook pros, and then of course getting second hand gpus off ebay for mac pros, my oven hasn’t seen food in months!! only PCB 😂😭
@@JDW- yes! my favorite is my MacBook Pro 4,1 with the original 512mb 8600m going strong. I usually have no issue with MacBooks and iMacs after baking, only the desktop cards that have been decimated from mining are sometimes unfixable. I have a “non working” 6970m on the way for a 2010 27 inch that i’m hoping just needs a good bake, I have what’s considered a 7950 equivalent firepro in it right now but it just performs awful.
I baked two 4850 and both of them got burnt and useless. You asked me to send photos. I have them, but i dont know how to attach a photo to this chat. I used a convection oven preheated at 200ºC with the convection on and heat coming from above and below the tray (excuse my english, hope u understand what i mean). The cards melted, especially the brown part surrounding the gpu chip. With the third card what i did was: I put the tray as low as possible, the heat only coming from above (bigger distance from the heat source), 200ºC, convection and only 7 minutes. At 7 minutes it started to smell very slightly burnt so i turned the oven off and took the card out. It is working by now (only 2 days). I hope this helps someone.
You can upload photos to Google Photos, to DropBox, to Flickr, just to name a few free sources. DropBox allows you to create links to your photos. Just do that and comment again with the URL. There's not much more I can say until I see your photos because out of the hundreds of comments under my bake videos, you really are the first person to report "burning" the video card. There have been a small number of people who reported components falling off, as I mention in my video above, but even they didn't mention "burning." That is why I really need to see your photos to better understand what might have happened.
@@JDW- i´m afraid these are not the best photos. Hope you see what i mean. The brown plastic material surrounding the gpu looked like melted and inflated
@@Tom85746 Tomas, thank you for the photos. For the life of me, I cannot see any "BROWN" plastic material in your photos. What I see is GRAY thermal paste that you did not remove. You must use alcohol and swaps or tissues to remove the old thermal paste from the GPU before you do the bake. Otherwise it will be even harder to remove that GRAY thermal paste after the bake. And you absolutely positively must remove that old thermal paste on the GPU and on the heatsink before you apply new thermal paste on the GPU. If you watch my 2nd Bake video, you will see all those details: ruclips.net/video/6BJGLFCigdA/видео.html
Personally i wouldn't recommend leaving the fans high all the time unless you are willing to continue taking the machine apart at least every 6-12 months to blow out the dust!
My 2nd bake lasted 2 years and 9 months, during which time I did not open it or clean out dust. When I opened it to do my 3rd bake, there was some dust, but not enough to have caused severe cooling problems. I think that proves your working environment has a lot to do with it. The thing about using higher fan speeds though is that you will suck in more dust. It can't be helped though. Higher fan speeds are helpful overall.
@@JDW- what I am trying to say or should I say ask why can't you test all the components on the video card or can't that be done sorry for my no skills
@@jimrandall6309 Because: (1) that would take a long time, (2) we don't need to test all the components since we know the problem is the GPU chip alone. The graphics cards used in iMacs from 2008 through 2011 were badly designed, and that design flaw results in this problem. Some people mistakenly think it is the solder balls under the GPU chip, but that isn't the core problem. Sometimes it is the solder balls, but mostly it is a problem inside the GPU chip itself that is resolved (for up to a few years anyway) with heat. So when someone removes the GPU thinking the problem is the solder balls, they heat the chip sufficiently to solve the problem (for a while), and of course the solder balls are perfectly applied then too. But because the main problem is in the GPU chip itself, you and I can resolve the issue from home by heating the card in an oven. Why not hot air? Sure, if you want. You just need to take much, MUCH more care with hot air so as not to accidentally desolder surrounding components. The oven bake method is the method MOST PEOPLE can do themselves. And it tends to last long enough to have made the time, effort and small expense worthwhile. I know this because I read and reply to all the comments under all my bake videos on this subject. I hope this explanation helps!
@@JDW- yes thank you as you might or not know I am very new to this and whi!le I got you could you help me my son gave me a iMac that won't boot up any hints as wha I can do to get it going bare in mind I am 72years young please help if you can thank you
@@jimrandall6309 I've made a total of 8 videos on this topic, and I believe you should follow my 2nd Bake video and use the thermal paste I recommend in the text description below that video. An iMac between 2008 and 2011 can have other problems, but most of the time, it's the graphics card. The graphics card can and does prevent booting. Here is a playlist link to all my Bake videos: ruclips.net/p/PLNZ4qjMn-GHoez6_PtpyJfcU_ialTS8bB
It's really a shame you don't brand like Apple didn't offer a solution to this graphics card problem even at cost!!! by offering an exchange when you see the price of an iMac !!! especially a 27 inch!! personally I just had one on occasion no problem for now and I just installed Ventura on it with open Core MDR !!!! No graphics card problem for now I do not know if it has already been cooked or not in my opinion I think so.... we'll see how long it lasts but it's still scandalous at that time all brands had this problem I have Acer laptops that have the same problem it's the same type of graphics card they did nothing they still sold their hardware their iMac their PC knowing full well that there was a problem of soldering on graphics cards at that time but hey we'll see Well, maybe they didn't think they did... And then if it ever breaks down we will have other models to offer them to its customers to these sheep .. Il est vraiment dommage tu ne marques comme Apple na pas proposé une solution à ce problème de carte graphique même à prix coûtant !!! en proposant un échange quand on voit le prix que coûte un iMac !!! surtout un 27 pouces !! personnellement je viens d'en avoir un en occasion pas de souci pour l'instant et je viens d'installer dessus Ventura avec open Core MDR !!!! pas de problème de carte graphique pour l'instant je ne sais pas si elle a déjà été cuite ou pas à mon avis je pense que oui.... on verra bien combien de temps ça tient mais c'est quand même scandaleux à cette époque toutes les marques avaient ce problème j'ai des PC portables Acer qui ont le même problème c'est le même type de carte graphique ils n'ont rien fait ils ont quand même vendu leur matériel leur iMac leur PC en sache pertinemment qu'il y avait un problème de soudure sur les cartes graphiques à cette époque mais bon on verra bien ça va peut-être pas qu'ils se sont dit... Et puis si jamais ça tombe en panne on aura d'autres modèles à leur proposer à ses clients à ces moutons..
STRANGE VERY STRANGE. my problem is the screen cures it self half an hour or so after power up. First the second fourth of the screen clears up then several minutes later The first 1/4 of screen clears up. At this time the left of the top of the monitor is warm very warm to the touch while the right half of the top of the monitor is cool. This is getting worse as the days go by probably taking an hour fir the screen to clear up. This started happening over a year ago. But only in the winter when the room was cold in the morning. It is as though it needs to warm up to work properly but that’s counter intuitive for electronics. I’m ready to do the bake but the delivery of the paste is behind schedule due to our winter pier outage. Thx for your detailed analysis.
@@windsurfertx1 I'd love to see a photo of your display when the problem happens, Chuck. Feel free to upload the photo to DropBox or Flickr or iCloud and paste the link here in the Comments. No doubt it's video card related, but your description of the problem is rather unique.
@@JDW- to get a photo I'll have to put it back together again, reconnect the cables. I'm trying to minimize the disconnecting re-connecting, they are fragile. In looking for similar picture of mine I came across this video:" ruclips.net/video/BYR36SjLpJo/видео.html. Give a look at the 1st half of this video as it best visually describes what I see. The "jibber-ish" that shows in one vertical section on the right side of his screen is what I get on the left side of my screen only I have four vertical bars of it on my left side. It for sure is warming that makes it go away. Because: After leaving the Mac on for an hour or so the vertical bars went away. Then I powered it off put the glass back on and powered it on and the bars were gone. However the bars came back the next morning. I don't think its a connector issue as shown in the video because after disconnecting-reconnecting I had the same issue. Could be though I'll try to inspect connector with strong light and magnifying glass. Perhaps the solder on the board to connector does not make connection until the fault generates enough heat to reflow those particular connections. Your thoughts?
But the warmth is on the left side of the screen on top and the graphics card and its connector is on the right side of the mother board which kind of shoots down that theory. One other thing. when I took out the screen from the Mac there were vertical stripes on the left side of the screen as though they were burned into the screen. the next morning those stripes disappeared. those stripes were the same size as the stripes you see in other videos: ruclips.net/video/hkt-mWt0xN8/видео.html. I may hook it up again and gather more info and shoot some video of it and post on RUclips.
@@windsurfertx1 Warmth and heat is not an indicator of the problem. The graphics card problem described in my videos is typically accompanied by a complete freeze of the iMac at some point. That freeze can occur with or without such artifacts on the display. In many cases, it can freeze with a completely black or white screen. If you have ever gotten a freeze, then your graphics card definitely has the problem my videos describe and the bake should help resolve that, although it is not a permanent fix. It could be a loose cable, I suppose but most likely the graphics card is the issue, especially if you have a 2008 to 2011 model, iMac small or large.
Mate, I am the one who in a comment section of one of you previous videos suggested replacing the faulty AMD GPU with Nvidia Quadro K1100m. Your argument against it is "I am a real Mac guy, and real Mac guys don't mess around with Linux and Windows in order to flash the GPU. I don't buy your argument because: 1. Real Mac guys don't bake iMac video cards. They go to the first Apple Store and have the logic board replaced for $2000. Real Apple guys are not supposed to open their iMac to clean the fans or upgrade an old and slow 7200 RPM hard drive with SSD hard drive. Real Apple guys don't touch their hardware because Apple don't want them to touch it. What Apple want is to rip them off for their money. 2. When it comes to design of products and quality of software Apple is a great company. I simply love MacOS as an operating system. But when it comes to upgrades of hardware in your iMac, Macbook Pro etc. Apple is the worst company in the world. Why wouldn't they provide already flashed Nvidia Quadro graphics cards so we who own iMacs from 2011 can enjoy metal support and the latest MacOS. Why don't they sell sensors for SSD? 3. Flashing a Nvidia Quadro has nothing to do with being or not being an Apple guy. Baking the faulty AMD graphics card from my iMac is not a permanent solution. It might work for two years or just one week. And as you know it's a pain in the ass to completely disassemble an iMac to do the baking over and over again. By dissassembling your iMac over and over again there is a big chance you'll break something (LCD cable fir example) and then you'll spend a great deal of your time and money to get it fixed. 4. Flashing a graphics card is easy and not a big deal.
Thank you for your follow-up comment. Please note, however, that you are not the only person to suggest a PC Nvidia MXM video card. You are simply the most recent. And of course, I appreciate your advice on that topic. I really do. And thank you for checking out my new video. I am not in complete agreement with your other points though. Real Mac guys DO BAKE video cards because I am one and I did the bake! :-) If you don't define "a real Mac guy" as "someone who has exclusively owned Macs since 1984," then I have no idea what a "real Mac guy" is! Real Mac fans also install their own RAM instead of paying Apple to a princely sum for the official overpriced RAM. Only folks from the PeeSee (ha ha) world of Windoze think such ill of Apple fans. There are older Mac fans like my father he would rather pay more than do a DIY solution. But for the rest of us who are in Gen-X or younger, DIY is the common knowledge way to save money, and we don't shy away from that. In terms of why Apple does things, I cannot say. I can only say that recent Macs do not use Nvidia cards because Apple prefers Radeon cards instead or integrated graphics. To get the best performance out of FCPX, for example, you need a supported AMD video card. Why? Because Apple says so. I am not defending that. It's just the way things are. Not wanting to flash a PC video card definitely HAS something to do with being a Mac guy. I know because I am a Mac guy, and despite having the mental capability of doing the flashing, I just don't want to. Maybe when my 6970M dies, as I said in my video, I will consider it for the LONE reason of making a video that shows that. But it certainly won't be about performance. If I really want speed, I'd get a 2020 iMac or wait for Apple Silicon Macs. If you watch all my BAKE videos, you will see me repeat over and over and over that the bake is NOT a permanent solution. Of course it isn't. But it is worth it in my opinion. Consider cost vs. performance. I paid the price of thermal paste and spent a Saturday and get 2 years and 9 months of use out of an otherwise dead card. The card was dead. I had nothing to lose. I spent a tiny amount of money on the paste. Yeah, I broke a couple cables and had to replace them, but that cost wasn't high. And if you read through the hundreds of comments under my first two bakes you will see that many other people not only find success, but they feel it is worth the effort too. And we all do this in the knowledge it won't last forever. Lastly, I agree with your thoughts on Apple product quality to some degree. You will see on my channel that I have a couple videos about the MacBook Pro. In one of those videos, I compel my fellow MBP owners to check their batteries because they could be swollen. Chances are, Apple won't cover the cost of that replacement, despite having a battery replacement program in place. I personally praise Apple about as much as I chastise them. Yes, true Mac guys do that. About the only people who think Apple is infallible are AppleInsider forum regulars! :-) (I'm a regular over there, but I try to balance out all the Cupertino worship with pointed criticism when needed.) Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, Andreas!
@@JDW- Appreciate your answer. Don't get me wrong, I didn't imply you are not a Mac guy who loves Apple products. I was making a point about Apple not allowing you to upgrade their products. My iMac 27" from 2011 is still in 2020 a great machine, with 20 Gb of RAM, 500 Gb Samsung EVO SSD and Nvidia Quadro K1100m. I am a musician and I compose music in Logic Pro X. I simply want to have the newest MacOS with metal support and Apple file system because in a couple of years I won't be able to install new apps on MacOS High Sierra. Already now some apps require at least MacOS Mojave. Also I don't want to waste my time on baking the GPU over and over again when I can solve the problem by a simple and cheap upgrade. I've bought Nvidia Quadro K1100m from China for $30.
@@andreasvukman Thank you for letting me know that card cost only $30 (probably including the CCP-subsidized shipping too). Question... You paired that K1100M with your 2011 iMac's stock heatsink which looks like the triple-heat-pipe version shown in my video? How well did that heatsink fit your card? And does the GPU of that card fall directly under the copper portion of the heatsink? Whatever details you can share about that would be appreciated. Thanks!
@@JDW- The heatsink fits perfectly my K1100m. I used K5-PRO thermal paste, which is an ideal replacement for thermal pads on GPU. www.computer-systems.gr/en/content/product/k5-pro-60g-3x20g It can be bought on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Viscous-Thermal-Replacement-iPhone/dp/B0851NLK48/ref=pd_aw_sbs_147_3/142-4819537-0571010?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0851NLK48&pd_rd_r=0c3070f8-312b-4a87-862f-9701588fda49&pd_rd_w=vJwaN&pd_rd_wg=lsIlU&pf_rd_p=408b641a-bb24-42ea-a6df-5ef48089cda2&pf_rd_r=CDCJ9CJR9PDZJ9WA13VB&psc=1&refRID=CDCJ9CJR9PDZJ9WA13VB
Thanks. I am aware of Curtis' videos, this one in particular: ruclips.net/video/lb-Gg2JY3ug/видео.html I should mention the caveats though. As I've said many times, using an Nvidia card will require you to flash the card, and to do that you need a Windows machine (realistically). I do not own even a single Windows PC, nor do I have bootcamp installed on any of my Macs. There are many Mac users out there like that. So if you cannot flash the Nvidia card, it won't work. Next, as you can see in Curtis' own video, there are sleep/wake issues that can hit you, depending on the CPU you upgrade to. Next, some people in the comments under his video are asking about 2009 and 2010 models, and in one case of a 2010 model, the person commenting said he got a black screen and Curtis could only say he doesn't have a 2010 model. That isn't a slight against Curtis, but it is a warning that particular video really applies to the 2011 iMac, and not necessarily older iMac models like mine (2009). Lastly, I see Curtis is using Arctic Silver V on the GPU chip in that video. I used that same paste on the GPU after my 1st bake, but I think it is a mistake now. I used a different paste after subsequent bakes. Why? Because Arctic Silver V paste is capacitive, and there will be some overspill that will touch the surrounding SMD components, potentially causing problems. I therefore recommend either K4 Pro or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for the GPU because they are not electrically conductive nor are they capacitive. Curtis made no mention in his video of pasting the memory chips, but that is just as important, and I recommend K5 Pro for those chips, since using thermal pads is troublesome to get fitted right. None of my remarks in any way whatsoever are criticizing Curtis' excellent videos. I am just pointing out the pitfalls you need to be aware of, in addition to giving you my own advice about thermal paste. Good luck!
OK seems like it did. I was posting a comment the other day writing about how I solved my GPU problem where I couldn't do the baking anymore by buying another cheap iMac and baked that card but somehow it never showed up here...
@@fabianlorenzen2648 The people at RUclips are complete idiots. Believe me, I have written to them multiple times about vanishing comments, but they do nothing but give me the run-around. I often get email notifications of new comments only to find the comments are not there. And many times, I cannot find a way to get in touch with the people to ask them to try again. It's very frustrating. The best advice I can give is when you post and find the comment doesn't appear, try again without URLs. That often works. I don't block URLs, but RUclips often does. Again, I am sorry about this, but RUclips isn't trying at all to solve this problem. They simply don't care.😥
@@JDW- Thanks a lot for your reply. Yeah, was quite annoying to write that comment only to find out it was gone directly after posting. Anyway - to sum up what I wrote: I did the bake with my 2009 27inch iMac's video card as well as long as it lasted. But instead of buying a replacement GPU afterwards like you did I just searched for another 27 inch 2009 iMac that was sold for parts and - judging from the item description - had the common video card problem. So I got this iMac for around 50 Euros plus shipping, successfully baked its card and was back in business again. Since I found another GPU-broken 2009 27 inch iMac shortly after for 70 Euros including working peripherals (Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard), I thought - well, a spare GPU can't be wrong, purchased that as well, baked it successfully and now have another GPU right at hand in case the other one dies... and in addition to that, a lot of additional working spare parts to sell or use. So my recommendation is this: if one of those old video cards fails... don't buy another one. Just buy another broken iMac. ;-) Greetings from Germany to Japan, Fabian
@@fabianlorenzen2648 I agree that if you can get as cheaply as you described, that would be best. Sometimes, it's hard to do that though because shipping fees can cost almost as much as the iMac itself. But it's great to hear you not only solved your problem but have a lot of spare parts too! You now simply need to find a place to store all those parts, since 27" iMacs take up a lot of space. Here in Japan, storage space is perhaps more of a problem than it is in other countries. Best wishes!
You could squirt some on, but all it would do is make a mess, I think. For flux to have meaning, it would need to touch all the solder balls, which is impossible. It just wouldn't reach the center of the chip. But there is a misconception that the solder balls are the root problem here. That isn't the case most of the time. It's a defect inside the GPU chip that gets fixed (for a while -- maybe a few years) when heated properly. The reason why reballing works is because during that process, you must heat the GPU chip! This is why flux really doesn't matter. It's a defect inside the GPU chip itself.
![AMD 6970M upgrade for 2009 iMac 27" [Video Card]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9dPsH1zIQMs/mqdefault.jpg)
![AMD 6970M upgrade for 2009 iMac 27" [Video Card]](/img/tr.png)
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Small tip for when you're replacing the lcd screen...
The long ribbon cable is a real pain to fix to the motherboard - really tricky to get into the socket where it's positioned. I managed to break a couple of the tiny connectors on one attempt. However, at the screen end, you can carefully peel off the sticky tape that holds the cable down and underneath that is a connector for the other end of it (ie. the cable doesn't disappear into the lcd). It's much easier to fix the cable to the motherboard first, then connect the screen end once that's in place.
Just did my 6th (I think - losing count now) successful bake yesterday, and have now kept the iMac going for over 2 years since the initial failure.
Thank you for your suggestion. Just to confirm, you are recommending to (1) disconnect the wide ribbon cable at the back of the LCD, (2) attach the opposite end of that wide ribbon able to the motherboard, (3) start to put the screen in place, (4) attach the wide ribbon cable to the LCD, (5) then attach the small ribbon cable in the upper left, is that correct?
@@JDW- Yup, that's it. I worked it out after I broke the connectors on the original cable, looked to see if it could be replaced and found that it had connectors both ends. When you've got the screen balanced on your chest it's a lot easier to reach the socket near the top of the lcd than the one down towards the bottom of the motherboard and, obviously, a lot easier to connect the motherboard end when you can get at it easily. I only half pull off the tape from the LCD, and stick that back in place once the connectors in.
And thanks for making the videos, and for the thermal paste recommendations. All much appreciated
@@nickbrennan7280 Thank you for confirming your tip, Nick. It's an excellent tip indeed, so much so that I've made it a PINNED comment that will perpetually appear at the top of all comments for everyone to see. That ribbon cable is the single most bothersome part of reassembly, so your excellent advice can help everyone who does the bake! THANK YOU!
@@JDW-You're welcome. Fame at last! 😁
Yesterday I was able to revive a late 2009 21.5” iMac using “the bake.” Wonderful, albeit challenging experience! I really can’t thank you enough. Mahalo
Mahalo nui loa! I am thrilled to hear your story of success with the bake. Your perseverance paid off! Best wishes to you and your newly resurrected iMac!
Thank you very much for your help. I did it for 10 mins, now back in business. Really appreciated for sharing.
Thank you for making time to let me know your success, Victor! Best wishes!
I got an Mid 2011 27-inch iMac recently with a freezing problem at booting. With your nice information, I just baked my RADEON HD 6970M 2GB VRAM card yesterday and put it back to my iMac. It worked and my iMac works fine now. Will see how long it will last.
Thank you!
Congratulations on your successful bake!
Hey, something I can help with! A couple months ago I repaired the 6970M in my own 2011 27" iMac using a heat gun. I can't get to it right now, but when I can I will get the model information. This was my first reflow attempt (well not really, but the first that I actually thought might work. I first tried it a couple years ago on a dead Radeon HD 5450. It's still dead.) so I wasn't exactly sure how I needed to do it, but my method was as follows (and yes, I know it's a bit scary):
1) Turn heat gun to highest heat setting
2) Wait for it to completely heat up
3) With GPU sitting on concrete I just moved the heat gun constantly over the GPU for about 7-8 minutes.I kept the heat gun a good distance away from the card as I knew it was going to be close to melting the solder. There was no set distance that I used. Instead I varied my distance, from a few CM away to around 10 inches or so. Like I said, this was the first time I had done this so I just tried something and it worked perfectly for me.
4) Once done I just turned the heat gun down to low and kept moving it over the GPU for another minute to cool the GPU more slowly.
5) Let the GPU cool, put it back in the iMac and tried it out. It worked!
I performed this method back at the beginning of August and so far it has held up great. I tested the iMac extensively as it was new to me (I had been repairing it for a customer when they decided to leave it with me), and it worked perfectly. The only thing I want to do to the iMac now is upgrade to an SSD. Everything relating to the GPU seems to be perfectly fine. It still performs exactly as it should and it's been very enjoyable to use. For the majority of the time since it was repaired the iMac has sat on my desk running. I have been leaving it running 24/7 as sort of an extended stress test, and it's done great.
When I can I will get more information about the heat gun I used and I can try to do a more detailed description of my methodology. I wouldn't recommend it to someone doing this for the first time though as it is extremely easy to completely mess up the GPU. It's just what I did and it happened to work out for me. I hope this is helpful!
Thank you for watching and for providing details about your heat gun experience, Jamie! That information will be very useful, especially when you add details about the model of your heat gun. I just now expanded the SSD content inside the text description under my video to include the 2011 iMac. You may or may not be aware of what's needed. I provided links to all the relevant hardware and software to do the upgrade. An SSD is the single best upgrade for older iMacs, hands down!
Thanks for the update on the iMac. I still need to fix the 27" iMac that I ripped the main connector off the motherboard, picked up a replacement board after giving the model info so that I get the right replacement board which I will need to review your video on, so many connectors to hook back up to it. I did end replacing the video card with another AMD Apple video card that was also used after my 1st bake on the original card failed again after a short period of time. The sad part is since I can't use the original main screen cause of the broken motherboard connector, I can still use an external screen through a connector on the back. I replaced just the screen glass to keep the dust-out and it is sort of cool that you have an x-ray view of the insides of the computer. Hopefully this winter I will get the time and courage to replace the new/used motherboard so I can use the 27" screen. Enjoy your videos very helpful.
Thank you for sharing that, Robin. I hope you can get that motherboard connector fixed soon. And although getting the connector fixed will mean putting the screen back on, maybe you can shoot a photo of your iMac’s internals so you can use that as a background image to retain that X-ray look! :-)
Hi, JDW. Greetings from the UK, and huge thanks for helping me to bring my 27" late-2009 iMac back to life. As you mentioned in another of your videos, with times as tough as they are at the moment buying a replacement Mac simply isn't an option for many of us, so a fix - no matter how temporary - is the best we can hope for. But who would have imagined that a failing graphics card would emerge phoenix-like from a 200ºC oven? Thanks to your clear instructions, I managed to undertake the whole job (including a thorough, much-needed clean) in the space of an afternoon. My only regret is that I didn't have a tame squirrel monkey on hand to help with the plugging back in of the sensor cables rather than having to rely on my own sausage fingers. :-) But the joy of seeing the desktop appear minus artefacts and grey bars made all the effort worthwhile. I really can't thank you enough. Annoyingly, the Mac crashed again some 24 hours after coming back to life, the cause of which I now suspect to be overheating. Since then I have, on your advice, installed Macs Fan Control which seems to be keeping the temperature in check. Just one query: what do you consider the optimal temperatures to be for the CPU, GPU and HD? Opinions seem to vary, with some users happy to let temperatures top 70ºC while others insist on keeping them to 30ºC max. Thanks again, and my very best wishes to you and your family. I hope good fortune comes your way this year - you certainly deserve it.
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing details of your experience, Paul! I suggest setting your fan control app to the highest speed your ears can endure. When I first started, I set all 3 fans to 1800rpm. Japan is a fairly noisy place, so I really couldn't hear that increased fan speed in a way that annoyed me. Later on, when I saw just how much my son was playing games on it, I upped the speed to 2000rpm. It's more noticeable, but since he is using it a lot of the time now, it's really the best choice.
When you say "crash" I assume you mean the same sort of freeze you had prior to the bake? If so, having that happen only 24 hours after the bake concerns me. Assuming you used the same 2 types of thermal paste that I recommend (K4 Pro on the GPU and K5 Pro on the memory chips), then it could just be that you need to boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility to repair any errors on your boot drive. After that, if you can run the machine without freezes for more than a week of regular use, then the bake is likely good to go.
@@JDW- Thank you for the follow-up suggestions, JDW. I did indeed use the K4 and K5 Pro pastes you recommended, and have run First Aid from Recovery but found nothing untoward. The initial post-bake freeze (while listening to streaming radio) and crash (as you described - as if someone had pulled the plug) have not reoccured, so I'm hoping I can put them down to one of life's unresolved Mac mysteries.
As to fan speed: living in rural Worcestershire, as we do, where the loudest noise is birdsong, I would like to keep the 'roar' of the fans to a minimum. So I have been experimenting with Macs Fan Control, and have discovered a setting that seems to work for general usage, although I've yet to test it with the GPU under pressure. I'm assuming that the GPU is cooled primarily by the ODD fan, so I've set that one to respond to an increase in temperature over 40C. The HHD and CPU fans are also set to ramp up when and if required. Fingers crossed, it seems to be working, although I'm sure that some tweaks will be needed down the line.
Finally, during my trawl of the internet to find out more about my Mac, I discovered a copy of the Apple Technician Guide for this particular model tim.id.au/laptops/apple/imac/imac_27_late09.pdf . I'm sure it won't tell you anything you don't already know, but I thought it might prove to be of some help to those of your followers who might benefit from some Cupertino words of wisdom as well as exploded views of their machine.
Thank you again for your commitment to helping those of us who have been using Macs since the days before Steve Jobs discovered turtlenecks. Keep safe, my friend.
It’s always nice to converse with veteran Mac users such as yourself. Like me, you probably started with Macs back when Jobs actually wore a necktie now and then! :-) It seems that you did everything correct with your bake, paste, and fan speed settings. Please feel free to Report back again in a few months to let everyone know how your machine is doing. Best wishes!
At 4:40, re the fans blowing at full speed. Yes a cable may have not been engaged at all or improperly but you can try an SMC reset first because it is a quick reset that may actually solve the problem, if the cable mentioned was in fact reconnected correctly.
Of course, you are correct with that experienced advice, Alex. Sometimes that can resolve issues. But I said what I did in Q2 based on Q&A in the comments section under my previous videos. I read and reply to every single comment, and I came to understand that almost everyone who had fans running at full blast either had not reseated the connector properly during reassembly or they had in fact broken the cable or connector itself. So if you decide to do the bake, take care when handling the cables and be sure to seat them properly and recheck each one more than once before you close and test the iMac.
I am happy to report that my late 2009 27-inch iMac is back in top operating form after languishing for 4 years. She's got a new 1 TB SSD (OWC Mercury Electra 3G), new optical drive and 32 GB of RAM. I didn't buy a new graphics card because I was determined to try the bake approach. I used K-4/K-5 Pro thermal paste, baked the card for 9 minutes at 392 degrees F and cooled it on the open oven door. I also diligently cleaned the card's heat sink (a zillion "black as the night" swabs). A million thanks for your detailed videos. They provided me with the inspiration and instruction I needed to keep going!
It really does take a lot of swabs, doesn't it? :-) I'm so glad to hear your bake and subsequent repasted worked great, Gayle. The bake doesn't last forever, but I do hope you can get at least the same 2 years and 9 months that I got from my 2nd bake. That makes the trouble worthwhile. Best wishes!
I fixed my 2011 iMac 27. Baked 400F for 10 mins. Can’t believe it works! Thank you!
My 2011 iMac 27 comes with SSD. After open the case, it looks Apple put the SSD behind the optical drive, which basically blocked the airflow. I removed the optical drive, attached the ODD temp sensor to the SSD. All good now.
Thank you for sharing your success story, Tianyuw! The Apple SSD option for the 2011 iMac was interesting. Apparently, if you did not order the iMac with the SSD, no cable or mounting bracket was included. They did it that way to give the user the option of also having the spinning platter hard drive too. It's one of the few setups where you could get 3 drives in an iMac: HDD, SSD & DVD. But as you point out, airflow is restricted by the optical drive. This is why companies like OWC make their bracket to replace the optical drive for the purpose of installing a third party SSD instead. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're up and running again!
@@JDW- btw, what is your idle cpu/gpu temp for 6970? I tested my 6970m idle 60C, max load 88C
@@tianyuw6330 When doing nothing, mine idles in the low 50°C range, but keep in mind it is still winter here in Japan. When my son is playing Roblox, it rises into the 60°C range, but with the all 3 fans set to 2000rpm, the temperature normally doesn't rise past 70°C now, especially not in the winter months. Are you really able to use yours in a stable condition at 88°C? That 88°C is your GPU temperature? Could be thermal paste. What kind of paste did you use when you repasted? (You should have used 2 types.)
@@JDW- I hit 88C when using default OS fan control while running unigine heaven in high quality. It’s the stock 6970m. I got the temp reading from Mac fan control. I think Mac fan control is a must as you can let ODD fan to monitor GPU temperature.
@@tianyuw6330 I just checked my iMac this evening after my wife had been doing email and web browsing for a couple hours. The 6970M GPU temperature was a cool 36°C. The thermal paste used and how it is applied impacts operating temperatures quite a bit.
Hello at 35:30 you mention the sudden power off issue which has been what I have been dealing with for the past 2years until today when vertical lines appeared at restart outer one of those sudden power off in this case the screen went blank and then attempted to reboot with no success. Now I get verticals lines at restart that move on to a blank screen as it continue to reboot. As I look for a solution I found your videos. I wondered if the sudden power off I have been having were a symptom of this btu issue it seems I may have.?
Israel, thank you for watching and for your reply. I've been trying to get data from other 6970M video card users, but unfortunately, you are the first person who has confirmed that you too have the same sudden power-off problem that I have. However, is your 6970M the stock graphics card that came in your 2011 iMac? If so, then I'm not sure what to think because it appears that the card I purchased was in fact a PC video card that the seller flashed, even though the seller said he did not do that. It was therefore my thinking that perhaps the power off problem might be firmware related. However, if your card is a stock Apple card, then my theory goes out the window!
So I'm sorry to say that the only advice I have for you is how to get rid of the vertical lines. Namely, you will need to follow my 2nd Bake video and bake your card. If your card has never been baked before, then the bake should resurrect it, at least for a time. The bake is not permanent, but then again, no fix in this world is. Please be sure you use a turkey thermometer or similar to verify your oven temperature is correct. Some people have reported their ovens are not accurate, which can cause problems. You must also clean off all thermal paste before your bake, then apply the two different types of paste that I recommend after your bake. Here's the link to my 2nd bake video:
ruclips.net/video/6BJGLFCigdA/видео.html
Brilliant video (series). Got any info on the need to bake a 2006 iMac 7300GT (and any differences in temperature/duration) for the Nvidia GPUs?
Unfortunately, I've not amassed info on iMacs prior to 2008. Few people discuss them in comparison to 2008-2011 models, for reasons unknown. Maybe because the 2006 and 2007 models have fewer video card related issues? So long as there are no aluminum electrolytic capacitors on your video card, assuming you indeed have graphics issues, you really have nothing to lose by following my Bake videos to see if baking it would do some good. Everything I say about thermal paste in my videos would apply to your card as well. No guarantees because I lack experience and knowledge about your card, but you can try it at the same temp and duration I recommend and see if it works. Just make sure it doesn't have electrolytic caps on board. I can't seen to find a photo of your card to confirm that point.
Thank you so much for documenting your findings and results. I’m going to bake once the paste comes in the mail, hopefully I can get another two or three years out of it!
Worst case scenario, it’s got plenty of space behind the screen to shove a MBP/mini motherboard or windows build for a hackintosh setup!
Thank you for your comment, Bryan. I’m afraid I won’t be much help if you ultimately decide to put a MacBook Pro inside your iMac’s enclosure, but I can say that the bake works well for most people who try it and many people get well over a year of use out of it. So it’s definitely worth your time. Please be sure to report back and let me know how it goes!
Thank you for your good work in helping other computer users, James! (I've been doing the same since 1983 when I first started using 8 bit Kaypro computers)
I will offer several ideas for improving the cooling of iMacs: When I noticed my late wife's iMac running hot, I encouraged her to keep the area immediately under the computer clear of small stacks of paper, which, I think, had limited upward air flow past the memory slots. When it became clear that more cooling was necessary, I put an upward directed fan on the floor behind the computer desk, running at low speed. This fan seemed to have reduced the ambient temperature behind the computer by allowing the aluminum case to contribute more to heat transfer out of the computer. I also got a high quality 3 or 4 inch fan of the type that is used in desktop computer towers and fashioned a draft tube out of cardboard the length of the iMac's exhaust slot below the top of the machine. I connected the fan to my own low power external power supply and affixed the assembly to the iMac case with Velcro strips. This updraft 4th fan really cooled down the iMac! I didn't know about fan-speed control programs like SMC Fan Control at the time. This hardware hack cost almost nothing and extended the life of the video card by 10 years. Thinking later that this hanging contraption was an inelegant kludge, I removed the external fan system that I had fashioned and, subsequently, my video card failed. I'm a psychotherapist not a computer engineer but humans and computers seem to thrive better when you encourage them to vent. Stephen
Stephen, please forgive me for not having seen your wonderful comment until day. I usually reply when I get email notifications of new comments, but for some reason your comment never generated a notification! It was only when I manually browsed comments today that I saw it. I appreciate your excellent advice. Thank you very much for posting it and for watching my RUclips channel content.
i have imac 2010, and i will bake my 4670, your information is very helpful to me, so thank you sir
Be sure to me know how your bake goes, Agus!
@@JDW- it's been 8 months, and i just did it successfully, 200 degrees celsius for 10 minutes, and my imac 2010 is working again, thanks to you sir
Oh ya, I'm also cleaning the inside, looks like it's never been opened. Pulling out and reinserting the mainboard was tricky, especially screwing the LCD back as I had to struggle with the magnets. Then I bought Kryonaut, now it's as cold as fridge, thanks again and God bless You Sir!
@@agus.leonardi Thank you for letting me know your success, Agus! But just to confirm, you did a bake 8 months ago, and then a second bake today? Or were you saying that you never did the bake 8 months ago and tried it for the first time today?
@@JDW- because I was busy with work, I just did it yesterday, and it was the first time baking after I watched this video 8 months ago
Thanks, a total success! Writing you from my working iMac
Congratulations, Andres! Thanks for sharing your success story!
Thank you for all the info, and all of the detail and effort you put into your videos. I hope you do a video on using the best flashed PC Card sometime. I have a 2011 27” iMac, and I am very interested in installing a much faster, cooler card, to be able to run Catalina. What are the best resources available, that you are aware of, for doing this?
Thank you for your kind words. I've read about people installing Nvidia cards in iMacs that they've pulled from Windows PCs, but you need a Windows machine to flash them for use on the Mac. Even then, you won't get a faster CPU, and when running a modern OS like Catalina, I think that really matters. In other words, just because you can run Catalina (by means of a patcher, and with a special video card), doesn't mean you should. I think the overall experience will be rather lackluster, to be honest. And I personally dislike Catalina anyway. I love my 32-bit apps. That's why I still run High Sierra on all my Macs at home and the office. High Sierra is officially supported on your iMac, so no patcher or special video card is required. The older OS's run more smoothly on older hardware too.
I was given a 2009 27" iMac. It was working great for a month then got the screen artifacts. I found your videos and bought K5 and Grizzly, I baked my card at 200 for 9 min.
It's running great so far, day one, aside from losing my Bluetooth.
Thanks for sharing your successful bake experience, Bill! Congrats! As to the loss of Bluetooth though, if it worked prior to the bake but not after reassembly, it means you must have disconnected the antenna wire from the Bluetooth card, located in the upper left corner, sometime during your disassembly or reassembly. But if that cable is indeed secured properly, then it would seem that perhaps your bluetooth card itself is in need of replacement. I hope this helps!
@@JDW- hi JDW, I'll check the bluetooth connection. I'm running 49°C on the GPU heat sink with a slightly faster fan speed.
@@ScheltemaBoutiqueGuitars 49°C is about what I get, depending on the app. Intense games will bring up into the 60's.
My IMAC 2008 started stalling when using Logic Pro, then it did no boot, and never passed the grey screen, only boots on safe mode. I will install an SSD Disk to see if that fixes the issue, in not, baking it is!
Very clear instructions.I preheated the oven at 200 for 12 mins. first. 8 minutes worked for the smaller 256Meg 4650M, and cured the green stripes, but, It just didn't work for the larger 1Gb 6790M with the pink stripes... Maybe it needs a few minutes MORE because of the larger surface?? Your opinion?
Be sure to shine a flashlight into the display on your 6970M iMac to see if you can observe anything. If nothing, then the video card is indeed the problem. But if you can see something with the flashlight, it means the backlight is your problem, not the video card. Now, if it is the video card, it could be that you didn't use an oven safe thermometer to confirm the temperature of your oven. Not only do you need to confirm the temperature, but you need to confirm the temperature is stable. The 6970M especially needs a consistent 200°C for at least 8 minutes. If the temperature drifts too much below that 200°C, then it could be the reason the bake didn't work. Never try to boost the temperature up much higher than 200°C though because you don't want a case where components become desoldered, as the components on the bottom would then fall off the board.
One last thing I can think of is that the bake many have worked fine, but during your assembly, you may have not full secured the widest ribbon cable, which will result in a black screen. So before you try another bake, please reconfirm all your connections.
I also have a question, can I also bake in a mini oven, mini pizza oven? Do I have to use bottom heat, top heat or both?
Toaster ovens are probably harder to regulate the heat. So long as the heat is all around, top/bottom doesn't matter. My oven has a fan to move air around, which I think helps. You would need to put an oven-safe thermometer in your oven of choice, then set the temperature and watch the thermometer over the course of 9 minutes. If the temperature is correct and stable, then you could use it. But if the temperature fluctuates higher than the specified temperature, you could find components falling off on the bottom side. You must make sure the temperature is correct and stable throughout the duration of the bake.
@@JDW- Great, thank you! Happy easter!
Happy Easter!
@@JDW- Thanks! I will see how it works in the mini toaster.
@@BlueSky-bx5tf Okay, but don't forget to put a turkey thermometer (or similar) inside your toaster oven (without the card in there) to first confirm (1) the temperature is correct and (2) that it is stable during a 9 minute span of time. If the temperature is fluctuates too high, components on the bottom side may fall off. If it fluctuates too low, then it could be the bake wouldn't have the desired effect. I repeat these precautions to you only because most people (including myself) have only used a regular oven. Because I lack experience with a toaster oven, using a thermometer to test it is the only safe course of action prior to your actual bake. Without a thermometer test first, I wouldn't advise doing it.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou! I did it and was in complete trepidation the whole way thru...but it works!The bake is real!
Thanks for making time to share your success story, Rob! It always warms my heart to hear these stories. Best wishes!
@@JDW- it was scary but so worth it
I’ve been trying to get the app for the fan speed but can’t seem to find it
Could you please share what its called? Thanks again!
@@treborkciddur I put links to 3 fan control apps in the text description beneath the video above. Simply click SHOW MORE to expand it.
Thanks for your videos and channels - I've got a 2009 iMac which I love and I replaced the GPU/heatsink about 18 months ago and then got the dreaded Black screen of death a few weeks later. Finally replaced the backlight inverter card which solved the BSOD but alas last night the machine locked up and I haven't been able to restore it. I'm using the Mojave DosDude patcher and I can get it to install but as soon as it boots back up, I'm getting a bright yellow screen which then fades to grey so definitely pointing to the GPU. I ordered the K5/Grizzley paste you recommended so will wait for those, but I've just got a couple of questions: I have the original Video card as well as the one that is in the machine so should I bake them both at the same time or separately? My second question is whether you're using the patcher solution as well or perhaps you have another approach for the clean load?
You do amazing work - thank you again. I'll let you know how the bakes go.....
I still run High Sierra on my iMac because I honestly don’t get much by moving to Mojave or even Catalina. About the only thing I would get is a bunch of nagging dialog boxes in Mojave complaining about the 32-bit apps I love, while Catalina kills them off entirely. I still have High Sierra running on my late 2015 iMac 5K at the office for that reason, and my high school age kids still run it on their 2017 MB Airs.
When testing, it might be helpful if you had a High Sierra external drive to boot from so you know any display issues are definitely not OS related, seeing High Sierra is the last supported OS on the 2009 iMacs. With that said, your description does indicate a bad GPU.
Yes, you can bake both graphics cards at the same time in your oven. Just make sure the temperature is correct and make absolutely sure you put a turkey thermometer or some other oven safe thermometer inside during the preheat time to verify the temperature is 200°C or 392°F and not much more than that. If the temperature is much more, you risk desoldering the components, which would be a major problem. Very few people have reported that, but some have, which is why I mention it. I fully realize that some ovens in the USA will only let you said 400°F, but that really is the upper limit of the temperature you should use.
Before you bake, be sure you follow my video and clean off all of the old thermal paste first. Watch my 2nd Bake video to see how to properly apply the new thermal paste after your card cools down after your bake.
Lastly, take great care when replacing all of the connectors before closing up your iMac because a fairly large number of people report their fans spinning at full blast and the reason that happens is because a connector wasn’t fully seated in its socket. You can fix that with a fan control app, but I feel it’s better to avoid the problem altogether by properly reconnecting all the connectors you disconnected.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Good luck!
@@JDW- SUCCESS - I followed your video to the letter and my 2009 Imac is fixed! I also go the ISTAT app and set my fans to 2000 rpms with the hope that I'll be able to tell what is happening. What do you suggest I set the alerts to in terms of the upper temperature limits. i'm just not sure what TOO HOT means, so any insight you have with that is appreciated. Thank You again. The hardest piece was the reattachment of the temperature sensor but the use of a set of hemostats works well.
The maximum temperature for the chips being monitored is 100°C, so setting your alerts to that temperature would be about right. With all 3 fans running at 2000 rpm, you will probably see temperatures in the range of 50 to 60°C most of the time. Only in rare cases when you’re running something really GPU intensive for a very long time should you see temperatures rise to the 70s. I have never seen sustained temperatures in the 80s or 90s.
Thank you for the nice advice on fan speed setting. I'm using the HD 4850 now, I will see how long mine last before replace it with WX4150.
There is a shop where I live offer the professional reballing service for 60$. It will last much longer if it is reballed properly. By reballing, I mean the shop will desolder the GPU chip, clean-off the old low-melt solder, apply new high-melt solder and solder it back to the card, with professional machine (chips rework station)
@@oantalaroan Actually, that is what the shop told you. But if you watch my videos on this topic, you will see that even a BRAND NEW CARD lasted only 3 years for me. The stock card that came with my iMac lasted exactly 3 years, then I had Apple installed a brand new replacement card which too lasted only 3 years. It was after that I did some research and discovered the Bake. I tried it, filmed that, found success, and shared the information here on RUclips.
Despite what some people say, the root problem is a defect inside the GPU chip, not the solder balls under the chip. In the process of recalling, you heat the chip sufficiently to solve the problem, at least for a while. How long that "heat fix" will last varies, but usually it is not beyond 3 years. This is why most people who try the bake find success, just like people who pay to have the chip reballed.
All said, the bake is the cheapest means of solving the problem. Reballing is fine, but it accomplishes the same thing as baking the card and will probably last as long. In other words, reballing is no more a permanent fix than baking the card because the defect is inside the GPU, not the solder balls. Even so, some folks just don't want to worry about it so they take the entire Mac to a shop, which does the entire job for them. So if that is your feeling, and if you don't mind paying the shop to do that job, then of course that can be a good solution for you.
I hope this information helps.
@@JDW- Thanks a lot for your dedicated answer. Didn't expect to receive response that fast. For me, I would just use my HD4850 for now until it dies. I have got a Quadro K1100m 2GB, and a WX4150, both flashed and run well in High Sierra, and tested as perform well under hacked Catalina and Big Sur, saving for the future.
I have watched all your videos on how to fix this problem, and have concluded that I don't want to go through all the time and trouble of doing this myself. If I were to take my iMac to a repair shop what would be the average cost to replace the video card?
I certainly appreciate your having taken the time to watch all my videos on this topic. Because I do not live in United States, I cannot accurately say what the cost would be. Most likely, the shops would do something called “reballing the GPU,“ which involves removing the GPU chip and then re-soldering it. That effectively heats the chip sufficiently to solve the problem inside the chip and ensures the solder points under the chip are good as well. That will not fix the problem forever but hopefully it will allow you to get another 2 to 3 years of life at least. I suspect that shops would probably charge anywhere between $60-$100 for that procedure. If they’re charging a lot more than $100, and if you’re not in a major city like San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York, then I feel that the price would be a bit on the high side. But again I don’t live in the USA band therefore don’t know how much inflationary pressure has been put on Mac repair shop pricing. I do hope this helps though.
@@JDW- Thank you for your input, I plan on taking the imac in for repair later this week and I will report back to their findings and cost to repair for anyone who might be in a similar situation. If I can get another few years out of this computer it would be well worth to fix for under 100 bucks.
@@JDW- I got my iMac repaired for $150 and he said he replaced the video card, whether it's a new, used, or black market part off Ebay or something is anyone's guess. I asked him about reballing the card and he said it would only be $90 but he said he couldn't guarantee if would last a week or a few months. He initially wanted $200 for the repair but when he knew I wasn't willing to pay that much his price went down. I could have shopped around but I just wanted it done, and $150 seemed worth the risk. Thanks again for all your great info, and hopefully this will help more folks out there when this happens to them. Cheers!
@@oldkid6 Many repair guys want to reduce their liability by saying a reball may not last a long time. My guess is that it would last a long time (perhaps up to 3 years?) because not only are you heating the GPU chip and temporarily fixing the problem internal to the chip, but you are also ensuring the solder balls under the chip are perfect too (if the repair guy does that job perfectly). But at some point the GPU chip will stop working again. That is my experience having replaced the 4850 card with a brand new 4850 card from Apple, only to have the same problem occur 3 years later. In other words, a reball of a 4850 (or similar) card would probably last as a long as a new card or a working used card. Because longevity is unknown, I recommend the bake for most people, since that is the cheapest solution most people can do themselves at home. But once the bake stops working, then one must consider a reball or card (or Mac) replacement. Anyway, I'm glad you got a replacement. Please feel free to post updates over time so we can know how long the replacement lasts.
Just a couple questions:
1º I baked my 4850 recently and seems to be working ok. I have installed two SSD: one with macos and the other with windows. when running macos i can control the 3 fans to keep temperatures (cpu and gpu) low. But in windows i dont see how can i do that, so ....i´m worried the temperatures could go too high and burn cpu or gpu. What do u think?
2º.- Is there any card compatible with my Imac that allows me to run catalina? Why did u buy Radeon 6970M? I mean what improvements do u get over the 4850?
Hi, Tomas.
Installing Catalina is possible using a patcher even with the stock video card, but the stock card doesn't offer Metal graphics acceleration which means Catalina isn't that usable unless you change the graphics card. Here's the patcher: dosdude1.com/catalina/
Here's info on Metal-compatible cards: bit.ly/333WqfS
I personally do not run Windows (via Boot Camp) on my Macs, but apparently SMC Fan Control will do the trick as per this: ask.metafilter.com/246258/iMac-Windows-7-and-fan-speeds
Mac Fan Control works both on Windows and on Mac OS.
Thanks for the video. Unfortunately I must have done something wrong, as I am only getting a pitchblack screen now with the fan on turbo. No sound, nothing. Any clue where the mistake might be?
Thanks for the question. I answer that in Q5 in the video: ruclips.net/video/hldcyJ_qUD4/видео.html
Thermal Pad Thickness for 6970m? 0,5mm for chips and 1mm for the mosfets etc.?
I honestly have no idea. And that is precisely why I decided to use K5 pro, which is a thermal pad replacement paste. Because it’s so difficult to measure accurately the thickness of an actual thermal pad you need, K5 Pro comes in very handy. You just put a bit on and any excess will squeeze out the sides. Works great.
@@JDW- Thanks i kwn this Thermal Putty, but i dont like this, because i like it clean to. i think i have to go again with this K5. But how u handle rest of the PCB? Also K5 on the Chips okay maybe its 0,5mm but he rest? its maybe 1-1,5mm i need a lot to get contact to the surface. Sorry for my bad engl
@@grape5465 You can see my application of K5 Pro at 10:48 in my 6970M repasting video here: ruclips.net/video/n2a8oEI2y6U/видео.htmlsi=SLJZfZMrTUUxFlHK&t=648
@@JDW- dude i have now add Thermal Putty on this GPU. because i damge with the pads :D so i baked this for like 8min 180° and well its work the temps are like on mid 30 drive.google.com/file/d/13PLiBEchjnly7kKDBg-LNdSrYlw06LGz/view?usp=sharing
My Panasonic Oven I just now set to 220C on pre-heat with an eBay Oven thermostat inside, that reads 180C... Wife swears the Pansonic is underreading when we cook food so we set 10C higher (not that it proves anything). How can I be confident I am not OVER or UNDER cooking my GPU when I do it... I dont want to cook assemble test and repeat many times cos its a pain in the backside to disassemble so many times. Would a real 220C kill the card???
The bake temperature should be 200°C or 392°F~400°F. If indeed your temperature is 220°C, that is too hot. The best thing to do is buy a turkey thermometer, or similar oven-safe thermometer. Put that in your oven during the pre-heat time to confirm the temperature is both CORRECT and STABLE. Only then should you put your card inside. If there is temperature fluctuation, it's better it fluctuates down rather than up. You don't want a situation where components on the bottom of your card get desoldered and drop off. If the temperature is a fairly solid 200°C/400°F, there is no fear components will drop off the bottom of the card.
This video is awesome ! I like the black background !
Thank you for your "iMac baking" youtube video series, I found it very thorough and helpful! Have you tried removing the optical drive to see if it helps cooling because it is located right below the heat grill for the GPU? I did some search, some people say removing it will help the air flow because it creates more empty room, but other people say the optical drive is needed there to channel the air from the fan belows it. I just wonder if you have any thoughts on it or did any experiments to compare. I don't use my optical drive at all so I have no problem removing it. Thanks.
I have not tried removing the optical drive because I still use mine. I’m also skeptical if it really would make the graphics cards’ heat sink read that much cooler because the ambient temperature inside the iMac is still quite warm even without that drive installed. I don’t think it will hurt anything if you want to remove yours though.
You are the best. Worded great
glad to know your 6970M is working fine... I'm really considering upgrading mine (which still works - 4850 on iMac 27" i5 late 2009) but I feel like the upgrade would be a nice touch... it's 2021, any updates? Ü thanks a bunch!
My only update is to say the 6970M still works fine. But the key to getting it to work right in the late 2009 iMac is (1) repasted the card using the two types of paste I recommend (you need a thermal pad replacement paste for the memory chips but a good CPU/GPU paste for the GPU chip), and (2) set all 3 iMac fans to a higher speed like 2000rpm in order to keep the card running cool.
Great videos! Thanks for sharing. I now have a completely disasembled iMac on my desk ;oD.
One question though: I live in Argentina so the available products are limited. I can get Arctic MX 4 and Kryonaut, but if I understood correctly those are both for the processor and not the memory chips. Could I use Arctic thermal pads for those? I can get those in variable thicknesses from 0.5 to 2 mm.
Also, why two different thermal pastes? I've never ever done anything remotely like this, so I have no knowledge about what their differences are. Thanks!!!
I recommend two types of pastes because one of those is a thermal pad replacement paste. I choose K5 Pro for that because it's easier to use than thermal pads. To use thermal pads, you have to measure the gap thickness between the memory chips and the heatsink. I found it next to impossible to do that accurately. Another problem is that on my card anyway, the card was ever so slightly warped and so the gap between some chips wasn't exactly the same as others. With K5 Pro, a varying gap distance is not an issue at all, but with thermal pads it might be. If there was no gap, you could use normal thermal paste on the memory chips. It's only because of that silly gap that we are forced to use something else. Regular thermal paste will not remain thick enough over time. It is intended only for "no gap" applications. The company who makes K5 Pro is located in Greece, so perhaps they would sell and ship it to your country. If not, then your only option is to try thermal pads, but again, I'm not exactly sure about the thickness required. www.computer-systems.gr/en/content/product/k5-pro-60g-3x20g
@@JDW- thanks for the link! Will ask them about shipping to Argentina. Great videos BTW!
@@cwacholder I suspect they will ship to you, although I'm not sure how much shipping charges will be. Please let me know how it goes! Best wishes.
Anyidea if its possible to turn off the GPU to get the imac to boot so I can use the slow mac as a monitor for another mac?
A working video card is unfortunately needed.
Hi I've just come across your channel thanks for the great tutorial I have just completed the bake and since I have reassembled when I power on the imac I get a black screen no chime bit all fans are running and hard drive is working I can hear starting up I have noticed I only have 1 led lite on the main board I have rechecked my connections do you have any ideas thanks in advance Gary
Hi Gary, thank you for your question. It's important to consider which of the LEDs is lit versus those which aren't. Here are two sources of information about the LEDs on your model iMac:
www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/126233/Where+are+the+diagnostic+led's+on+this+model's+logic+board
discussions.apple.com/thread/7031064
Please let me know if this helps.
@@JDW- hi thanks for your reply I have just 1 led lite to the left just trickle voltage supply but I get running fans and hard drive thanks Gary
@@garychadbond1182 This is the complete guide which describes the LEDs: drive.google.com/file/d/1Bs7Th2tfCaXTPC1LXzHFvwRQIgy3_CaQ/view?usp=sharing
Page 26 describes the Startup Sequence. As mentioned there, because you aren't getting the 2nd LED after pushing the power button (regardless of fans spinning), you either have a cable connection problem or the power supply needs to be replaced. The video card being bad is the most common cause of a black screen, but a power supply that is unable to supply full power is also a reason. There is obviously enough power to run the fans and drive, but not the entire computer. If after checking all your cables you cannot get the machine to power on, then the power supply needs to be replaced. I know that is not what you are wanting to hear, but since you have already baked your video card, you can be more assured that you iMac will run after you replace the power supply. Please let me know if this helps.
@@JDW- thanks again for your reply this points me in the right direction I will do some more investigations 😀
@@JDW- Thanks again for your Help. it turned out my GPU had been baked many times and was shorting out the motherboard.fitted a Nvidia card and allis good
I replaced the video card from my late 2009 27" iMac with an AMD Radeon HD 6970. The Mac was out of commission for quite a good couple of years until I got round to it. I also took the time to replace the 2Tb hard drive with a 4Tb model, and replaced the DVD superdrive with a compatible Blu-Ray burner.
But - since putting it all back together; when I switch on the Mac, it will restart several times. Sometimes before the boot process has begun. Sometimes more randomly. It usually stabilises after about 20 minutes, and I can get on with things - though it did restart after coming out of sleep mode the other day. I normally switch off the Mac at night.
Running the iMac in safe mode, and it hasn't restarted once, and I hadn't changed anything in the configuration of my software, so I have to assume it's graphics cards related - even though it passes all the hardware tests. Is there anything I can do to stop the restarting, or do I have to dig out my old graphics card, apply new thermal paste put it back in?
Thank you for your comment. It seems you did all those upgrades at once, rather than one at a time. While that saves time, it also opens the door to a more complicated troubleshooting scenario when problems like yours arise. Running in Safe Mode alone doesn't necessarily determine your video card is the fault here. The most bullet proof way to test the video card is to eliminate the new HDD and DVD from the picture. If you disconnect both of those and then boot from a known good external and still have the rebooting problem, you can safely say it is indeed the video card. In my case with a 6970M though, I didn't have that problem, so it cannot be said the 6970M is incompatible with a late 2009 27" iMac. But it could be that your 6970M has issues, either stemming from a bad GPU or non-stock firmware on the video card itself.
If you are able to disconnect the HDD and DVD and boot just fine from an external HDD, then you must troubleshoot the HDD and DVD. My guess is the trouble would probably be on the HDD rather than the DVD. But perhaps there is some conflict between the DVD and HDD. The point here is that you will need to troubleshoot each component you modified in your system to determine which one is at fault. It's bothersome, I know, but necessary.
At ~6:40 and running fans at full speed, there is a caveat to cranking up fans - dust. Even if you live in a fairly clean home without much dust, you will find that more dust accumulates the higher the fan(s) RPM is set. There is a balance I suppose but I believe Apple's default are a balancing act in that they try to reduce fan noise, moderate airflow accompanied by thermal disputation by taking advantage of the aluminum design (considering the Mac is not in direct contact with sunlight) and finally I would guess there is some energy savings with lower fan RPM. Generally though, I do agree with ramping up fan RPM beyond Apple's default through software.
There is yet another option that Larry Pina presents in one of his books -- an external fan (floor fan) blowing at the hot Mac in question! :-) Even better would be more religious use of A/C. Use both A/C and the floor fan for even more cooling! Or we could just throw in the towel and get a fanless M1 Mac and call it a day!
_ 18:34 and the black screen - just a point or two. Reset SMC and reset PRAM or both to see if either or both contribute to resolving the black screen issue, these are both quick steps and much faster than checking the ribbon cable.
Very true. However, in almost every case of a black screen that follows a bake and reassembly, the culprit is in fact the wide ribbon cable. But I agree, it takes a little effort to try your excellent suggestion first. It’s just that the probability of it being the cable is significantly higher than a problem caused by the machine needing an SMC reset. I know this not simply from my own personal experience, but from reading and replying to every single comment under all of my bake videos and knowing how people are resolving the black screen issue. That wide ribbon cable is a real troublemaker!
I may have a few more comments but I knew that this would be one of the videos to watch because a few hors ago my 2011 27" iMac displayed a solid blue screen in the middle of work and then rebooted spontaneously. While restarting it displayed five evenly spaced green vertical lines over a grey background, all of the lines were between 3-5cm or so. The iMac is now in a reboot loop it seems. In an effort to resolve the issue all external devices have been disconnected and a clean install with no time machine back up restored. The issue persists. The moment I saw the blue screen I immediately suspected a hardware issue. Right now the iMac is simply switched off but I have to say …
James thank you for this in depth FAQ, it really set my confidence high, particularly at 30:18 - just try the bake …
Thank you James!!
Thank you, Alex. If the problems you have are consistent and never go away, you have the same problem I did originally. At that stage, you really have nothing to lose to try the bake, other than a Saturday of your time and a few bucks spent on thermal paste. I look forward to hearing how your bake goes!
@@JDW- I have to do it, I have to order the paste and I actually may go for thermal pads for the VRAM. Another video noted a 2mm pad.
@@JDW- One more quick comment, unrelated to your reply (oddly I am unable to comment today for some reason so I will use a reply) … under the assumption that heat is causing the requirement to bake, it would seem reasonable to me to replace rotational drives with an SSD whenever possible. Also, if the internals ambient temperature is too high it can affect mechanical drives as well. So folks should be advised to install an SSD while the machine is open to encourage cooler operation. This might allow for a slight reduction in fan speed as well yielding quieter operation. -Best, Alex
@@santospoland Another reason I went with K5 Pro (a thermal pad replacement paste) rather than thermal pads is that if there is any kind of warping at all on the video card circuit board, the actual distance between the tops of the memory chips and the bottom of the heatsink would not be a 100% perfectly consist 2mm. K5 Pro allows you to put gobs atop each memory chip. That gob could be 2mm, 3mm or even 4mm tall and when you press down the heatsink it will just spread out horizontally and fill whatever gap there is between the memory chips and the heatsink. With fixed height thermal pads, you must hope and pray the gap width is consistent. If it isn't, some pads may not make contact at all or make only partial contact. So in my opinion, K5 Pro is the best approach, even though some may deem it more unsightly at first than a thermal pad. But I assure you that when you press that heatsink down on it, it will become out of sight, out of mind, and do its job just as well as any fixed height thermal pad can do.
Regarding an SSD, I agree. I put lots of links and info about that in the text description.
@@JDW- Good observation, I will skip the pads and go with K5 Pro for the VRAM chips and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for the GPU. Thank you for pointing out this important point and for your support James.
I saved this video, worth gold! I would add that to prevent damaging connectors as I have!, lay your imacs down and place a wedge to keep the LCD panel raised enough so you can use both hands to effectively get the video cables in parallel to the connector :D it takes no force just even parallel movement. Wow I grew up in Cali! I know what you mean about heat! love California its my real home! someday! thank you for this video!
Thank you for adding that tip, Cam! It's hard indeed to get that wider ribbon cable properly back in its mating connector on the motherboard with only one hand while your other hand holds the display, all the while staring down into dark shadows that make it impossible to see what you are doing. Getting that particular cable in place is one of the more frustrating parts of the reassembly process. Following your advice should make it easier. Thanks!
@@JDW- You're very welcome! Best!
Worked for late 2009 21.5" iMac! I've had the iMac sitting in my basement rec room ever since the video went on the fritz three or four years ago. I had looked into replacing the card at that time, but too expensive even if you could find the card. I recently happened on your videos about baking the card, and decided I might as well give it a try - either that or take it for recycling, which seemed like a shame as it's a great machine except for this one issue. (No, not as nice as a 27", but still a nice machine.) Your video, like all the other similar ones for this particular problem, all seem to deal with the 27" model though (I didn't find any specifically for the 21.5" model). So the innards of this one are a bit different (not a lot) and it's more compact, but doable. The card isn't quite the same, but not wildly different either. I watched a few other videos about taking apart a 21.5" for other issues (hard drive, etc.) to get familiar with the interior, and then went to it and extracted the video card. When I did the bake, the cookie sheet that the card and its aluminum pyramids were on warped a bit from the heat so the card was baked a bit off-level. In this case, that doesn't seem to have hurt it. After re-assembling it all, it booted right up and no more video problems! I also installed a fan utility to keep the chips cool, as you recommended. I'm now updating the OS to High Sierra, and look forward to getting more use out of this iMac. Many, many thanks to you!
That's wonderful to hear, Phil! Thank you for making time to share your detailed experience. There have been a number of other people who have reported success with the 21.5" iMacs, so it's nice to see your case is no different. Baking the card at an angle isn't a problem as you discovered. The bake won't last forever, but it can last a long time. My 2nd bake lasted 2 years and 9 months. Please feel free to report back over time on how your iMac is doing. Best wishes!
What is your opinion about the GTX 765M ? I have a mid 2010 iMac. My graphic card was recently baked but I'm afraid someday it will stop working. Therefore i was thinking about buying the 765M cos they say you can install catalina on it (metal support). Do you have an opinion about this?
Tomas, that is Q8 (27:54) in my video above. I spoke about the K2100M but my words apply to the 765M as well.
Hello question if i do this and it works will all my files be still intact or by doing this will I lose all my files that I have in the computer? thanks!
If your files were intact before, they will be intact after, because the root problem we are fixing is the graphics card, not the drive/storage.
I have an 2009 imac with screen problem: the screen goes black within a few seconds after power on. Sometime the screen stays until the login window appears, sometime during the boot progress bar, sometime just right a few seconds. I can still connect to the imac from a laptop. When I plug an external monitor to the imac, the login window appears on the external display as usually. Is there a way to find out what is broken: the logicboard, the graphic card, or the board on the display? Just to check before I give the bake method a try.
Hi, Tony. When the screen goes black, if you shine a flashlight into the display, can you see anything? If a flashlight reveals no content at all, then without any doubt whatsoever, it's your graphics card, which means you need to either proceed with the bake in accordance with my videos, or replace the card. I recommend the bake over replacement as it is the lowest cost method that doesn't hurt to try. Sure, it costs you some hours of your time on a weekend, but it works for the vast majority of people who try it. It won't last forever, but even a brand new card of the same type doesn't last forever in my experience.
@@JDW- Hi, thank you for your kind reply. I checked with a flashlight as instructed above and didn't see anything. So it's likely the graphic card waiting for a bake. However I am puzzled, since the external display seems to work just fine. Can a faulty graphic card drive an external screen?
@@tonyhahn1955 Yes. Just like when you boot into Safe Mode and the internal display sometimes seems fixed. Symptoms of the bad video card problem vary from machine to machine. Also, your flashlight test proved its not the backlight, and if one contends it is the logic board, then one would expect it to happen with the external display too. The logic boards rarely fail relative to the video card, so the evidence I see points to it being the video card.
Hi, i'm'going to prepare my gpu for baking...one question, i removed all the parts that could burn in to the hoven. Such as two frame made of, i suppose, one of rubber and the other of hard paper. After baking, is it necessary to past them yet on the gpu?thank you!
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. On my 4850 card there was a black foam piece surrounding the GPU chip, which of course I removed before the bake. Normally, you would put it back after the bake. However, that foam piece is not required for proper operation. Most likely it just acts as a filter so dust doesn't collect around the GPU chip. The video card will work normally without it. As to your "rubber" and "hard paper" pieces, I would love to see a photo showing exactly what you mean. If you are referring to anything on the heatsink though, then of course you would not bake that because you need to completely remove the heatsink, then clean off all the old thermal paste on both the heatsink and the graphics card, and then you would bake ONLY the graphics card.
@@JDW- thank you. You extactly understood my ruogh question. Sorry for my bad explanatiom.
I 'm going ti bake only the graphic card of course.
@@JDW- Hi! i baked my gpu, now it works!!! thank you for the support! my best regards. Emmanuel
@@nuelberry Thanks for letting me know, Nuel! Best wishes!
Hi JDW, I hope your doing well. I baked my 4850 512mb a few months ago and have received a black screen problem. When I have the computer on anything above 4-5 brightness the display will shut off. While the display turns off the computer will still run. Sometimes my computer will last 30 seconds between blackouts and sometimes 3 weeks. I can reset the display by using hot corners and turn of display. While I can still do this I would like to use higher brightness and was wondering if you could help me out.
I read and reply to most all of the comments under all my graphics card bake videos, and I must admit your case is quite different than anything I heard before. It almost sounds like you have a backlight going out, rather than the video card. The graphics card problem has a variety of symptoms, but normally if the screen goes dark, the computer freezes and cannot be used. If you can shine a flashlight into your screen and see the screen when the screen goes dark, then it is definitely a backlight problem. The fact that brightness settings trigger your problem gives even more evidence of a backlight inverter issue. The inverter is the card found in the upper left corner of your 27" 2009 iMac. Here's a link to a replacement part on Amazon USA (affiliate link): amzn.to/3jPipy8 Now I am not giving you a 100% guarantee it is the inverter, but your description of the problem leads me to believe that very well could be the root cause of your trouble.
@@JDW- I will get on that thank you for the suggestion. I also have a problem on youtube with stutters. If its anything 60fps the video stutters. 720 60fps stutters but not 720p 30fps.
@@reececlegg9374 I would recommend rebooting and testing that again in Safari, Firefox and Chrome to see if it is a consistent stuttering across all browsers. If it is, check what Login items you have (what programs auto load at boot time). Sometimes programs running in the background can drag down CPU and GPU performance such that stuttering occurs. But that wouldn't have anything to do with a bad backlight inverter though.
I had the same random shut downs with my 5750 in my 2009 IMac when it got too hot. After taking the machine apart again and looking at the card and heatsink I noticed that the thick paste on the VRAM chips was keeping the GPU Die from making proper contact with the heatsink. After using a more thin spread of paste on the VRAM modules the random shut downs stopped happening. Not sure if this is the same case with your 6970M but it sure helped me. GPU is runner a lot cooler now. Although the 6970M is much hotter card than the 5750 in the first place of course. I don't know if you did this already but removing the Superdrive also helps get more airflow to the GPU since this partly blocks airflow to the GPU in the first place. Fan of your detailed content!
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I did repaste and found it increased the temperature at which the card triggers a sudden power-off condition. I increased internal fan speed and try to keep the ambient room temperature cool to avoid shutdowns.
Thank you for your very impressive and helpful RUclips Channel! Maybe you could help me for one strange fact, after I followed everything and put everything together and the bake worked perfect! There are on the left and bottom edge of the display a gray line and on the right site a blue thin line. That’s very strange. Do you think a VRAM reset could help? Or is it the display cable? Cheers!
Are you saying those lines never go away? I've honestly never heard of that before. If possible, could you take a photo and upload it to Flickr, DropBox, Google Photos, etc. so I can take a look? (I don't mind if you post links in comments.)
@@JDW- Thanks! Sure, here you go! www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/04QTnFs_HNoonlBGwFQmy9Mqg#iMac_2011_Display_Issue_
I didn’t had time to check everything yet but I will do it this night.. (german timezone) ;-)
@@TheHollabyWaldfee Thank you for taking those 4 photos. I must admit I've never seen anything like that, nor has anyone commenting under my videos ever mentioned anything like that. It looks like a white line showing at the very edges of the display. Even stranger is your photo of the bottom left corner. The white line looks curved, not a 90° angle like I would expect. You didn't drop the LCD or strongly bump it when you removed it or put it back on, did you? I am guessing you did not. In that case, my only recommendation is one you are not going to like. You need to reopen the iMac and check that all the cables are firmly seating into their mating connectors. Make sure none of the cables or connectors are broken. The little ribbon cable in the upper left corner is very easy to break, and some people have reported the head of that connector falls to pieces when they remove it. But the hardest connector to seat into place is the wide ribbon cable in the middle of the computer. It's short too, which makes it difficult to seat properly in its matching connector on the motherboard. My guess is that it could be that connection. Normally you get a black screen if that wide ribbon cable is partly disconnected, but perhaps yours is 99% connected with only a single wire not making contact. It is rather odd that a bad connection would cause a white line around the screen through. Again, I have never seen that before. I'm sorry there is not an easier solution, but resetting the machine is highly unlikely to cure this kind of problem. You really do need to check all your cable connections inside. Be very careful when you do that so you don't accidentally break any cables when you remove the display again. Please let me know if that helps solve the problem.
@@JDW- Hi James! Thank you for helping me out. Unfortunately it still not working. I just followed your steps.. but still keeping this strange edges on screen. I found out something really strange too. I put the sleeping mode on and wake up. After the screen is back, the bug in the left bottom corner disappears but still keep on the left vertical side. Do you think it could be the bake? Maybe I did not right? Or just a cable could be broke? - I did another try with a second iMac screen I got and switched the display it comes to life but still keeps the issue. Just a second question for you I hope you could help me! The second iMac I got has the problem, the screen still stays black! Do you understand this problem? Because I did the bake too and it didn’t work for this one - still black screen. If I changed the display from the black screen iMac to the first with the “crazy edges” the display works. But I found out, that the display disappears after a few minutes on that iMac -> first iMac also black. So I switched back and the first iMac works fine except the Stranges edges ;-) So my question is, what do you think about the black screen iMac? Maybe the bake was not correct or is it again the cable? Still hope you could help me! Thank you very much for your time! I hope my massage is not to confuse! Cheers and kindly regards!
@@TheHollabyWaldfee You provided me with a lot of information. I need to first make sure I understand exactly what you told me...
1. You have 2 iMacs.
2. You baked the video cards of both iMacs. (I will assume you repasted correctly.)
3. One iMac has the "strange white line around the display" problem. (Let's name this: "White Line iMac.")
4. The other iMac constantly has a black screen. (Let's name this: "Black LCD iMac.")
5. After sleeping and then waking your White Line iMac, the white line in the bottom left corner is not present, but the white line on the left side of the display is present.
6. You mention something about "switching the display" but I don't really understand that. Did you remove the LCD from the Black LCD iMac and put that in the White Line iMac and have the same white line problem? If not, could you please explain what you "switched"? If you switched the LCD, are you saying the white lines remained the same on the White Line iMac?
I am very confused about point 6 above, but everything else I think I understood. What I can say for now is this...
A. I've never seen anything like your White Line iMac EVER. That is so odd. I honestly have no idea what is wrong with that. Maybe after you explain 6 above I can offer more advice.
B. As to your Black LCD iMac, you must shine a flashlight into the display after powering on the iMac. If you hear a boot chime and if you see something on the display while shining a flashlight at it, then it means that iMac has a backlight problem. It could be the backlight inverter board is bad. But it also could be bad solder joints on a connector attached to the back of the LCD unit, which is very bothersome to fix. I personally have never fixed that, but I have seen a video on it. Many people opt to just swap the LCD rather than try to fix bad solder joints. It's not an issue of people not knowing how to solder. It's a problem of not being able to easily access the points you need to resolder. But I don't know if your iMac has that problem. If you shine a flashlight but see no display content, it means a cable problem. Most likely it is the wide ribbon cable in middle of the machine.
Hi, my imac, imac11,3, 27'' mid 2010 i7, has gone probably fort gpu fault. I dont' find the ati 5750 1gb, the question is: can i put the 6970m? does the graphic card frame matches with the 6970 gpu card? thank you
The 6970M works in my late 2009 27" iMac, so it will work in your 2010 model. I don't have a 2010, so I cannot say if you need to cut plastic exactly as shown in my video. It should be about the same. Just make sure you have the triple-heatpipe heatsink. Never use a 4850 card heatsink. Here's my video on that: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html
@@JDW- THANK YOU!
@@JDW- "triple-heatpipe heatsink"
mhhh, i think there is a double heatpipe. Is a problem?
@@nuelberry You can see both types, side-by-side, here: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html
Even with the triple-heatpipe version, the 6970M gets quite hot. As such, it cannot be sufficiently cooled using the dual-heatpipe heatsink. If a seller of the 6970M includes the dual-pipe version, they are deceiving you because the dual-pipe version came with the 4850. The triple-pipe version came with the 6970M (in the 2011 iMac).
Hello James, James Day using wife's laptop to connect to you. Well, my 2011/6970 card bake lasting about 10.5 months and over a week of use with white bars/lines finally locked up with that look on screen flickering with entire screen white. This was a second fix which is likely about average last of the card. Now my question is do I rebake again or try to find a new 6970 card which seems very risky as there are no new cards unless perhaps if I bought one from Apple. Price prohibitive. Or just buy a new iMac, or a later model one off eBay. Any suggestions? Thanks, your feedback is always helpful. I lost your email, etc.
Hi James. It’s good to hear from you. I’m sorry to hear your last bake only worked for just over 10 months. In the case of my iMac, I got two successful bakes, but the two bakes after that only lasted a week each, so I gave up and replaced the video card.
Doing another bake is a lot of trouble, to be sure, but it might actually work and give you a few more months of life out of your existing iMac.
By the way, you can find my email address by clicking on my JDW name and then on my channel page click the About tab and scroll down and you’ll find access to it.
I’ve read about a lot about people buying an MXM card for PCs, and then flashing it for the iMac, but that’s a lot of trouble and requires a Windows PC, so I never wanted to do that myself, and that’s why I don’t make it a strong recommendation for others either.
A used 6970M video card - even one that’s a flashed PC version card by a Hong Kong seller- is still the cheapest overall solution.
The cheapest solution isn’t necessarily the best solution, but you pay more for the best solution, which is of course to buy a new iMac. And as much as I love my late 2015 27 inch iMac at the office, which doesn’t have any kind of video card problem, it is now exhibiting a ring of pink around the outer edge of the entire screen, which is extremely disappointing. So definitely don’t buy a used 2015 model.
Buying one of the newest iMacs with the M1 chip is very forward-thinking, but I personally prefer larger display size, and I really dislike the white bezel around the screen on the 24 inch model. If Apple comes out with a black bezel version of their larger iMac using Apple silicon, that very well may be the most prudent choice if you decide to replace your entire iMac.
I hope this helps. Feel free to email me anytime.
We would be grateful for your opinion on baking my wife's late 2009 27" iMac video card and if you think it islikely to extend its life, before we embark on the exercise. That is, do our symptoms imply this is an appropriate 'cure' (albeit temporary).
While we are thankful that the machine has run so long, pretty well faultlessly, we aren't that keen on the cost of a new equivalent, so if we can keep it going another year or two that would be good. Recently we had noted that the iMac was getting pretty hot along the top, then a week or so ago it froze with pixelation on the screen. On restarting it we got no further than the apple logo and pixelation.
Viewing your first bake video was daunting, not least in the degree of labelling and extent to which the machine needed disassembling. But we thought we would at least take a look inside. It was pretty dusty, and after a clean we wondered whether, with the addition of SMC fan control, we could keep it cooler and not need to do the bake - prehaps not quite yet being in the position of 'having nothing to lose'. I should add that my wife uses the machine for correspondence and spreadheets, and other than perhaps looking at images of fabrics, doesn't tend to do anything graphics intensive (and no-one else uses the Mac). It has been used at least a couple of hours a day over the last decade.
After reassembly we installed the fan control, not without issues arising from not running it from the applications folder, and though it ran somewhat noisily, it did not read over 40C. But on looking at fabrics it immediately pixelated and froze, and on restart wouldn't go past the logo screen. We had understood that the issues were in large part down to over-heating, but we are having problems at quite low temperatures.
We left it a day, and my wife has been using it today for a couple of hours without any issue, and it has stayed cool. So, do we carry on fingers crossed we shall have minimal problems, or is a bake realy desirable - hence we should order the K5 etc.
I watched the FAQs hoping that there might be more about quite what a bake could fix, and when to do it.
Finally, though an early Apple afficionado - from ][ through ///, Lisa and transportables to IIcx, work meant I had to become a Windows user - I can no longer say I'm familiar with even basic aspects of the Mac iOS.
Thanks for all your valuable advice. My wife loves the way you chat so personably and explain everything in such detail. Wow what a commitment/interest you have.
Thank you for your kind words, Martin, and for providing extension details about your iMac. Based on what you said, I can say without any doubt that you have a graphics card problem. Your machine is technically not "overheating" because this era of iMac all run very hot to the touch. The root problem is a design flaw in the GPU chip of graphics cards used in 2008 through 2011 iMacs. You were blessed in having gotten so many years of trouble-free use from that iMac, but now the problem has surfaced, and the old solution is to either bake the card or replace the card. The easiest and cheapest approach is the bake.
If you don't care about replacing the PRAM battery on the back side of the motherboard, you can follow my 2nd bake video and not have to worry about removing the motherboard.
I strongly recommend K5 Pro for the memory chips on the graphics card, and either K4 Pro or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on the GPU chip only. That is to be done only after having cleaned off all the stock thermal paste and after your bake.
When you preheat your oven, put a turkey thermometer inside and make absolutely sure your oven temperature is a solid 200°C or roughly 400°F. Anything too much hotter than that and components can start to fall off the video card, which is not what you want to happen. Put the card on tin foil stand-offs as shown in my video. I used a convection oven with a blower fan, but a regular oven will work fine too. Do not use a toaster oven though.
After everything is reassembled, you can use a fan control app to keep all 3 internal fans running at as high an rpm as your ears will allow. You can start off with 1800rpm, and then try 2000rpm if it's not too bothersome.
The bake is not a permanent fix, but it does often last long enough to make the bake and repasting job worthwhile. Please be sure to let me know how it goes after your bake, repaste and testing is complete!
@@JDW- Many thanks for your confirmation, we shall assemble the materials we need.
Having watched your first bake video, where you mentioned Arctic Silver, we had purchased some Arctic MX-4. Is this an acceptable alternative to the K4-Pro/Kryonaut for the GPU? (It is non-capacitive). Arctic offer thermal pads for the memory chips - is your argument against these because of the difficulty in knowing what thickness you will need?
@@martiningham1064 MX-4 is fine for the GPU. If you can accurately measure the gap, you of course can use Arctic thermal pads. In the case of my 4850 though, the heatsink did not lie perfectly flat. It was almost flat but not 100%. As such, the gaps between some memory chips was very slightly different than other chips. But since I used K5 Pro, it didn't matter because there is no defined thickness with K5 Pro. To use thermal pads, you need to make sure you (1) know the gap height, and (2) make sure the gap is consistent across all the memory chips. I hope this helps!
@@JDW- We have now carried out the bake, got it all back together and initial impressions (yesterday) were good, thanks to the videos and your other advice.
Today we moved the iMac back into our study and started it - it works okay - but the fan(s) seem to be running at max speed and are noisy. The fans come on instantly when the power is started. SMC fan control reports 0C and 0rpm. All we can think it that one of the cables wasn't seated correctly, and may have come loose when we moved it. Any suggestions as to which to look for when we reopen the machine, as we now must?
Must admit that when reassembling we found it very difficult, as you indicate, to refit the cable from the GPU stat on the underside of the motherboard - we undid the motherboard screws as the video showed to give a little extra space. Is this cable the most likely culprit, or might we have dislodged something else? When in the video you say that the two pins must face up is this towards the top of the screen, and is the push then towards the motherboard from underneath?
Also wondering if there is anything we should look at (software-wise) before opening the iMac up?
@@martiningham1064 There have been a few other people who have reported the fans running at full speed. The reason, in every case, is a cable that wasn't full seated into its matching connector. There are only two solutions for that: (1) open the iMac again and check all your connections (the best solution), (2) use a fan control app to set all the fans to a speed that your ears can handle (a satisfactory solution that is also the easiest solution). Now, as to that little connector on the back side of the motherboard, I show how to fit that into its connector here: ruclips.net/video/9dPsH1zIQMs/видео.html
Hello There! I have a iMac 21.5'' Mid 2011 and I baked my 6770 graphics card. Afterwards my iMac no longer boots up. The chime launch sound is gone. However all fans power on full blast none stop. I removed the LCD screen and only see one green light on my logic board with my power cord plugged in. The other three lights are off. What does it mean? I checked all the cables and made certain I connected everything back correctly. I've gotten so attached to this iMac. It's like I lost my best friend. Not sure what else to do.
Here are two sources of information about the LEDs on your model iMac:
www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/126233/Where+are+the+diagnostic+led's+on+this+model's+logic+board
discussions.apple.com/thread/7031064
Please let me know if this helps.
@@JDW- This is very helpful. I appreciate you.
Try to boot your iMac with the graphic card removed (LCD removed, too). If it chimed in, The issue lie on your graphic card. It may dead, or some components touched the heatsink, causing short and system panic.
Hello there. congratulations for your great videos! I have a 27" late 2009 imac with a dead 4850 GPU that keeps the mac rebooting. It was warranty reviewed by the repair workshop several times but they finally gave up ( I suspect now they were just baking the card over an over again). Now the computer has been broken ever since...
I was very excited when I saw your first video and like you got the wings fallen from my heart on the second one. But now I am really considering your recomendation. The most demanding tasks I did on the iMac was photorealistic rendering.
I have a couple of questions for you...
I know it sounds a crazy thing but...What do you thing about water cooling system for the chips? just for the sake of it
Looking on ebay for the the 6970M that you used I found the Nvidia GTX 675MX video card with 4GB RAM + Metal... that I quote "replacesRadeon 6970M. What you think about this?
Thank you in advance and again congratulations!
Thank you for your kind words, Humberto. If you paid someone to repair your 4850 in the past, you should have the right to ask if they either baked it or "reballed" the GPU. Reballing is what most repair shops do. They desolder the GPU chip and then resolder it. I personally think the root problem is not the solder balls but instead something inside the GPU chip itself. But when you desolder the chip, you heat it just like the bake, so repair shops think it is the solder balls. It probably isn't. And in my experience, I could only bake my card twice. The 3rd and 4th bakes failed, lasting only 1 week. That's why I switched my video card.
I didn't choose an Nvidia card because I do not have a Windows or Linux computer that is required to flash the card. You would need to do that, or have the card's seller do that.
Keep in mind that the Nvidia cards may be able to run Catalina, but your CPU is still old and slow. And those Nvidia cards are kind of slow too compared to modern GPU cards. As such, you may find that your overall experience using Catalina is slower than you like.
I personally still use MacOS High Sierra on all my Macs, even my 2015 Macs which can run Catalina without problem. High Sierra runs faster, and it is much more stable too. I only run Catalina on an external SSD attached to my mid-2015 15" MBP to run the newest version of FCPX so I can edit my RUclips videos. The newest version of FCPX runs much faster than the version that runs under High Sierra. But I also find Catalina less stable overall than High Sierra. I upgraded my son's 2017 MacBook Air from High Sierra to Catalina and he hated it because it killed off all his 32-bit games. I restored his drive from a backup and then installed Mojave, and he seems content with that. I also upgraded my daughter's MacBook Air to Catalina, and although she still uses it, she says apps crash much more. I am telling you all this so that you know Catalina on an old Mac won't necessarily be the best choice for you, even if an Nvidia card supports it.
Regarding my 6970M card, I didn't have to use a Windows machine to flash it. It doesn't support Metal or Catalina, but that doesn't bother me because I like High Sierra.
The only other thing I do not know is how perfectly the stock heatsink will fit the Nividia cards. Perhaps the seller can provide you details about that. It probably is ok, but I have no first hand experience with it.
As to water cooling, such is not possible in an iMac. Sure, there are people who don't mind drilling holes in the Mac, but that is not me. I would never do that. And if you do not drill or otherwise mod the case, I don't see how water-cooling would be possible.
I hope this helps!
my 27in still working for 5months now because of the bake. Sound issue still an issue :P imac needs to heat up then the audio stabilized.
If you are talking about audio through the iMac’s built in speakers, what happens when you plug in headphones?
Hi JDW
This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this year. I'm delighted to report that my late-2009 i7 iMac is still chugging along, 9 months after I followed your lead and baked my video card. Although this 13-year-old machine is still doing all I ask of it, I am considering replacing it with an M1 Mini, if only to benefit from the added security that comes with the newer iterations of OS. But rest assured, the old workhorse will still have a place in our home undertaking lighter, less processor hungry duties. Which, I imagine, is the retirement we all aspire to. :-) Thanks again for helping to add an extra year's life to a machine that, otherwise, would have been heading for landfill. I'm much obliged to you.
Paul, I sincerely appreciate your time spend on posting that update. It's great to hear your bake is still going strong. I suspect that many people are in your shoes, pondering whether to do the bake on their own old iMac or go for one of the new M1 Macs. M1 Macs certainly are compelling, and goodness knows my own RUclips video editing process could be benefited by the speed and power they offer. Even so, for people who have the desk space for them, old Macs can still be fun or even productive to use. As such, the bake still may prove useful for those folks moving forward. Best wishes!
Hello JDW! I replace the gpu card on a 21”5 iMac,I bought the original card on eBay pre own but in working condition the seller gets nothing but good reviews however when I put these cables back I got the black screen issue I hear the welcome sound but the screen is black,and I was watching your FAQ video where you mention if the long ribbon cable is not seated properly you could have this issue.I check it and it seems to be seated right,however the 4 pin ribbon cable that connects to the upper left I notice one of the pins seem like a pice of the copper foil is missing do you think this cable could be causing the black screen or is the longer ribbon cable? Thanks for the advise.
The small ribbon cable in the upper left is V-sync. The iMac will work without it but there will be noise or jitter, so if you're is broken, you should buy a replacement (link in text description). Shine a flashlight into your screen with the machine powered on. Do you see an image? If so, your backlight driver board needs replacement. No image with a flashlight? Well, you said you confirmed the wide ribbon cable, but make sure you check both ends of it (the place behind the LCD too). That is almost always the cause of a black screen. If you are 100% positive it is NOT that wide ribbon cable, then you should pull out the video card and reseat it, making absolutely sure it is fitted into it's connector on the motherboard. If you still get a black screen, then it must be a bad graphics card. It cannot be the power supply because you said you can hear sounds (booting). Even EBAY sellers with great feedback can see defective items at times, so it's not outside the realm of the possible. I hope this helps.
@@JDW- you know what I discover the ribbon cable did not chip a piece of the copper foil like I had thought looking through it with my magnifying glasses I found out it just curl up I un curl it and putted back in its original place but is like you said it should still work but I thought maybe that ribbon cable is suppose to activate the inverter board and turn on the back lights of the screen, I was going to ask you even if the graphics card is defective the screen should still light up but not show and image right? I am going to shine a lot on the screen to see if I see the image I’ll let you know.but I think the guy from eBay might of sold me defective video card.but the good thing is I have the original card witch I could do the bake method and still have a chance of getting it to work the only thing I hate is that I have to remove the motherboard to get the graphic card out not like some model Macs you don’t need to remove the motherboard is easier.once again thanks for your advice is always highly appreciated.
I ran out of troubleshooting options.do think is the graphics card the problem?
@@garylove2836 You said you checked the wide ribbon cable. So if you did the flashlight test with the power on and could not see any image, then I would say with certainty it must be the graphics card.
@@JDW- yes that’s correct I check the longer wide ribbon cable to make sure it lock into place because it has to clips that lock the cable in place,I pull on it just a little bit to see if it would detach and it didn’t I also check the other end that connects to the lcd and is also lock into place.i turn the light off in my room and shine my iPhone light especially at the middle where you would see the apple logo and nothing I was thinking of connecting by dell monitor to the IMac to see if I get video on the external monitor but I need a thunderbolt to DVI to HDMI adaptor witch I don’t have.I have to agree with you is the graphics card at this point. today I messaged the eBay seller so he could give a refund for that dud he sold me😡JDW I am going to bake my graphics card from my iMac but you said you have to first let your oven get hot. And bake the video card at 290 degrees for 9 minutes I was going to ask you which is the best thermal paste I could use for the gpu chip and the memory chips I would appreciate the advice thanks again.
As luck would have it, I picked up a free Late 2009 iMac 27 with video issues. Pretty sure the stock ATI HD4850 would bake out but I have a 1 GB 6970M needing a home so in it went. Install went smoothly. First turn on, screen stayed black for several minutes before finally showing question mark folder. Subsequent boots have been normal. Thinking this is the SMC adjusting to the new GPU. Anyways, the machine is a top spec i7 2.8 GHz with 32GB RAM (and not a 4GB C2D) so feeling fortunate.
On a side note, this machine did not come with a HDD so had to install a non-Apple unit. Used a temp sensor from a broken ODD on the HDD. The connector is the same. Fans spin normally in Auto mode so it appears to be working.
Wow. You can't beat "free"! :-) Glad to hear you have the machine up and running. Since it seems you added a regular hard drive, I do have one piece of advice for you. It's definitely worth the money to swap out that spinning platter HDD with an SSD. It's absolutely without a doubt the single best speed enhancement you can add to your late 2009 iMac, hands down. If you click SHOW MORE to expand the text description below my video, scroll down to where I say "
@@JDW- Way ahead of you, lol. The ODD sensor takes care of fan over speed so SSD is in the cards. I have SSD in my Mid 2011 27 and totally agree on the benefits. What is nice about the 2009 is that there is a header on the mobo for the HDD temp sensor. In the 2011, the sensor input is part of the SATA cable so OWC or some other work around is needed for auto fan mode to work right.
I baked by 6750m and its working fine now. 9 mins at 200c.
That's great to hear, Nebelz. Thank you for making time to let me know!
Is it still working?
And was it your first bake?
between the failings gpu’s on the imacs and the macbook pros, and then of course getting second hand gpus off ebay for mac pros, my oven hasn’t seen food in months!! only PCB 😂😭
Have your graphic card bakes been successful? (It is for most people. I am just curious about your case.)
@@JDW- yes! my favorite is my MacBook Pro 4,1 with the original 512mb 8600m going strong. I usually have no issue with MacBooks and iMacs after baking, only the desktop cards that have been decimated from mining are sometimes unfixable. I have a “non working” 6970m on the way for a 2010 27 inch that i’m hoping just needs a good bake, I have what’s considered a 7950 equivalent firepro in it right now but it just performs awful.
I baked two 4850 and both of them got burnt and useless. You asked me to send photos. I have them, but i dont know how to attach a photo to this chat. I used a convection oven preheated at 200ºC with the convection on and heat coming from above and below the tray (excuse my english, hope u understand what i mean). The cards melted, especially the brown part surrounding the gpu chip. With the third card what i did was: I put the tray as low as possible, the heat only coming from above (bigger distance from the heat source), 200ºC, convection and only 7 minutes. At 7 minutes it started to smell very slightly burnt so i turned the oven off and took the card out. It is working by now (only 2 days). I hope this helps someone.
You can upload photos to Google Photos, to DropBox, to Flickr, just to name a few free sources. DropBox allows you to create links to your photos. Just do that and comment again with the URL. There's not much more I can say until I see your photos because out of the hundreds of comments under my bake videos, you really are the first person to report "burning" the video card. There have been a small number of people who reported components falling off, as I mention in my video above, but even they didn't mention "burning." That is why I really need to see your photos to better understand what might have happened.
@@JDW- www.dropbox.com/s/xhjnsxodeek3aom/IMG_6311.jpg?dl=0
@@JDW- www.dropbox.com/s/olsqehbna2oqh9c/IMG_6312.jpg?dl=0
@@JDW- i´m afraid these are not the best photos. Hope you see what i mean. The brown plastic material surrounding the gpu looked like melted and inflated
@@Tom85746 Tomas, thank you for the photos. For the life of me, I cannot see any "BROWN" plastic material in your photos. What I see is GRAY thermal paste that you did not remove. You must use alcohol and swaps or tissues to remove the old thermal paste from the GPU before you do the bake. Otherwise it will be even harder to remove that GRAY thermal paste after the bake. And you absolutely positively must remove that old thermal paste on the GPU and on the heatsink before you apply new thermal paste on the GPU. If you watch my 2nd Bake video, you will see all those details: ruclips.net/video/6BJGLFCigdA/видео.html
Thanks so much
Personally i wouldn't recommend leaving the fans high all the time unless you are willing to continue taking the machine apart at least every 6-12 months to blow out the dust!
My 2nd bake lasted 2 years and 9 months, during which time I did not open it or clean out dust. When I opened it to do my 3rd bake, there was some dust, but not enough to have caused severe cooling problems. I think that proves your working environment has a lot to do with it. The thing about using higher fan speeds though is that you will suck in more dust. It can't be helped though. Higher fan speeds are helpful overall.
Why not test the components of the best since
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.
@@JDW- what I am trying to say or should I say ask why can't you test all the components on the video card or can't that be done sorry for my no skills
@@jimrandall6309 Because: (1) that would take a long time, (2) we don't need to test all the components since we know the problem is the GPU chip alone. The graphics cards used in iMacs from 2008 through 2011 were badly designed, and that design flaw results in this problem. Some people mistakenly think it is the solder balls under the GPU chip, but that isn't the core problem. Sometimes it is the solder balls, but mostly it is a problem inside the GPU chip itself that is resolved (for up to a few years anyway) with heat. So when someone removes the GPU thinking the problem is the solder balls, they heat the chip sufficiently to solve the problem (for a while), and of course the solder balls are perfectly applied then too. But because the main problem is in the GPU chip itself, you and I can resolve the issue from home by heating the card in an oven. Why not hot air? Sure, if you want. You just need to take much, MUCH more care with hot air so as not to accidentally desolder surrounding components. The oven bake method is the method MOST PEOPLE can do themselves. And it tends to last long enough to have made the time, effort and small expense worthwhile. I know this because I read and reply to all the comments under all my bake videos on this subject. I hope this explanation helps!
@@JDW- yes thank you as you might or not know I am very new to this and whi!le I got you could you help me my son gave me a iMac that won't boot up any hints as wha I can do to get it going bare in mind I am 72years young please help if you can thank you
@@jimrandall6309 I've made a total of 8 videos on this topic, and I believe you should follow my 2nd Bake video and use the thermal paste I recommend in the text description below that video. An iMac between 2008 and 2011 can have other problems, but most of the time, it's the graphics card. The graphics card can and does prevent booting. Here is a playlist link to all my Bake videos: ruclips.net/p/PLNZ4qjMn-GHoez6_PtpyJfcU_ialTS8bB
Least you don't live in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!! 😂😂
It's really a shame you don't brand like Apple didn't offer a solution to this graphics card problem even at cost!!! by offering an exchange when you see the price of an iMac !!! especially a 27 inch!! personally I just had one on occasion no problem for now and I just installed Ventura on it with open Core MDR !!!! No graphics card problem for now I do not know if it has already been cooked or not in my opinion I think so.... we'll see how long it lasts but it's still scandalous at that time all brands had this problem I have Acer laptops that have the same problem it's the same type of graphics card they did nothing they still sold their hardware their iMac their PC knowing full well that there was a problem of soldering on graphics cards at that time but hey we'll see Well, maybe they didn't think they did... And then if it ever breaks down we will have other models to offer them to its customers to these sheep ..
Il est vraiment dommage tu ne marques comme Apple na pas proposé une solution à ce problème de carte graphique même à prix coûtant !!! en proposant un échange quand on voit le prix que coûte un iMac !!! surtout un 27 pouces !! personnellement je viens d'en avoir un en occasion pas de souci pour l'instant et je viens d'installer dessus Ventura avec open Core MDR !!!! pas de problème de carte graphique pour l'instant je ne sais pas si elle a déjà été cuite ou pas à mon avis je pense que oui.... on verra bien combien de temps ça tient mais c'est quand même scandaleux à cette époque toutes les marques avaient ce problème j'ai des PC portables Acer qui ont le même problème c'est le même type de carte graphique ils n'ont rien fait ils ont quand même vendu leur matériel leur iMac leur PC en sache pertinemment qu'il y avait un problème de soudure sur les cartes graphiques à cette époque mais bon on verra bien ça va peut-être pas qu'ils se sont dit... Et puis si jamais ça tombe en panne on aura d'autres modèles à leur proposer à ses clients à ces moutons..
STRANGE, VERY STRANGE. My problem is That when I power up left half screen has the Thx for your comment.
STRANGE VERY STRANGE. my problem is the screen cures it self half an hour or so after power up. First the second fourth of the screen clears up then several minutes later The first 1/4 of screen clears up. At this time the left of the top of the monitor is warm very warm to the touch while the right half of the top of the monitor is cool. This is getting worse as the days go by probably taking an hour fir the screen to clear up. This started happening over a year ago. But only in the winter when the room was cold in the morning. It is as though it needs to warm up to work properly but that’s counter intuitive for electronics. I’m ready to do the bake but the delivery of the paste is behind schedule due to our winter pier outage. Thx for your detailed analysis.
@@windsurfertx1 I'd love to see a photo of your display when the problem happens, Chuck. Feel free to upload the photo to DropBox or Flickr or iCloud and paste the link here in the Comments. No doubt it's video card related, but your description of the problem is rather unique.
@@JDW- to get a photo I'll have to put it back together again, reconnect the cables. I'm trying to minimize the disconnecting re-connecting, they are fragile. In looking for similar picture of mine I came across this video:" ruclips.net/video/BYR36SjLpJo/видео.html. Give a look at the 1st half of this video as it best visually describes what I see.
The "jibber-ish" that shows in one vertical section on the right side of his screen is what I get on the left side of my screen only I have four vertical bars of it on my left side. It for sure is warming that makes it go away. Because:
After leaving the Mac on for an hour or so the vertical bars went away.
Then I powered it off put the glass back on and powered it on and the bars were gone.
However the bars came back the next morning.
I don't think its a connector issue as shown in the video because after disconnecting-reconnecting I had the same issue. Could be though I'll try to inspect connector with strong light and magnifying glass. Perhaps the solder on the board to connector does not make connection until the fault generates enough heat to reflow those particular connections. Your thoughts?
But the warmth is on the left side of the screen on top and the graphics card and its connector is on the right side of the mother board which kind of shoots down that theory. One other thing. when I took out the screen from the Mac there were vertical stripes on the left side of the screen as though they were burned into the screen. the next morning those stripes disappeared. those stripes were the same size as the stripes you see in other videos: ruclips.net/video/hkt-mWt0xN8/видео.html. I may hook it up again and gather more info and shoot some video of it and post on RUclips.
@@windsurfertx1 Warmth and heat is not an indicator of the problem. The graphics card problem described in my videos is typically accompanied by a complete freeze of the iMac at some point. That freeze can occur with or without such artifacts on the display. In many cases, it can freeze with a completely black or white screen. If you have ever gotten a freeze, then your graphics card definitely has the problem my videos describe and the bake should help resolve that, although it is not a permanent fix. It could be a loose cable, I suppose but most likely the graphics card is the issue, especially if you have a 2008 to 2011 model, iMac small or large.
Mate, I am the one who in a comment section of one of you previous videos suggested replacing the faulty AMD GPU with Nvidia Quadro K1100m.
Your argument against it is "I am a real Mac guy, and real Mac guys don't mess around with Linux and Windows in order to flash the GPU. I don't buy your argument because:
1. Real Mac guys don't bake iMac video cards. They go to the first Apple Store and have the logic board replaced for $2000. Real Apple guys are not supposed to open their iMac to clean the fans or upgrade an old and slow 7200 RPM hard drive with SSD hard drive. Real Apple guys don't touch their hardware because Apple don't want them to touch it. What Apple want is to rip them off for their money.
2. When it comes to design of products and quality of software Apple is a great company. I simply love MacOS as an operating system. But when it comes to upgrades of hardware in your iMac, Macbook Pro etc. Apple is the worst company in the world.
Why wouldn't they provide already flashed Nvidia Quadro graphics cards so we who own iMacs from 2011 can enjoy metal support and the latest MacOS. Why don't they sell sensors for SSD?
3. Flashing a Nvidia Quadro has nothing to do with being or not being an Apple guy. Baking the faulty AMD graphics card from my iMac is not a permanent solution. It might work for two years or just one week. And as you know it's a pain in the ass to completely disassemble an iMac to do the baking over and over again. By dissassembling your iMac over and over again there is a big chance you'll break something (LCD cable fir example) and then you'll spend a great deal of your time and money to get it fixed.
4. Flashing a graphics card is easy and not a big deal.
Thank you for your follow-up comment. Please note, however, that you are not the only person to suggest a PC Nvidia MXM video card. You are simply the most recent. And of course, I appreciate your advice on that topic. I really do. And thank you for checking out my new video.
I am not in complete agreement with your other points though. Real Mac guys DO BAKE video cards because I am one and I did the bake! :-) If you don't define "a real Mac guy" as "someone who has exclusively owned Macs since 1984," then I have no idea what a "real Mac guy" is! Real Mac fans also install their own RAM instead of paying Apple to a princely sum for the official overpriced RAM. Only folks from the PeeSee (ha ha) world of Windoze think such ill of Apple fans. There are older Mac fans like my father he would rather pay more than do a DIY solution. But for the rest of us who are in Gen-X or younger, DIY is the common knowledge way to save money, and we don't shy away from that.
In terms of why Apple does things, I cannot say. I can only say that recent Macs do not use Nvidia cards because Apple prefers Radeon cards instead or integrated graphics. To get the best performance out of FCPX, for example, you need a supported AMD video card. Why? Because Apple says so. I am not defending that. It's just the way things are.
Not wanting to flash a PC video card definitely HAS something to do with being a Mac guy. I know because I am a Mac guy, and despite having the mental capability of doing the flashing, I just don't want to. Maybe when my 6970M dies, as I said in my video, I will consider it for the LONE reason of making a video that shows that. But it certainly won't be about performance. If I really want speed, I'd get a 2020 iMac or wait for Apple Silicon Macs.
If you watch all my BAKE videos, you will see me repeat over and over and over that the bake is NOT a permanent solution. Of course it isn't. But it is worth it in my opinion. Consider cost vs. performance. I paid the price of thermal paste and spent a Saturday and get 2 years and 9 months of use out of an otherwise dead card. The card was dead. I had nothing to lose. I spent a tiny amount of money on the paste. Yeah, I broke a couple cables and had to replace them, but that cost wasn't high. And if you read through the hundreds of comments under my first two bakes you will see that many other people not only find success, but they feel it is worth the effort too. And we all do this in the knowledge it won't last forever.
Lastly, I agree with your thoughts on Apple product quality to some degree. You will see on my channel that I have a couple videos about the MacBook Pro. In one of those videos, I compel my fellow MBP owners to check their batteries because they could be swollen. Chances are, Apple won't cover the cost of that replacement, despite having a battery replacement program in place. I personally praise Apple about as much as I chastise them. Yes, true Mac guys do that. About the only people who think Apple is infallible are AppleInsider forum regulars! :-) (I'm a regular over there, but I try to balance out all the Cupertino worship with pointed criticism when needed.)
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, Andreas!
@@JDW- Appreciate your answer. Don't get me wrong, I didn't imply you are not a Mac guy who loves Apple products. I was making a point about Apple not allowing you to upgrade their products. My iMac 27" from 2011 is still in 2020 a great machine, with 20 Gb of RAM, 500 Gb Samsung EVO SSD and Nvidia Quadro K1100m. I am a musician and I compose music in Logic Pro X. I simply want to have the newest MacOS with metal support and Apple file system because in a couple of years I won't be able to install new apps on MacOS High Sierra. Already now some apps require at least MacOS Mojave.
Also I don't want to waste my time on baking the GPU over and over again when I can solve the problem by a simple and cheap upgrade. I've bought Nvidia Quadro K1100m from China for $30.
@@andreasvukman Thank you for letting me know that card cost only $30 (probably including the CCP-subsidized shipping too). Question... You paired that K1100M with your 2011 iMac's stock heatsink which looks like the triple-heat-pipe version shown in my video? How well did that heatsink fit your card? And does the GPU of that card fall directly under the copper portion of the heatsink? Whatever details you can share about that would be appreciated. Thanks!
@@JDW- The heatsink fits perfectly my K1100m. I used K5-PRO thermal paste, which is an ideal replacement for thermal pads on GPU.
www.computer-systems.gr/en/content/product/k5-pro-60g-3x20g
It can be bought on Amazon:
www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Viscous-Thermal-Replacement-iPhone/dp/B0851NLK48/ref=pd_aw_sbs_147_3/142-4819537-0571010?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0851NLK48&pd_rd_r=0c3070f8-312b-4a87-862f-9701588fda49&pd_rd_w=vJwaN&pd_rd_wg=lsIlU&pf_rd_p=408b641a-bb24-42ea-a6df-5ef48089cda2&pf_rd_r=CDCJ9CJR9PDZJ9WA13VB&psc=1&refRID=CDCJ9CJR9PDZJ9WA13VB
Have a look at Curtis Gross RUclips channel for some exciting upgrade options to both cpu and gpu!
Thanks. I am aware of Curtis' videos, this one in particular: ruclips.net/video/lb-Gg2JY3ug/видео.html
I should mention the caveats though.
As I've said many times, using an Nvidia card will require you to flash the card, and to do that you need a Windows machine (realistically). I do not own even a single Windows PC, nor do I have bootcamp installed on any of my Macs. There are many Mac users out there like that. So if you cannot flash the Nvidia card, it won't work.
Next, as you can see in Curtis' own video, there are sleep/wake issues that can hit you, depending on the CPU you upgrade to.
Next, some people in the comments under his video are asking about 2009 and 2010 models, and in one case of a 2010 model, the person commenting said he got a black screen and Curtis could only say he doesn't have a 2010 model. That isn't a slight against Curtis, but it is a warning that particular video really applies to the 2011 iMac, and not necessarily older iMac models like mine (2009).
Lastly, I see Curtis is using Arctic Silver V on the GPU chip in that video. I used that same paste on the GPU after my 1st bake, but I think it is a mistake now. I used a different paste after subsequent bakes. Why? Because Arctic Silver V paste is capacitive, and there will be some overspill that will touch the surrounding SMD components, potentially causing problems. I therefore recommend either K4 Pro or Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for the GPU because they are not electrically conductive nor are they capacitive.
Curtis made no mention in his video of pasting the memory chips, but that is just as important, and I recommend K5 Pro for those chips, since using thermal pads is troublesome to get fitted right.
None of my remarks in any way whatsoever are criticizing Curtis' excellent videos. I am just pointing out the pitfalls you need to be aware of, in addition to giving you my own advice about thermal paste. Good luck!
I liked you ironic political mood for answering dumb questions!
Thanks! 😄
Does this comment actually show up?
OK seems like it did. I was posting a comment the other day writing about how I solved my GPU problem where I couldn't do the baking anymore by buying another cheap iMac and baked that card but somehow it never showed up here...
@@fabianlorenzen2648 The people at RUclips are complete idiots. Believe me, I have written to them multiple times about vanishing comments, but they do nothing but give me the run-around. I often get email notifications of new comments only to find the comments are not there. And many times, I cannot find a way to get in touch with the people to ask them to try again. It's very frustrating. The best advice I can give is when you post and find the comment doesn't appear, try again without URLs. That often works. I don't block URLs, but RUclips often does. Again, I am sorry about this, but RUclips isn't trying at all to solve this problem. They simply don't care.😥
@@JDW- Thanks a lot for your reply.
Yeah, was quite annoying to write that comment only to find out it was gone directly after posting.
Anyway - to sum up what I wrote: I did the bake with my 2009 27inch iMac's video card as well as long as it lasted.
But instead of buying a replacement GPU afterwards like you did I just searched for another 27 inch 2009 iMac that was sold for parts and - judging from the item description - had the common video card problem.
So I got this iMac for around 50 Euros plus shipping, successfully baked its card and was back in business again.
Since I found another GPU-broken 2009 27 inch iMac shortly after for 70 Euros including working peripherals (Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard), I thought - well, a spare GPU can't be wrong, purchased that as well, baked it successfully and now have another GPU right at hand in case the other one dies... and in addition to that, a lot of additional working spare parts to sell or use.
So my recommendation is this: if one of those old video cards fails... don't buy another one. Just buy another broken iMac. ;-)
Greetings from Germany to Japan,
Fabian
@@fabianlorenzen2648 I agree that if you can get as cheaply as you described, that would be best. Sometimes, it's hard to do that though because shipping fees can cost almost as much as the iMac itself. But it's great to hear you not only solved your problem but have a lot of spare parts too! You now simply need to find a place to store all those parts, since 27" iMacs take up a lot of space. Here in Japan, storage space is perhaps more of a problem than it is in other countries. Best wishes!
can you use flux before baking?
You could squirt some on, but all it would do is make a mess, I think. For flux to have meaning, it would need to touch all the solder balls, which is impossible. It just wouldn't reach the center of the chip. But there is a misconception that the solder balls are the root problem here. That isn't the case most of the time. It's a defect inside the GPU chip that gets fixed (for a while -- maybe a few years) when heated properly. The reason why reballing works is because during that process, you must heat the GPU chip! This is why flux really doesn't matter. It's a defect inside the GPU chip itself.