New iMacs

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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
why would you buy one? seems easier to rock an external monitor and an mac pro.

thankfully you can flash the mac pro 5,1 roms to the 4,1 and upgrade to 6-core westmere(s) or 6 core W rigs.

flash a 5770 or 5870 and load it up with 5 drives of your choice
 
Tyranicus

Tyranicus

Senior member
Aug 28, 2007
914
6
81
The primary hard drive bay is proprietary, but the secondary bay is not.

There is also the fact that the hard drive in the iMac has not been considered user-replaceable for quite some time.
 
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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
no kidding you can get a mac pro used for cheap these days and not have to deal with expansion issues. i saw how you have to rip the glass off - meh! that is insane!
 
A

alent1234

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2002
3,915
0
0
i know some people treasure Mac's like their kids, but most of us will just throw a 5 year old computer in the trash if it breaks. on macrumors i read about people paying techs to replace hard drives and add memory and it's crazy. by the time you nickel and dime yourself with upgrades for an old machine you might as well buy a new one. doing it yourself is one thing, but labor is $80 an hour if you pay someone. Tekserve in NYC charges $299 including a 2TB hard drive they probably buy for less than $50.

if it breaks sell it on CL or ebay for the parts so that crazy people who actually want to spend money to fix it will help you buy a new Mac
 
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ViRGE

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
Sid59 said:
new iMacs have proprietary SATA connections making user replaced drives impossible.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/12/apple-restricts-hard-drive-replacements-on-new-imacs-2/

Users are saying they've successfully replaced the 7 pin with a standard SATA without issues.

Rumor or not?!
Click to expand...
It's likely a rumor, or at least poorly reasoned facts. OWC is many things - being down to Earth and not prone to whipping up a storm is not one of them.

There are clearly people that are having no problems replacing their hard drives, so it's not cut & dry as OWC presents it.
 
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Eug

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,156
1,804
126
Replacing the hard drive in an iMac means taking off the glass and the screen. No thanks.

That's arguably even worse than taking apart a Mac laptop.

BTW, the way, the techs tell me that once you take off the glass, it's extremely hard to not get dust behind the glass.

It's too bad they've moved away from the iMac G5's days when a lot of these parts were actually designed to be user replaceable.
 
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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
why i like the mac pro. I can upgrade to 6-core cpu's (dual quad core xeon now) - i can add raid cards external storage. anything pretty much. flash a 5870 and use it (pc version). When the 2009 machine is 5 years old it will still sell for a pretty penny since it is 10.7/10.8 (64 bit only) compatible. Plus i can pick a better quality monitor than the junk that apple sells.
 
Eug

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,156
1,804
126
HDD Fan Control software addresses iMac hard drive replacement issue

According to the developer behind HDD Fan Control, this is a problem that has been present in iMac models since late 2009. The dev wrote his HDD Fan control application after he replaced his own hard drive and the fan speed for the drive increased to 6000 rpm. He used the hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) interface to control the speed of the fan and bring it down to a normal level.
 
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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
yeah the dual quad core 2.26 goes for about $1500 used and $1800-2000 on ebay (higher having applecare still).

but there is a price to pay for something that works well and is fully ECC compliant and when you get tired of 2.26ghz you can bop in some 6-core's and bump the ram up to 1333mhz.
 
Hellhammer

Hellhammer

AnandTech Emeritus
Apr 25, 2011
701
4
81
Emulex said:
yeah the dual quad core 2.26 goes for about $1500 used and $1800-2000 on ebay (higher having applecare still).

but there is a price to pay for something that works well and is fully ECC compliant and when you get tired of 2.26ghz you can bop in some 6-core's and bump the ram up to 1333mhz.
Click to expand...

That requires a firmware flash since 6-core CPUs use different stepping (B1 instead of D0).

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.0.html
 
E

Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
yeah and some 1333 ram to boot, but you are going to be rocking a 2010 model that will still be current for a few more years. you can re-buy two imac's in the time of 1 mac pro . hell folks still rock the G5 dual core units for work. lol. seriously
 
Ns1

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,420
1,600
126
decided to pull the trigger on a 21.5" base

<3
 
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Ns1

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,420
1,600
126
I'm a little confused by Thunderbolt-

Since I have an old minidisplayport -> DVI adapter, can I use it on a 2011 iMac? Want to display to a TV....

and on a related note, would old miniDP -> HDMI adapters work?
 
M

mchammer187

Diamond Member
Nov 26, 2000
9,114
0
76
I have an Imac but don't have any DP adapters but I believe the TB port is actually a TB/minidisplayport so it should work
 
Spineshank

Spineshank

Diamond Member
Jun 8, 2001
7,728
1
71
Ns1 said:
I'm a little confused by Thunderbolt-

Since I have an old minidisplayport -> DVI adapter, can I use it on a 2011 iMac? Want to display to a TV....

and on a related note, would old miniDP -> HDMI adapters work?
Click to expand...

I have one running to another monitor. The minidp im not sure about.
 
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