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I already have 4gb memos and am also replacing the 250gb HDD with a 500gb hybrid SSD but I was thinking about replacing the original C2D 2.4GHz (E8135) with a C2D 3.06GHz (E8435), is that possible? The order number is MB323LLA. I’ve searched A LOT on Google and it seem’s ok, it’ll fit on the socket and all but I don’t know if it’ll have any heating issues - for that I’m thinking about buying the 24" CPU heatsink as well, will it fit? No, unfortunately I don’t have the money to just buy another iMac so my only option will be to upgrade mine - if that’s possible, of course. :) Any help here? Update Well, I already bought the processor (fingers crossed hehehe) and now I ask you guys: does anyone knows if the heatsink of the 24" iMac will fit a 20" iMac? I’m asking ‘cause my only “source” are pictures on the internet and by what I’ve seen on those I’m really in doubt. Here’s the 24"heatsink: http://tinyurl.com/4m8k7a5 Here’s the 20"heatsink: http://tinyurl.com/468os42 And here is the 20" iMac with it’s own heatsink where you might get an idea of the space available: http://tinyurl.com/4tt5dj9 By those pics I think there is a chance it will fit, but also there’s a big chance it won’t, does anyone know for sure? Thanks! == Final Update 09/18/2011== Well, it took about 9 hours, but it’s finally done! :D To be fair, it should be ~6 hours, but the video card wouldn’t work (no surprises as it was really a gamble - it was a ATI Radeon HD2600 but from a HP 8510W) so I had to start over from the beginning. To those thinking about doing the same, know that this is real hard work - and I don’t mean only the hours! Granted it isn’t as challenging - and scary - as changing the wi-fi antenna in my iBook G4 12" but it was so hard that I was sweating most of the time and got some blisters of blood in my fingers. I don’t remember hating something so much as I hate those “bleeping” Torx screws! Darn!! Anyway, here are the tools I used with the parts I bought on eBay: http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6158/… Now the before and after screenshots: Before - http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/783/b… After - http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/7852/… One other thing I knew before hand was that I would need to adapt the 2,5" HDD where it was the 3,5" HDD so I improvised some sort of bracket. But it turns out that the holes in this iMac’s HDD are different from the ones in the HDD I used as a model, so I had to improvise in the improvisation :P http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/9209/… Oh and credit where it’s due: I would’ve never done that if it weren’t for the guides I found here. Honest! So thank you guys at iFit, you didn’t make the job easier, but certainlly made it possible - and less risky! :) And last, but not least: yeah, now it’s WAAAY faster!! :D
According to Mactracker the two iMacs have the same logic board system bus (1066mhz) so if the processors form factor are identical the 3.06Ghz should fit.
I’m 90% certain that the heatsinks are not the same size. I don’t have one in front of me at the moment, though. Since you already bought the processor, just try to install it with the 20-inch heatsink. The only potential drawback would be firmware incompatibilities. iMacs aren’t meant to be upgraded… so I don’t know if your 20-inch logic board will be able to use the new processor properly.
If it fits there shouldn’t be an issue. I would not bother replacing with such little upgrade in speed. Go ahead and try but you won’t notice much of an increase in performance.
I just bought one of them on ebay with Intel core 2 Duo 2GHz IMac A1224 according to Google processor look like that: http://www.computerclinicliverpool.co.uk… 2 months ago I was repairing (don’t laugh I know it is boring PC) my dell laptop so I striped my laptop down and I can remember that there was the same processor T7200. Anyone know if I can take processor form faulty laptop with high clock and put it to my imac ?
Carlos, in case you see this, I’m curious how this CPU swap went. My thinking is that if the heatsinks aren’t dramatically different in size, you’re probably fine with the heatsink that came with your slower CPU, and if/when the faster CPU gets hotter, the iMac’s fans will just run longer. Of course, hearing the fans more often might get annoying, if you’re the type that’s bothered by that.
Apparently it will take longer for me to know that too as I still didn’t get some of the parts I’ve ordered…
Hey there, I hope to see a response here too as I’ve been researching this same upgrade to no avail. Re. temperatures
- You can monitor the temperatures of a number of different copmponents inside your Mac with “Temperature Monitor” http://www.bresink.com/osx/0TemperatureM…
- You can also manually change the fan speeds if you can see your temperatures getting too high with “SMC Fan Control” http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23049/s… This helped me when my 2133 would crash during COD4 matches. The GPU would overheat and freeze and could only be overcome with hard restarts. Manually increasing fan speeds before I start playing now means no dramas. I’m sure these should work just as well for your new processor. That is, if you went through with the upgrade…
Hey mate, while the new CPU runs well, the CPU fan constantly is Max on startup and then gradually decreases. Once I start doing anything though, the CPU temp apparently jumps from 35c to about 75c in a matter of seconds! (I seriously doubt that’s actually the case though)… It’s not a huge issues but I really dislike the loud fan noise. My ideas are that one of the temp sensors were not connected back properly or that it may be shorting out on startup. Every single time I start the iMac, the CPU fan is max. All other fans run as normal. I can’t control the CPU fan with SMCfancontrol, every other fan is directly changeable though! The CPU fan now seems to have a mind of it’s own… I’m going to try a few things out, I may even swap the old CPU back to see if that helps and post back UNLESS ANYONE CAN SUGGEST ANYTHING FOR ME??
Hmm, did you have any trouble with the spring-loaded screws that hold the heatsink onto the processor? I left mine a bit loose and used no thermal paste :/ I’ve got some thermal paste now Nd will try to secure the heatsink to the processor a bit better this time and let you know. Although, it only took me about 2 hours roughly following the Logic Board replacement guide… Chris
You guys have me thinking (which of course is dangerous). I have an iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 128 MB S# QP7070ESVGP Any thoughts on upgrading this ? Thanks Alan
On a related note– I have an old iMac MA877LL/A 20in 2.4 C2D.. What’s the fastest processor I can put in this? For you guys who upgraded to the 3.06 did you see tangible improvement? I’m thinking along the same lines– upgrade to an SSD and a faster CPU to revive my old faithful iMac.
