iMac Internet recovery stuck, says 24:00 remaining and doesn’t decrease.

So I recently replaced the HDD in my iMac with an SSD (original was 1TB, New is 500GB) and now I’m starting up the drive. I have already transferred all of the stuff I want to keep from the old drive onto a portable storage drive, with the intention of transferring it to the iMac once I finish setting it up. The new drive was straight out-of-the-box, and I haven’t formatted it myself.

I started booting up the iMac, and held down Command+Option+R, and the internet recovery globe appeared with the progress bar beneath it and the timer that said the countdown was at 24:00. I waited for a few hours and nothing changed. The globe kept spinning but the progress bar or timer never moved.

I tried shutting down the iMac and starting the recovery again, like 5 times, but still to the same result. I have tried resetting the PRAM (Command+Option+R+P) twice, but that’s made no effect either.

Any suggestions?

If it’s relevant, when replacing the HDD I broke the screen connector cable, and so I’m running the iMac off an external monitor.