Apple iMac Fixing

I just wanted to know if I could upgrade/fix my old iMac. It only runs El Capitan and has a 2.66GHz Intel duo. Can you upgrade the core? Can you upgrade the graphics card? It is a iMac 24inch early 2009. And can I do anything thing else with it? Thanks!

iMac

Posted on Jun 17, 2023 2:21 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best answer

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/37689-five-things-you-need-to-know-before-upgrading-your-2009-or-later-imac/


How much would you want to spend on a 14 year old obsolete Mac? You may can change certain components, but the rest will be 14 years old and it all will still be obsolete to Apple. Of course that may be of no concern.

Posted on Jun 17, 2023 2:31 PM

14 replies
Question marked as Best answer

Jun 17, 2023 2:31 PM in response to AppleMan345

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/37689-five-things-you-need-to-know-before-upgrading-your-2009-or-later-imac/


How much would you want to spend on a 14 year old obsolete Mac? You may can change certain components, but the rest will be 14 years old and it all will still be obsolete to Apple. Of course that may be of no concern.

Jun 17, 2023 2:36 PM in response to AppleMan345

No. Those items are not upgradeable. Actually, a 21.5" iMac has no normally upgradeable components. You might find an Apple Authorized Service Provider.  to open up the machine and upgrade whatever is possible. However, finding parts for an obsolete iMac will be difficult and very expensive. What you would spend on the upgrades would probably be an excellent downpayment on a new iMac. The 2009 model couldn't run any system beyond what you're running now.


Apple offers refurbished Macs in their refurbished section with a new Mac warranty as a lower cost. Also OWC (MacSales.com) offered refurbished Macs and is considered the premier 3rd party hardware supplier for Macs.


Personally I would not get any Mac, new or refurbished with less than 16 GB of RAM and a minimum SSD boot drive of 500 GB. Just some food for thought.




Jun 17, 2023 2:47 PM in response to ku4hx

Thanks ku4hx. But Can I connect an Apple Mac mini to it? And, will it be faster? Because I don’t want to buy a 1,400$ iMac. Because I could just buy the Mac mini for 600$ And I am not trying to sound cheep when I say this, I just wish I wouldn’t have to spend all that money for no reason when I can buy some thing cheaper… Right?

Jun 17, 2023 2:46 PM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad said “However, finding parts for an obsolete iMac will be difficult and very expensive.” But I think it would be cheaper to upgrade it, based on prices from OWC it would be about 100$ for a new hard drive. He also said “Actually, a 21.5" iMac has no normally upgradeable components” I said I have a 24 inch iMac would that make a difference?

Jun 18, 2023 4:31 AM in response to MyMacComputr

MyMacComputr wrote:

However, you can upgrade RAM, and HDD to SSD which will make your Mac 20 times faster than before.

FWIW, an early 2009 iMac has a Geekbench score of 330. If it ended up "20 times faster", it would out perform a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023) Apple M2 Max @ 3.7 GHz (12 cores) by nearly a factor of 3, which has a Geekbench score of 2730.

Jun 18, 2023 4:41 AM in response to AppleMan345

AppleMan345 wrote:

Thank you servant of cats, but can you replace the Intel core?


I doubt it. I don't know if the CPU is soldered in or not – but that is a very old CPU, so I bet that even if it is not soldered in, Intel will have changed the socket / motherboard / RAM interfaces multiple times since then. Any CPU that might be compatible, but a little better, will be long discontinued.


If the CPU in that machine is too slow for what you're doing with the machine, it's time for a new machine.



Jun 18, 2023 9:43 AM in response to AppleMan345

...but can you replace the Intel core?


Even were a CPU upgrade possible (I don't see that it is) it would accomplish little.


In the days when processors swaps were easier, I found you needed a 40% increase in processor speed to "feel" a real performance difference at the user's chair. Applying that to your 2.66ghz processor says it needs a 3.7ghz processor to be effective in actual use. Unfortunately...


...the fastest Core 2 Duo processor Apple even installed in an iMac was only 3.33ghz.


IMHO, not worth it even if theoretically possible.


The common USB/SSD external boot-volume solution is not available to pre-2012 iMacs. It requires USB3; applying it to a USB2 iMac could mean data transfer rates far worse than you now have.


As for the SSD, your Early 2009 iMac has a slow SATA 3Gb drive bus, handicapping its max speed regardless of drive type. Yes, there are compatible SSDs for the early 2009 iMac:


https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/imac/early-2009


but, to replace exaggeration with data, an SATA 3GB SSD can do transfers no faster than about 250MB/sec. That would be an improvement over the 60 to 100MB/sec you likely now get, not 20X but more like 3-4X depending on the specs of your current mech hard drive. It would would help some but you still have a bigger problem.


Your macOS version limitation is the real pachyderm in the parlor here. Many web sites now require much higher macOS versions to fully work, and current browser versions cannot be installed on 10.9. You can throw hundreds of $$$ of hardware at the computer and still not be able to use it for browsing the internet. No hardware upgrades can change that.



Jun 18, 2023 11:37 PM in response to dialabrain

The "Late 2009" iMac models -- the iMac "Core 2 Duo" 3.06 21.5-Inch (Late 2009), "Core 2 Duo" 3.06 27-Inch (Late 2009), and "Core i5" 2.66 27-Inch (Late 2009) -- look quite similar to the "Early 2009" models -- the iMac "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 20-Inch (Early 2009), 2.66 24-Inch (Early 2009), 2.93 24-Inch (Early 2009), and 3.06 24-Inch (Early 2009).

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/imac-aluminum-faq/differences-between-imac-aluminum-late-2009-early-2009-models.html

Apple iMac Fixing

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.