Can the processor in the 2009 iMac be upgraded?

This is one of those "Yes, but", answers...

You can upgrade the processor, to an i7-870/880, but its only a marginal increase in speed.

You can put a better graphics card in, but it would be only marginally better than the original.

I would put 16 gigs ram in first, note that this iMac shipped with 1066 memory installed, but accepts 1333. You would have to remove the 1066, however.

My second upgrade would be a new hard drive. If you go SSD, be careful, SATA II interface, 3 gigs/second. Use a drive known to be compatible, like OWC's 3G.

I personally would put a Western Digital Black in 2-5 terabytes in.

You will need a temp sensor from OWC, original drive had it built in.

There was a discussion on this forum about a week or 10 days ago about this. The discussion centered on the actual socket itself. Apparently if the socket can accept a better processor it can be done. That being said IMHO you would get WAY more bang for your bucks if you went with a SSD instead of the HD you now have. I have an early 2008 and saw a great difference when the SSD was just hooked in via Firewire 800, now that it is internal my iMac is as snappy as a new MacBook Air. Of course that doesn't make up for heavy crunching for certain applications. Depending on your video processing that may be limited to what was available at the time.

The short answer is no the CPU cannot be upgraded. If you have an early 2009 iMac these use Core 2 Duo CPU's and the latest machines are 4 Core machines which are totally different architechtures. As a general rule the only upgradeable parts on an iMac is RAM. If you want a faster CPU then you will need to sell your machine (Mac's have great resale value) and buy a more up-to-date machine.

rkaufmann87 wrote: As a general rule the only upgradeable parts on an iMac is RAM.

This is misleading. For the average user perhaps yes, but if you have the skills, or should I say, the confidence, to deal with the sometimes tricky case opening, and the knowledge of the issues that may arise, depending on model and year, hard drive upgrades are possible.

http://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac_Intel

WZZ,

Yes I couldn't agree more regarding paragraph 2! I can't assume when a poster asks about upgrades on iMacs that I know their level of expertise unless I have data. In this case the OP did not state anything about his skill or confidence level so based in the information I had I provided what I thought was the best answer.

iMacs, at least since the current alluminium design, have been socketed, and so if you can get to the CPU you can replace it. They are only replaceable with cpu´s of the same socket type and same bus speed (obviously).

So go ahead... may have updated C2D iMacs to use C2E CPUs, its just tricky to get to the CPU and Hard Drive. But there are many video or pictured tutorials about.

Also, if hybrid hard drives are worth looking into if you want the boost of an SSD and the space of a HDD. Might as well replace what you can if you´re gonan open it up.

Good luck.

By rule of thumb, you can basically upgrade your iMac to whatever the top configuration was when you went for a a cheaper setup. If you went for the top setup, then you just need to know your hardware... think of upgrading an iMac like upgrading a laptop... tricky to unmount but doable.

Link you might appreciate that was on another thread:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/imac-aluminum-faq/imac-intel-aluminum -processor-upgrade-instructions.html

Just curious how this upgrade went.

In reply to the query of what does SSD have to do with the CPU... I did some benchmarking on some builds under WinXP (C++ data crunching), and the SSD boxes were 2x or more faster than the HDD boxes. Just moving the files I was crunching from HDD to SSD was all it takes. So if you can do a SSD ad-in, that would speed things the most. If the poster regarding using SSD via Firewire was correct, you don't even have to open up the iMac to do that.

-R

The processor upgrade requires taking the machine apart, but is possible. iFixIt has instructions:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Upgrade+iMac+Intel+Core+i3+CPU+to+Core+i7/8670

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Upgrade+iMac+Intel+Core+i3+CPU+to+Core+i7/8670