I Was Given a FREE Broken iMac, Lets fix it!

hi guys welcome back from the Hugh Jeffries video in this video I'm gonna be restoring this broken iMac I was given for free from what I understand this Mac hasn't been used for some time I was asked if I knew how to fix a Mac with a blinking question mark and wouldn't start up for a mate I used to work with he was trying to get some data off of it but we came to the conclusion that his data was most likely unrecoverable as he no longer wanted it he gave it to me it's clear to say that it's very dirty on the outside with a built-up amount of dirt and grime on the stand screen and body my guess is it's been sitting in a shed or something similar to be able to get this dirty in fact it even smells like it's full of dust on the inside the aluminium housing has quite a number of scrapes on the sides which is strange considering this as an all-in-one computer even the front glass is covered in a huge amount of dirt and grime around back you'll find some ports along with a few marks and scratches on the black plastic you'll find a range of different ports including USB firewire 400 and firewire 800 and around the side you'll find that the DVD slot is very bent even the power cable needs cleaning as it's more Brown than grey and looking at that test and tag label I can tell that this came from a high school so it's time we powered on the iMac pressing the power button it's good to see that the device boots up and shows some kind of life unfortunately soon after we're greeted with the blinking question mark which I mentioned earlier this is a huge indicator that the internal hard drive is dead in some kind of way so of course to fix this we're going to need to put a new hard drive in but before we even open the computer or even give it a clean I'm going to connect up a external hard drive in a USB dock and boot to it now this hard drive has a copy of Mac OS 10 75 line installed on it and sure enough the computer will actually allow you to boot to an external drive it will take a couple of minutes to load in but as you can see it successfully put it up and we can see this is in fact a mid-2007 iMac with a 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo and four gigs of RAM in the storage section we didn't see any drive so that's most likely dead checking the temperatures everything seems to be okay before we crack open the iMac I'm going to give the outside a thorough cleaning for this I'll mostly be using alcohol as it's a very strong cleaner and evaporates fast starting with the display I used a microfiber cloth to scrub away at all that grime this was actually quite caked on and required lots of scrubbing to remove moving on to the aluminium I can use the same process as the display the filthiest part of the computer so far is his stand using alcohol and some spray and wife I can use a piece of paper towel to wipe away the muck this took several goes after the paper towel removed a lot of the grime I could use some spray and wipe along with an old sponge to finish it off making the stand look like new continuing with the spray and wipe I can wipe down the back of the iMac being careful not to put too much on that it goes in the ports but enough that it's actually going to clean off all the marks I can repeat the same process for the sides removing any more filth pen marks and so on it's now time we actually got inside this iMac using a pair of suction cups I can pull off the front glass covering the display next twelve screws need to be removed from the perimeter of the display before we can remove the aluminium bezel this differs from newer models as the aluminium is attached to the plastic back rather than all being in the one housing there are two different screw lengths used for this so be careful when reassembling to install the right screw into the correct hole with all the screws removed we can carefully lift up the front portion of the display bezel and disconnect the microphone cable connecting underneath I'll also make sure to remove the RAM door first before lifting up the aluminium front with the front of the iMac removed we can already see the amount of dust accumulated on that fan which could be impacting on the cooling aspects of the device I'll be giving this iMac a good clean and reapplying the thermal paste to ensure it performs as it should to get better access at the rest of the internals as well as that failed hard drive we'll need to take out the LCD assembly and you guessed it it's held in with more screws that's definitely a good thing to see and not a series of plastic clips or adhesive like we find on a lot of newer electronics with those several screws removed I'll need to disconnect a cable for the temperature sensor and the main LCD connection for the display lifting the display panel to the side there is still one connector underneath which is providing the display with power this proved very stubborn and in the end I just decided to unplug it from the power supply end which actually came out a lot easier be careful as the power supply is exposed and could potentially hold residual charge with the display removed it's now time to further disassemble this iMac we're basically going to be taking out just about everything except the DVD drive and the power supply this will allow us to properly clean the device as well as reapply the new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU chips the speakers will need to come out first and once we have those removed I'm going to start by disc every cable from the logic board so when we unscrew it it can be easily removed there is many different cables connecting here so it might take you a couple of minutes just to go through and make sure everything is disconnected there's a series of fan cables sensors and data cables for the DVD drive once we've disconnected everything it's time to unscrew the logic board from its position this is quite difficult as Apple doesn't provide any kind of guides will tell you which screws need to be removed this is a huge problem in the world of repair so I sort of just had to judge and luckily there was a couple of arrows pointing me to the screws which needed to be removed however this wasn't the case with many of them so it was a little bit of a guessing game when it came to removing this logic board carefully routing all the cables out of the way we can finally get this board removed now it's time that we removed both heat sinks for the CPU and GPU chips and reapply some new thermal paste there's a couple of warranty if remove stickers which is quite strange as I've never seen this on another Apple product the removal process is quite strange and is something I've never seen before the screws holding on the heatsink are actually screwed into another set of screws on the other side of the board so you need to flip over the board halfway through regardless I pulled that heatsink off in one piece using some alcohol and a q-tip I can clean any residual thermal paste off of the CPU before coming across to that GPU chip and repeating the same process there's quite a few resistors or capacitors on top of this chip so you just need to be careful when cleaning it off I can reapply some new thermal paste and move across to the heatsink where I can clean off yet again some more thermal paste which was left behind from when it was installed previously using some canned air I can blow out any of the dust inside of the heatsink fins with everything ready to go I can reinstall the heat sink back on to the logic board now I didn't have to upgrade the CPU or GPU in this computer as it's quite all then I won't be using it as any kind of daily machine or anything but the ability to do that is here which is fantastic to see with everything screwed back into place I can reconnect the two temperature sensor flex cables to the board lastly I can use some more canned air to finish off our mainboard and make it nice and dust free coming back across to the rest of the iMac it's time to take out the fans which are caked with dust as well as that dead hard drive which is clipped in at the top of the unit this was quite difficult to remove as it was held in with a lot of force disconnecting the SATA and SATA power cables we can remove the drive from the iMac you can see the amount of dust caked up in the rear vent which I could blow out with some canned air that would definitely be affecting the cooling performance of this device using more canned air and a brush I can remove any remaining dust inside the chassis of this iMac next it's time to clean out these fans and they're absolutely caked in dust but how much might actually surprise you I used a brush to brush out the fins of the fan and I couldn't disassemble these ones like I can with the MacBook fans so I just had to do my best with a brush and then come in later with some canned air and tug it against the table you can see just how much dust can hide in one of these fans the outside was also quite dirty so I cleaned that up as well moving along to the secondary fan of this iMac we can repeat the same process with a brush and dusting it out and making it as clean as possible of course there are three fans inside this IMAX so moving across to the last one this one actually came from the DVD Drive area and it is the least dusty of the three hitting these all with some canned air to finish them off these are looking almost brand new and I am very happy to report that this will definitely be improving the cooling in some aspect while I've got that brush on I'm going to clean off the speaker assemblies as well given these are quite dusty but it's time to turn our attention to the reason we actually opened this iMac in the first place to replace this dead 320 gigabyte 7200 rpm hard drive we can remove the bracket and the temperature sensor located underneath even given its age I'm going to be throwing in an SSD so using an adapter here which will convert it into the smaller SSD format we can attach the bracket and screws to the side of this adapter we can crack out our new 240 gig SSD to go inside this iMac of course depending on the brand you can pick these up pretty cheap I managed to get this one and a few others on sale and saved a couple of bucks we can attach the temperature sensor and the piece of foam going over the top and it's officially ready to reinstall inside the iMac while we have replaced your original hard drive it was actually faster than the drive found in the newest 2020 iMac which is only a 5400 rpm drive so this SSD is going to provide much faster speeds for storage than Apple's latest iMac next we can reinstall the fans and logic board making sure to route all the cables in their correct places so they don't get trapped underneath I can then install these several screws holding everything back together these screws vary in length so make sure to keep track of them throughout the repair now we can go ahead and connect up all of the cables that we disconnected earlier back into their correct sockets and making sure everything is routed correctly and won't get caught when we put the display back in after we've connected up our DVD drive cable we can reinstall its fan and the right speaker installing the left speaker we can screw that down into place which also holds in the fan next to it the speaker cable will need to be routed as well before it could be plugged in to its correct socket further we can now install the LCD panel back into place connecting up the power cable to the power supply first we can dust off the back of the display and position it down into place reconnect the temperature sensor cable and the display cable and reinstall all the screws holding down the LCD assembly be careful when doing this as these screws are quite tight and it'd be very easy to slip and scratch the LCD display finally our iMac is back together enough that we can test it and pressing the power button it still turns on which is fantastic but we're getting that blinking question mark because there's no operating system installed I did some experimenting off-camera and got a Wi-Fi AC card from a newer Mac computer to work inside of this however the bracket doesn't screw down as a screw hole is in the wrong location so I'm gonna have to stick with the original card which doesn't have the new old Wi-Fi standards not a big deal as this isn't going to be a daily device with the insides now looking quite clean the last thing we need to scrub up nicely is the front bezel which is caked in dust on the bottom air vents as well as the bezel itself so cleaning that out with some air and a brush we can also do the same process to the little ramp access door I also found this weird gunk on the display bezel so using some alcohol and a toothbrush I could clean that up quite nicely the last thing I'll need to do for this display bezel is unbend at the DVD slot I can do this using a plastic spudger and inserting it in the gap I can simply just bend it back into place it's not perfect but it's a lot better than it was I can reinstall this display bezel making sure to reconnect up the microphone and carefully tuck the cable back into its position and press the display bezel back in to place now I can reinstall all the screws holding it together as a whole this iMac isn't too difficult to repair although the lack of an upgrade or repair manual can make it difficult and a bit of a guessing game or which screws need to be removed this iMac does feature an upgradable processor and graphics card which is quite nice it's important to clean off the display panel before installing the front glass as you don't run any dust underneath the glass itself installing the glass I can then clean it once again making sure there are no marks or fingerprints on the display I'll also clean off the base of the iMac which is often overlooked and reinstall the RAM door on the bottom and tighten the one screw we're almost done the last thing I'll need to do is clean off this disgusting power cable and yet again using some alcohol and a cloth we'll bring this up quite nice it's not perfect but it's a lot better than it was with the iMac booted up I can reinstall a copy of Mac OS I opted for Mavericks however this thing can run anywhere between ten point four and ten point eleven with our OS installed we're done sorry this is it a restored 2007 iMac that I received for free with a thorough cleaning new thermal paste and an SSD we've revived this 13 year old Mac while it's quite old it's still capable of basic computer tasks such as watching YouTube videos web browsing and so on as it can run a large number of Mac OS versions it's also great for running old software this iMac has a 61 centimetre display with an Intel Core 2 Duo 4 gigs of ram and an SSD unfortunately this 61 centimeter display has some yellowing on the edges which after some research appear to be quite common on these early aluminium iMacs as for temperature I'm running Mac's fan control and the computer is running at an ice core temperature remember it might be 13 years old but it's got something the latest iMac doesn't an SSD and on that note this has been a huge EFI's video if you liked what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the repair playlist for more videos just like this one also make sure to check out my website if you're interested to see what tools I use or if you're looking to get into repair link 4 which is down in the description that's all for this video and I'll catch you guys next time

Channel: Hugh Jeffreys

Views: 4,623,099

Keywords: Hugh, Jeffreys, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, technology, repair, restore, iMac, Cleaning

Id: Qw9HO5Iaios

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020