Imac 27 Inch 2009-2011 Graphics card replacement

hi guys today we're gonna talk about another little bit more technically difficult clear probably not many people are going to use the instructions in this video as the computer I'm working on today it is a little bit older one an older model and I'm talking about two 27-inch iMac from 2011 what I'm going to do here it's actually real reflow the graphic card or you can use the same instructions I'm not gonna show you how the reflow is done as for that you need specialized tools but I'm gonna show you how to replace the graphic card in your iMac should you decide to do this repair yourself now the reason I'm doing this video today is because actually it's a leak that doesn't eat him we're in November of 2018 and I still see couple IMAX from 2011 brought in in my shop every month and people are still using them they're not bad they're not a bad machine of course it's a little bit outdated as I said but not as much as you might think so I have a lot of musicians which they still use a certain version of the software which can only work with an older operating system that's why they cannot operate when you are iMac worked when you were Mac which will not support the affirmation older operating system like lion mountain lion or even older anyways long story short how do you know that your iMac needs the graphic card replaced or repaired basically when you turn it on the skin would have either a bunch of dead pixels a gray hue tweet horizontal or vertical lines or it might even be like this one attorney Ron and I'll show you how it the screen on this iMac looks once it's turned on so okay as you see it has a bunch of lines going down on the screen you while you can still see the Apple logo the girl might start to boot will go up to halfway through the boot then you'll get this kind of stuff and the computer will freeze it will freeze two-thirds of the of the way why because that's on the graphic card the dedicated graphics card will initialize because before the computer was using the built-in one which is the Intel graphics which is handled by your CPU now I'm a share of the computer and as I said let's let's without further ado let's get to fixing this iMac so as I said I will show you how to replace your graphic card graphic cards nowadays depending on which one you have if it's a 1 1 gigabyte of video memory or 2 gigabytes the prices might vary but for a basic one gigabyte one probably you'll find it for around 120 dollars on eBay make sure you don't buy one which says it's a refurbished as that definitely was revolt or refloat many people are saying the reflow is not an option to repair it trust me announcing this over the years I repaired if not hundreds but maybe thousands of computers IMAX each piece they used to have this this problem all of them would reflow and maybe out of the the rate of success of the repair is probably over 90% of the cases many people will say oh no the graphic chip is bad you'll have to replace it or some people would advertise oh this is a graphic card with the second-generation chip poor on now let me tell you something that's a bunch of back because there is there is no second generation of that particular chip the graphic cards in iMac or if you have a MacBook Pro 15 or 17 inch from the seam here from 2011 and it has these symptoms you'll find probably a motherboard which says because in another mega product graphic card is not replaceable so you will buy the whole motherboard you would say oh it's a new and improved the second generation chip now let me ask you something you think that Nvidia or AMD which are the manufacturer of those cards after the problem was discovered by Apple which took to them probably around 2 years after the release of the of the 1st 2011 Mac 2 pro or iMac they already changed the technology of manufacturing the the graphic chips they moved to a different architecture you think that they released an old generation newer cards which were improved and they didn't have that he should know at the end so if you see that second generation cheap crap don't believe that it's the same original chip so if the chip is the problem they just swap the chip with the one chip which was from the same generation and end of the story now I was telling you the reflow is also very if done properly again if it's done properly the reflow it will be as good as an option as getting a new card why because most of the time the problem it's with I'll show you a cheap this is I know how much you're gonna be able to see this is how a graphic chip looks like you see right there and on it you notice there are those real both right there not all those those are connections to the mainboard it has around 900 something more than 952 in some computers now the problem is the iMac and MacBook Pro they have problems overheating when when the graphics you gets to a certain temperature so the solder which Apple used in that years was inferior to other years in terms of pretty much the melting point of the solder was lower than what it should be so due to the heat generated by the computer some of those little pins would become unsoldered from the main board that's I have this problem so if the solder is reapplied and you're using a high quality not the Chinese boss or anything like that you don't need to buy the little balls which you have to put there no it's a much simpler people like to over complicate things and by the way that's the reason I'm I have this channel and I'm trying to educate you guys on how to do certain repairs because it's not as hard as some people might claim it is and then you're gonna be fooled into Pingree large amounts of money especially if you're dealing with certain certain brands authorized repair shops so they will charge a lot of money for something you can pretty much do it yourself so anyways with that said I'm gonna show you how to change the graphic card you can find a used one on ebay for around 100 something dollars we can replace this you can do this job you know about probably is gonna take you around 2 hours so you know it's a nice weekend project if you might so yeah now let me show you how this is done so don't remove this camera a little bit so you guys get an idea no you can't see what I'm doing that's here okay excuse my hand I know you don't want to see my hand but anyways so I'm gonna put this so we're gonna lay the iMac flat look at the screen up okay okay just a second so we got a laid flat on a bench we will take our suction cups it's gonna be something like this you can find them if you don't have them you can find them anywhere even in a hardware store you'll find the larger ones where you can buy them again you can buy them on eBay or Amazon for around a couple bucks I gotta put the suction cups one on each side of the screen okay probably you don't see the other side but I have two of them and we're gonna slowly slowly lift it so we're gonna lift the glass we're gonna take the glass we put it away onto a flat surface give me a second okay so then we will remove there are four screws on each side of the screen which holds the screen together now the location of the screws I will try to pin 22 you will probably see it yourself once you open the computer but see it will be right there one there let's see if I can make this a little bit clearer on the other side probably so let's move this here so you have one screw here two three and one more on the top with this particular one is missing now you see these little guys right here those those are magnets one two three which holds the actual screen together when you remove the screws make sure you avoid it try to not get those crews caught up into those strong magnets so let's let's remove as we move the screws I will pause the video for a second as there's no need show you how to remove the screw just wanna mention that for this job you'll need a t10 bit okay okay so once we have all the screws removed it is time to remove the actual display now the way we will do this we will use our screwdriver and eventually a metal tool will put it right we will put it in this on the top and slowly slowly lift the LCD now we don't want to lift the LCD all the way up why because the LCD couple of cables which is being hold if I can show you this is the inside of the computer now you will have in a 2011 one you'll have one cable right this on D on your right hand side is looking at the computer you will have ribbon cable right here which goes into the mainboard into the power the door a power supply you'll pull that one straight up it is a regular ribbon cable which you'll pull it right out then we can lift the screen even more we will disconnect next we'll disconnect the LCD connector let me see if I can zoom on it and show you guys what I'm talking about and how this is supposed to be done okay so this is the inside of the computer now your LCD cable it is if you can see this right here on this one it has two flaps on each side of the computer I'll show right now once the skin is removed I'm gonna show you how this is the connection of the LCD you see there are some two tabs right here on the side which you can press you see right so the way you remove it you grab it to two fingers you press these flaps on the side a plastic one and you put it right out and then there is one more cable which is a lot I mean zoom out a little bit okay now something happened with my garden camera so excuse the cussing let's see see what's going on I lost the connection so again I'll have to a some point upgrade the camera but for now it should do it as this is not my main job so and now it should be just fine CEO of technical difficulty okay so the other cable which we are going to remove is right here they say this one right here this is the power to the LCD so you will press it down it has also plastic tab you'll press right here and pull the cable right out now you will also have a sensor cable right here okay this sensor cable can also be very easy so as I was saying there is this little cable which is the sensor for the LCD you will just pull you right out of its socket it is you can actually see it is it's one of this well paints will pull it right out now with all the cable disconnected you can safely remove your LCD and I'm going to put this on the side and I'll show you which one it's actually your graphic art into this machine and how we will manage to remove it now on this particular one there is a little bit easier to remove it while in this particular model the hole now I see that this computer had an SSD installed on it I use the previous guys didn't have the right Wow okay they didn't have the right here it was a 2.5 inch was supposed to be a 2.5 inch hard drive the SSD it's a 2.5 inch so you need an adapter to make it fit properly here they didn't have or the customer didn't want to pay for it even though it's like probably a $15 part they use tape so whatever whatever might work but that's not what we're talking about right now I'm going to show you which one is your graphic part and how to easily remove it in this particular model if you have this one this right here is your graphic card okay right here right now in newer models actually this looks like it's early late 210 even though when it's when I put in the serial number it shows me 2011 which is weird as 2011 they would have a different connection right here anyways that said it looks like that would have to be honest with you so on this one on the newer model you will have to remove the whole main board in order to reach to the graphic heart to remove it because this screw is one two three screws would be on the opposite side of the board on this one you are lucky if you find that the screws are on the top so I'll show you how to remove the graphic card without removing the actual motherboard which will make your life much easier so let's proceed so you see here there is a little connector which it's actually the connection for the Wi-Fi yeah this is definitely a 2010 one at the 2011 so we will remove this one in the newer one you will have the Wi-Fi card right about here and you'll have the three antennas you'll be able to actually see right next to the graphic card so yeah this is an older model of of it now we will I'll show you what which screws you'll have to remove and how to remove the graphic card without the movie nut so you have one two three screws there and then you will have one more one more screw which is right here holding the heatsink together okay now we will remove we will start with these three screws for that I have to change the beat see the bit we will use it is a t8 it works eight so we remove one two oops okay take your time don't do what I'm doing two three right here and we remove the one on right here we remove that one as well one two three okay now if you noticed we can move slightly move the graphic card up and down so it is caught up in a connection which looks something like this but much wider now all we have to do it's right lift up the graphic card and move it left or right now don't pull it because look what can happen if you pull it suddenly you have these very tiny components on the mainboard by the connector well where are you come on Charmander and right there see have you have these little components and you have the connector right there for the screen the LVDS connector have these components so if you pull it straight you're gonna knock the components out of the board so we're gonna lift we will lift a little bit this one and you will put the graphic card nicely out now also on the graphic card you have a sensor temperature sensor which is connected on the other side of the board fortunately for this all we have to do is just push on the connector with the tweezers and we pulled out the actual sensor connector from the other side of the board putting it back without removing the the motherboard might turn out to be a bit difficult but with a little bit of patience you can definitely do it now with since we have the graphic card out we're gonna remove the computer station on the table I'll show you what so most of the time you will find the graphic card that is coming preassembled with with the heatsink okay so basically when you buy a new or used graphic card it will come something like this right now sometimes it will come just a graphic card itself now so you'll have to keep your heat sink the way you remove the heatsink it's very easy if you have two screws right here one one there and one here okay so you use the same t8 screwdriver we'll remove those two screws one say I need something to get to and you have a dissent you'll have another screw which is holding the hissing together remove or remove that as well and now the back of the hissing it's removed we're gonna put this on the side and this is the actual graphic card right here which you see it is crap with these four screws now you it's your choice if you wanna go the Philips screwdriver onto this side or you wanna disconnect this screws I typically go on the back side of it and just remove the torque screws one two three four now with those screws removed it's time to open up the graphic card now what you see here on to the graphic card it is actually they're using a thermal compound to make the connection the heat transfer without the heatsink and you have this little white why did looking if this is a it is also a thermal compound but there's not a piece there is an actual thermal pad now if you can salvage this you can do that as well so you'll scrape it from your graphic card and put it back to your old heatsink or you could order thermal pads they should be around five dollars just order a new set of thermal pads those are not very important so those are basically controlling I mean it's there making the heat transfer from the actual RAM sorry so as I was saying before I was interrupted these ones are transferring the heat from the actual video memory into the heatsink now that video memory does not get very hot so that's why I'm you know I tell you guys to probably reuse those pads if possible if they're not very damaged while generating the heat is the actual graphic chip now you wanna remove when you order your boat your card it won't be something like this I will show you soon how to reassemble it wants to get it I have to fix this one first also keep in mind please remove the old thermal paste from your from your heatsink and reapply a good quality thermal paste you could use arctic silver you could use a pretty much that that's more than a decent graphic I'm sorry a thermal compound so be back in a little bit to show you how to reassemble the card once you have it put it on a heat sink and how to put it inside of your computer okay okay so let's say you received your brand-new graphic card I will show you how to reassemble it into the old in case sitting yet also a heat sink for it so first thing we're going to do we will as I mentioned we will reapply the thermal paste on top of the chip die now use a good quality one you can you can buy it for around seven dollars I personally use the Arctic one and when you reapply it just put a couple of dabs okay don't don't put extra just put a little bit on top of the chip itself why you don't need to put x-rays because the pure pressure when when that is gonna it's gonna be tightened on the heatsink this will spread it's a thermal compound will spread now we're gonna reapply we make sure that those four screws are perfectly aligned with the holes on the graphics card put it in now we move it a little bit okay to make sure that it's nice and aligned we're going to take this lower retention bracket and we will start to screw in the screws with we will not tie it up right now we're just gonna put it in place and then I start with one and we go opposite way I know they attach the second one okay three number four now it's time to tie them up now you want to hold this side of the screw with your finger and push it down as it has a little spring see when I'm pushing it down and if you can see but the actual screw will come out a little bit yeah you already see it but anyways tie second oil third and fourth make sure yep it looks just fine now we will attach the back of the heat sink okay so the way you do this is pretty much as I showed you there is one screw right here which holds it all together see so we're gonna fasten that screw first is the short chubby one let's put this into my okay so we'll attach that first okay and now we make sure that on this side the holes are going to be aligned and just submitting a little bit you understand what I'm talking about now remember you had two screws right here one two we will move the back of the heatsink and right now they look like they are aligned right so or take the screws tie it up 1 & 2 okay now the graphic card is reassembled onto your heat sink into your old heat sink again if your skin already with heat sink then you can skip this step okay now we'll take the computer and I'll show you how to reassemble the graphic card yeah this is a little bit easier but innocent a little bit complicated what I'm trying to say by that is that we did not remove the whole motherboard in order to reach to the graphics card we saved us a little bit of time now we're going to put put a graphic card back together we'll have to be a little bit more careful about couple of things and I'm gonna show to you what exactly I mean by that so remember the last step at the removal of the graphic card was the removal of of this little sensor ok Center cable which is caught up onto the other side of the board now how we gonna reattach it we will take our tweezers grab the connector make sure it is at the right so I don't know how much you can see do you see that these connectors zoom in a little bit more okay for example in this connector you see there is a little hole right there now that hole will have to align with this digital piece it has also a little I don't know how to call it it's like a little pink will sticking out so that's the way we're gonna put it in now on the other side of the board when we're gonna reapply it when when when I'm gonna put this the pin will have to be on the outside so take this connection and carefully and slowly we will reattach it on to the other side now again if you don't realize this properly what's gonna happen it's basically the fan would work at full speed because they will not detect the temperature of the graphic card okay so make sure make sure you take your time right here do it slowly and okay perfect the cable eats what it's supposed to be now here this is how we're going to put back the graphic card pretty much you'll have to align these little holes one two or three with the holes on the board one two and three so we're gonna put it to a little bit of an angle so you'll start the position would be after the LVDS connector a little bit of an angle you don't reach straight you'll do it angled a little bit okay so we're going to push the card a little bit with the finger not much and then slide it make sure you pass through all the tiny little components right there and then we're gonna push it straight and then you should feel okay you should feel that the card got into its connection which it actually did because it is perfectly tight here and as you see the screws are perfectly aligned with the holes on the board itself okay so now we're just going to put the screws back in once I find my screwdriver okay so there were three screws one two three and we're gonna have right there and we have another screw don't forget about this one it's not that important but still you want to put all the screws in so is the screw which is right here at the end of the heatsink okay okay so that we assembled now it's time to bring back the LCD I don't know why this guy's doing this now we're gonna see kind of half of the picture but that should suffice so we'll take the our LCD and make sure we've said is the bottom so basically where you have the ribbon cable connection which is right here this is the top part we're going to put it in just like this so the iMac okay we will reattach the cables and I'll show you right now how that is done I say so I got my camera okay so we're gonna reattach the kilos right now here we're gonna work in reverse order so we're gonna take the LCD cable we're gonna put it straight in you should hear a little click now don't forget about up you know what you see thanks god I remember and don't do the same mistake as me make sure you put back the Wi-Fi the Wi-Fi came up onto the mainboard okay so make sure that scene now we can put the LCD yeah what warming steaks especially one with life in front of the camera just kidding okay so we'll put your CD cable then we will have to add the sensor cable then we will connect right here we will do the power supply which is power supply cable which goes right in here and last but not least is the tiny ribbon cable ribbon cable which goes you're not gonna see it because I have to close the screen and boom that's it well double check that all the cables are inside so LCD cable it's inside the sensor it's inside the power cable it inside on the ribbon cable is inside now we're gonna sit slowly the LCD down we're gonna reapply the screws number one and if you want to save yourself some trouble you wanna check that the screen it's actually working because you assembled the the graphic card properly we're just gonna do one screw on each side of the screen so choose the easiest one to puddings would be this fella right here which there are no magnets around it okay we'll put one in there and one on the other side and why we're doing this is because you don't have to reassemble the whole screen put the glass on top of it touch that with your own and realize oh I forgot to connect something or I did not assemble the vidiians assembles other graphic cards correctly so we're gonna do a test on it take your computer sleep it they put it in its regular position and that's okay that's actually connect the power cable and turn this bad boy on remember in the beginning it had the had lines the nice pink lines coming down the screen now let's see how this one will behave right now okay I shot that scene yep okay it is in this is him okay and we're gonna turn on the computer [Music] have the computer starting we have the white screen we don't have those nice lines going around it which is a good sign and now we're gonna wait for the Apple logo and we should be good to go we can put a glass back on okay come on buddy some chopped okay so we have the Apple logo perfect so with that said the repair it's pretty much it's done I hope I hope this work for you guys we learn something from this and don't be don't be scared to take one new things try new things try new repairs any questions you might can tell me or not on YouTube live leave a message like subscribe to my channel and hopefully I'll see you over to the next video okay that's it we're done all the

Channel: Comptechnyc

Views: 116,316

Keywords: imac graphics card replacement, imac 2010, imac 2011, imac 27 inch graphics card replacement, imac 27 gpu replacement, imac 2010 disasembly, imac 2010 screen replacement, imac 2011 screen replacement, imac 2009 gpu replacement, imac 2009 lcd replacement, imac 2009 graphics card repair

Id: Lpa5B6bCRpg

Length: 42min 32sec (2552 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018