I mostly use the PC to watch Netflix as well as occasionaly playing online-games (League of Legends)ĭo the below work and which would be the one with the strongest performance? The i7 or quad core i5?
I am thinking to upgrade the CPU of my iMac Mid 2011 21.5 i5 2.5Ghz. XEON 1275 v2: does not work natively, research and testing in progress.i7-3770: does not work natively, research and testing in progress.XEON E3-1290v1: plug and play in 2011 27“ imac, sleep is broken (roscho).XEON 1275 v1: plug and play in 2011 27“ imac, sleep is broken (zabumbazarolha).Sometimes, systems can't boot at all, sometimes can boot, but are unstable (kernel panic), or can't go to sleep or wake up. So far, only partial successes are reported. The officially supported CPUs (of interest) are hence: First experiments of StephN999 and highvoltage12v by adding IvyBridge microcode to the NVRAM have yet been unsuccessful, so buying an IvyBridge CPU can not be recommended yet, apart from research (which is highly welcome) Unfortunately Ivy Bridge CPUs do NOT work yet, most likely due to missing CPU microcode in the NVRAM. In principle the iMac’s Intel Z68 chipset is capable of handling Ivy Bridge CPUs which are also socket 1155. There is no incentive to use any of the "K" variants.ĥ. The "K" CPUs allow overclocking, which is not implemented in the EFI and hence will not work. Sleep is broken though for all Xeon models (i.e. The XEON CPUs (Sandy Bridge = E3-12XX v1) are not officially supported but work mostly plug’n’play. iMac 2011 officially supports only Sandy Bridge CPUs.ģ. Only CPUs supporting socket LGA 1155 can be used.Ģ. If you experience unstable behaviour, reduce the internal power usage, or use a CPU with lower TDP.ġ. Using a HDD and/or multiple internal drives and a GPU with higher TDP might overload the supply so that the system runs unstable. or if you want to use a CPU with higher TDP, do it in the 21.5" unit only if you have a GPU with lower power dissipation, and have replaced the HDD with SSD, and have only 1 SSD in the system. either use a CPU with TDP of 65W (or close to this) only for the 21.5" The 21.5" has 210W power supply, the 27" has 310W.Īs the power is shared among the components, it is recommended to The difference between Mid 2011 21.5" and 27" concerning CPU upgradability is mainly caused by the available power from the power supply. This is a Wiki post with information collected from the entire thread.