DIY 2013 iMac SSD Upgrade! 

I did the same on my 2011 27" - It was unreal how much better it was after the upgrade.

I think he should have stuck with the original OS. It would be as fast as it was the day it was new, even faster with the SSD.

@@bobacks Same here. It really doesnt feel 10 years old. Macs Fan Control installed to handle the fan speed issue. Running problem free for 3 years.

How did you reply three days ago when this video wasn't uploaded until today?

@@matthewlanzilla9849 probably a patrion supporter

A very fun (But alarming) fact.

nice catch

where can i check for such things? i'd love to check out some of my older apple devices to see their history

@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 I repair phones and computers for a living and our company takes part in Apple’s IRP (independent repair provider) program. As such we have access to Apple’s service platforms like GSX. Unfortunately there is no way for a normal person to check things like that, even though it could be very helpful (repair history, configuration the device came with, etc.).

That sounds a little weird bro

Did you had any problems with the temperature sensor ramping up the fans? , or no issues whatsoever?

If possible, you should also investigate putting an NVMe SSD in there. AFAIK all 27-inch iMacs of that time period should come with the internal card-style PCIe SSD slot even if you did not order it with Fusion Drive option, and that slot can accept an NVMe drive through an adapter. Those can be at least 5x faster than SATA, so even just a 256GB one for building a Fusion Drive with your SATA SSD can be beneficial.

@@hikaru-live I always thought the Fusion drives were one piece like those Hybrid stand-alone HDDs, great to know there’s an actual PCI connector for real SSDs

Do you have to backup the computer before installing the SSD?

Great information! I have a question, I have a 3TB fusion drive in a 27” 2014 iMac that I would like to upgrade to a full SSD, would the process be the same?

@@ronkemperful Similar. But you can’t have a Fusion of two SSDs so you’d end up with your new SSD and the smaller Fusion SSD as two separate drives. Still worth doing 👍

@@griffog2001 Thanks!

Darren: I've got a 27' late 2012 with a failing HDD. What SSD model do I need to buy to replace it?

@@690design Any model is fine. I got the cheapest 480GB from Teamgroup and had no problems for 3 years.

2017 inch???

@@fhdbvkdfhbv2639 no wonder they had such trouble moving it around lol

@@alvareo92i cant move a normal sized one around becus i dont have one

You on drugs? 😂

168???? The biggest one they sell is up to 27 inch I use The 2021 iMac M1 24 inch it’s really good!

Still, don't want to test it by putting my finger on it though.

high quality power supplies should have a discharge resistor on those big capacitors, so they will be discharged after couple seconds/minutes. But as you said, holding power button is also a thing i recommend.

I do it while working on macs and PCs, and haven't got 'bitten' since I started doing that before stabbing power supplies (as one does) during upgrades/repairs.

have you put a volt meter to it before you did to see if it recorded anything ?

@@jockeyjeon9532 it’s in case of you doing it accidentally :)

Do you have a video showing this??

@@mr702s if you look at 17:50. The left side of tape 4L and right side of 4R are the two pull tabs of when you remove the display. This way you don't need to cut it like mentioned in the video.

+1, do this. The caps in those PSUs are pretty fat, you would absolutely not want to get zapped by them. And they absolutely hold charge for quite a while.

Apple just being "special" as ever

You can easily get 10+ years out of a half-decent PC as well... and you'll pay 10% of the price up-front. Apple's hardware is good quality, sure -- but so is standard PC hardware. My machine from 10 years ago is still running fine.

I have a 2009 24” that is still my daily driver also but it still has a mechanical hard drive inside and it’s getting way too slow; I was thinking about swapping it with a SSD but i don’t know if it is worth the trouble…

@ I swapped my HDD with and SSD years ago on a 2007 24", use it everyday it works great and fast.

@@donduncan3052 thank you for your input. If you don't mind me asking, how much memory do you have and which ssd did you install? Thanks

@ 6GB of Ram and the SSD is a Samsung 850 EVO

Completely usable system for a large portion of users out there, myself included. All signs point to Monterrey working just as well as Big Sur does.. so there's more life to squeeze out of this hardware yet!

Ppl are too quick to get rid of perfectly usable machines!

I just installed an SSD in my 2012 Mac Mini a week ago. :-) You speak the truth, sir!

It basically turns it into a new system, nice to hear it’s working well!

Seconded! Only reason I’d buy a Mac or MacBook at all is to run Linux on it, personally. That, and compiling Mac versions of my software if I decided to, I guess. I used to _really_ want a MacBook Air to run Linux on. Amazingly portable, decently durable, and with Linux on, perfect for writing code wherever I needed to. Never got around to getting one since I could never find a used one at a sane price, what with comparably priced alternatives being typically more powerful. Just wasn’t viable for me at the time.

@@archgirl What about a ThinkPad with Linux? Mac and Linux doesn't sound like a good financial decision, as Macs were justified for its orignal OS. Then again, not anymore, as people began to install MacOS on PCs through Linux virtual machines.

@@jockeyjeon9532 I personally think Mac’s have never been justified at their price point, regardless of the OS you run on them. ThinkPad is a solid option, if you get the right one, but I don’t trust Lenovo worth a damn, so they’re not getting a penny from me. They’ve been known to install phishing software as part of the bloatware bundled with their systems. Not that it affects me, since I’d be wiping the drive and installing Linux anyway, but it’s the principle. I’d have to go secondhand, which wouldn’t be a problem if I was still in the market for a laptop, but I’m not. Don’t need one anymore. Thanks, though.

Linux on a Mac is great - but you need to know *first* if you have a 32-bit EFI or a later 64-bit EFI bootloader (despite both being real 64-bit Mac OS X operating systems once they load). Not so many desirable, modern Linux distros still work with 32-bit EFI. For example, Linux Mint stops at version 19.3 (LTS to 2023, I think), for 32-bit EFI, sadly. 64-bit EFI and, theoretically, you’re good to go for years.

@@stevearkwright It’s not too difficult to implement a workaround for 32-bit EFI. I remember having to look into it for an obscure netbook owned by a friend a while back. Add a bootia32 efi file to the EFI/BOOT directory of the installation medium, and it’ll boot on machines using a 32-bit EFI implementation just fine for installation. Custom grub2 config can be used for implementing the mode switch to 64-bit after the bootloader, instructions and templates for which can be found online. It’s getting harder and harder to find distros which still carry a 32-bit version, yes, but booting a 64-bit distro with a 32-bit bootloader is still doable. It’s not so heavily documented given that there aren’t all that many machines out there with 64-bit CPUs using 32-bit EFI, but there are discussions about it and solutions for it. Secondary to all of this is that I don’t believe any Mac produced after mid 2010 actually uses a 32-bit EFI anymore anyways. They switched over to a 64-bit EFI long ago. Before this, they were restricting 64-bit capable Macs to 32-bit mode because of kernel extension compatibility issues at the time. This is no longer a concern, and all modern Macs boot and run in 64-bit mode now, and appear to have done so for roughly a decade.

Think that only applies to the 27" models, as the 2017 21.5" didn't have the pull tab

You can run MacOS on your PC with by installing a linux virtual machine. Mutahar from Some Ordinary Gamers did it.

@@jockeyjeon9532 or just hackintosh it. You can still run windows along side Mac OS.

@@drbass9677 Running MacOS through virtual machine IS hackintosh.

Because during this time period SSDs were PRETTY PREMIUM then again.... macs are Premium hardware so paying 500USD for 512GB is fine

@@edwardtan1354 7200 drives were normal for many years before this model was released. And hybrid drives were fairly normal as well.

@@edwardtan1354 at the time, and for a few years after that, iMacs were the only Mac that sill shipped with HDDs. If you wanted a stock SSD you had to buy a MBP. It boggles the mind

@@wyterabitt2149 7200 2.5” drives normal for many years?

@@alvareo92 My mid range dell's all had them from 2011 onwards. And the hp I got for my gf in 2013 did. I only saw slower on low end, or the basic bad value spec companies try and sell those who don't research.

I had one from HP I'm guessing at a certain point there was really trashy components the circulated thing is that was a seagate, this one I think is a toshiba or hitachi made

Apple Legal would like to know your location.

@@kirishima638 ha! Non-MacOS updates still come through via Software Update. Needless to say, they know already.

i would love to be sure that it is really useful to do this, because I want to upgrade my 2013 iMac: to access the SSD, you have to unmount the whole iMac and motherboard. But I read the PCIe is only PCIe2.0 x 2 , so not much better rates than SATAIII SSD... what do you think ? Thank you

@@michelusac1798 PCIe 2.0 x2 is still 1GB/s theoretical over 600MB/s theoretical for SATA 6Gb/s. You can still use a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD in there and it would just negotiate down.

They did make a 2k 27in , in 2013 though