Anyone know the latest version of OS X this Mac can install?

[Jsheeeeeehan]

Hi there.

I hope someone can help. Please excuse my lack of knowledge.

I have a Late 2008 iMac, which I have fished out the loft. Its horrendously slow (because of the HDD I reckon) I plan on giving it a clean and booting it off a external SSD to (hopefully) speed it up. Before being put in the loft I updated it to Sierra using the unofficial update tool. I would now like to wipe it and revert it to the most up to date version of OS X it can run. I have searched on the internet for this but cannot get a clear answer. Would anyone have a download link for such a version?

Ultimately I would love to replace the internal HDD with a SSD but I'll have to watch a lot more YouTube tutorials before doing that. ?

Bare in mind this is just a little fun project I'm doing, so anymore advice is welcomed!

Thanks in advance
Jack ?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Using Everymac.com as a guide there is no "Late 2008 iMac" so I'm going to assume it's an "Early 2008 iMac" (iMac8,1).

You can use dosdude1's Catalina Patcher on the iMac8,1 model.

I'm not sure how well it will run from the USB 2.0 ports…not great I'm thinking. It would be better to have an internal SSD. You can put 6GB of RAM in it and if you're actually thinking about using it you should.

Be sure to check out the instructions at ifixit.com for swapping out the hard drive.

 

[charlyham]

Hi there.

I hope someone can help. Please excuse my lack of knowledge.

I have a Late 2008 iMac, which I have fished out the loft. Its horrendously slow (because of the HDD I reckon) I plan on giving it a clean and booting it off a external SSD to (hopefully) speed it up. Before being put in the loft I updated it to Sierra using the unofficial update tool. I would now like to wipe it and revert it to the most up to date version of OS X it can run. I have searched on the internet for this but cannot get a clear answer. Would anyone have a download link for such a version?

Ultimately I would love to replace the internal HDD with a SSD but I'll have to watch a lot more YouTube tutorials before doing that. ?

Bare in mind this is just a little fun project I'm doing, so anymore advice is welcomed!

Thanks in advance
Jack ?

Here's is a website that might be helpful with your project:

20″ iMac (Early 2008) | Low End Mac

 

[Brian33]

I used a 27" Early 2008 iMac (8,1) until its graphics card died at the beginning of 2016. I had opened it up and installed a 2.5" SATA SSD along with replacing the optical drive with a PATA-to-SATA adapter and a 2.5" HDD. I combined them into a 1.5 TB DIY Fusion drive and it was fantastic.

I was very careful during the SSD installation, but with instructions from iFixit, it wasn't very difficult, and I had almost no prior experience. I think I was last running El Capitan, which worked well IIRC. I had the max 6 GB of RAM.

It was very usable, and I was still quite satisfied with its performance as my "daily driver" when the graphics finally failed completely.

 

[Nermal]

The latest version you can officially run is 10.11 (10.12 requires a 2009 model), available here.