I have (or should I say, my wife) an early 24" 2009 iMac that I'm thinking about repairing.
I've replaced it with a 2017 iMac (Great machine by the way!) but instead of throwing it to the curb (I just can't picture myself throwing my once $2200 iMac out to the curb! A sad day for sure
![Gasp.png]()
) I would like to repair it if I can figure out which part it might need.
It has a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and 8Gb of RAM (the max, unfortunately). I put a Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD in two years ago, and actually it is quite fast and adequate for normal everyday surfing, email and Angry Birds(It's my wife's and she loves Angry Birds). OK, to the point...
It is shutting down randomly. I don't think it's heat related because I can get it to shut down right away from a cold reboot, or sometimes it might take awhile if I'm easy on it. It usually occurs when you open another program. Time Machine can usually trigger it to shut down (from all the extra windows popping up?), which makes me think the Graphics card is failing? I've taken the Graphics card out and baked it in the oven per you tube instructions (to maybe re-flow the solder? or maybe it's snake oil!). I've reapplied the correct heat-sink compound on both the Graphics and CPU chips. Nothing has helped, yet. I also blew out the dust, surprisingly there wasn't much. All the fans are working, and I monitor fan speed and temperatures with a program, all seem normal.
I see online there are two places that offer the graphics card for around $166 + shipping, not sure if these are new? If I was really sure it is the graphics card I wouldn't mind spending $188 (including shipping). But could it be the logic board?(definitely throw it away cause that is big $$$$), or Power supply (only $92)? Would I just be digging a hole? As a side note, I've re-staged the OS and started from scratch just to make sure no other installed programs were the cause. I also tried the original RAM.
Hopefully I've explained what mostly triggers it, What do you think it could be? And, Fix it or Trash it?
Thanks!
Tom
I've replaced it with a 2017 iMac (Great machine by the way!) but instead of throwing it to the curb (I just can't picture myself throwing my once $2200 iMac out to the curb! A sad day for sure
It has a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and 8Gb of RAM (the max, unfortunately). I put a Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD in two years ago, and actually it is quite fast and adequate for normal everyday surfing, email and Angry Birds(It's my wife's and she loves Angry Birds). OK, to the point...
It is shutting down randomly. I don't think it's heat related because I can get it to shut down right away from a cold reboot, or sometimes it might take awhile if I'm easy on it. It usually occurs when you open another program. Time Machine can usually trigger it to shut down (from all the extra windows popping up?), which makes me think the Graphics card is failing? I've taken the Graphics card out and baked it in the oven per you tube instructions (to maybe re-flow the solder? or maybe it's snake oil!). I've reapplied the correct heat-sink compound on both the Graphics and CPU chips. Nothing has helped, yet. I also blew out the dust, surprisingly there wasn't much. All the fans are working, and I monitor fan speed and temperatures with a program, all seem normal.
I see online there are two places that offer the graphics card for around $166 + shipping, not sure if these are new? If I was really sure it is the graphics card I wouldn't mind spending $188 (including shipping). But could it be the logic board?(definitely throw it away cause that is big $$$$), or Power supply (only $92)? Would I just be digging a hole? As a side note, I've re-staged the OS and started from scratch just to make sure no other installed programs were the cause. I also tried the original RAM.
Hopefully I've explained what mostly triggers it, What do you think it could be? And, Fix it or Trash it?
Thanks!
Tom
Last edited: