Low End Mac Mailbag: Upgrading a 2011 27″ iMac with a Quadro K4100M

Certain iMacs from the early 2010s and late 2000s have an MXM GPU slot inside them, allowing for the graphics card to be replaced or upgraded. All 27″ and 21.5″ 2009 – 2011 iMacs have an MXM 3.0 slot, with the exception of the late 2009 21.5″ iMac with the base GeForce 9400m GPU. MXM […]

Mini-PCIe, Express34, MXM eGPU compatibility index: Part 3

Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This is article is broken up into 3 parts, as it contains a lot of information and pictures. Please refer to part 1 of the article for hardware/parts prerequisites. Sections 1 through 5 are contained in part 1, Sections […]

Mini-PCIe, Express34, MXM eGPU compatibility index: Part 2

Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This is article is broken up into 3 parts, as it contains a lot of information and pictures. Please refer to part 1 of the article for hardware/parts prerequisites. Sections 1 through 5 are contained in part 1, Sections […]

Mini-PCIe, Express34, MXM eGPU compatibility index: Part 1

Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This usually requires external power, the corresponding adapters, can be done via the mini-PCIe slot or MXM slot, and come with case-by-case caveats as most of this was never intended to be a thing. Once installed and properly connected, […]

CustoMac: Gutted 20″ ’06 iMac + eGPU

Nearly 20 years ago, this was a white Late 2006 20″ iMac. Today, it’s fastened to two wooden shelf pieces, supported by a… shelf bracket. Modifications done: Ripped out the Radeon x1600 chip, Bluetooth and wifi antenna is out of a 17″ 2006 MacBook Pro, Thermaltake smart 700W external PSU, A T7600 2.33 GHz Core […]

ATI Radeon X850XT vs Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL: 20 Years Later

In the world of computer upgrades and peripherals, the age-old question has come up time and time again: do I get this one, or that one? Whether “Apple or Microsoft”, “Intel or AMD”, “iPhone or Android”, “ATI or Nvidia”.. competitors seek to have an advantage over the other, as so to convince someone to buy […]

Adding PCIe (Yes, PCI-Express) to your AGP/PCI-Based PowerPC Mac

The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, aka PCIe, is a longstanding serial computer expansion bus standard created in 2003. The Late 2005 Power Mac G5 was the only PowerPC Mac which took advantage of this technology, which had a production run of October 2005 – August 2006. As a result, AGP/PCI-based Macs received 1-2 years lesser […]

Maximizing the GPU in your MXM-based iMac

Between 2006 and 2011, many iMacs shipped with a removable internal graphics card known as an MXM GPU. MXM (Mobile PCI EXpress Module) is an interface pioneered by Nvidia around 2004, originally intended for laptops, which had gone through several iterations before slowly phasing out as a platform interface connection standard. As our Macs age, […]