Chosen Solution
Hello all, I have an old 2007 iMac 7.1 standing around in the attic and wanted to give it a new go. I’ve already maxed out the RAM to 6GB and equipped it with a 750GB SSD which worked quite well. I also wanted to upgrade the CPU and maybe try and get Mojave running. There have been reports of successful upgrades to a C2D T9300, so I figured I might try my luck with a T9500 SLAYX which I happened upon. I went through all the hoops and swapped the CPU just fine, but after reassembly the machine wouldn’t boot. It would power up and the optical drive would initialize - but nothing after that (black screen). So I’m wondering if the T9500 is incompatible with my machine or did I get a faulty CPU? And if the T9500 is incompatible, (why) would the T9300 be? Thanks so much, Mark
While the T9500 chip fits the socket it’s not compatible with your system. Your systems BIOS (EFI) does not have the support for this chip. Intel Core2 Duo Processor T7300Intel Core2 Duo Processor T9500
While the Core 2 Due T9*** (Penryn) chips are not supported by the 2007 iMac they WILL work. The iMac will misread the processor speed and will tell you the system is running an 800Mhz CPU, due to it not recognising the processor, however it will run normally. The exceptions to this are the extreme chips from this generation: X9***. They will boot but will be horribly slow. If I remember correctly that’s due to their unlocked core clock which would be great if the iMac could overclock or even knew what the chip was but as it doesn’t, will just run with a multiplier of x1 (800Mhz FSB speed x 1 = 800Mhz core clock). Using the Penryn architecture and some readily available OSX installer mods will allow you to install both High Sierra & Mojave, with the latter being technically possible but probably not worth the hassle due to the aging ATI graphics. These machines may be on their last legs at this point but with a Penryn CPU, SSD and a boat load of old DDR2 RAM they can still be put to use for checking your e-mails and a bit of light YouTube consumption. EDIT: It’s worth noting that whilst in this exact use case you can use a couple of unsupported CPU’s, most of the time the advice above is worth listening to. Just being able to place a newer CPU in a socket does not mean it will work so if in doubt make sure someone else with the same hardware has managed to successfully do the swap. If not then you’re probably out of luck.
