Ack, my iMac died!

StrangeDaysStrangeDays
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware
I've been running a fully-loaded 2011 iMac until last week. Specs:
  • 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
  • 20GB RAM
  • AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 2GB VRAM
  • 256GB SSD
...it was a good machine; besides general computing I ran VMs and did my software dev on it. Couldn't run the latest macOS tho. What failed? A few years back the graphics card, which I replaced for about $600. This time it began restarting randomly at first, then repeatedly over & over. Apple logo, progress bar, gray screen, reboot. Could not get into the recovery system (CMD+R). From what I could google this seems to be faulty logic board. I dunno if this was due to clogged vents which I wasn't great about cleaning, or if the machine wasn't actually going to sleep each nite and was always burning away (the sleep settings for it never seemed quite reliable, it was often on when my schedule said it should be asleep).

Didn't make sense to put any more money into it, and MR buying guide said they just updated them in March '19...so I bit the bullet and ordered a new iMac! Was going to get a refurb but I use a VESA arm mount on my desk, and discovered with 2012+ models you cannot freely remove the stand! You must choose either a VESA model or a stand model. So I did a BTO VESA model:
  • 3.6GHz 8-core Intel Core i9, turbo boost up to 5.0GHz
  • 8GB RAM (I will be upgrading this via Crucial. Can max it at 64GB for $280)
  • Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 8GB HBM2 memory
  • 2TB SSD (Apple lowered prices recently and 2TB is $400 more than 1TB...not cheap but over another 8 years is doable)
Express shipping is only $8 (whoa, is there anything so cheap on Apple.com!?), but isn't available for VESA models. So it will be a week or two.

Looking forward to that 5k display.
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