02-16-2012, 03:48 PM

I purchased my iMac in 2008, when the new Aluminum 24" model was release.

Since then the machine's performance has declined and recently the left speaker and hard drive gave out. So, I decided to perform an upgrade. I've read a lot about people upgrading to an SSD + HD – this definitely interested me.

Doing so required the removal of the optical drive - which was easy to part with as I hardly use the thing. However, given that the optical drive is connected via ATAPI (PATA), utilizing such a connection would severely hobble the SSD speed (via optical drive caddy). As a result, I decided to purchase the commell MPX-3132 Sata II mini pcie card forgoing wifi as my machine is wired with Ethernet. Since you cannot boot off the commell card the SSD had to be wired to the logic board’s sata port while the 1TB storage drive would be connected to the commell card.

In all, the upgrade was well worth the time and money spent – the machine hums along very nicely with 10.7.3 installed. Further, the read/write speeds of upgrading from my external firewire 1TB to an internal Sata II are pleasing.

One Issue I ran into was getting power to both hard drives. This was resolved using a simple Sata Power splitter cable. As you can see in the pictures – I had to reposition the 1TB HD to accommodate the new Power/Data sata cables – although it technically shouldn’t fit I figured out a way to make it work.

The upgrade include the flowing equipment:

Western Digital 1TB 7200 Black Caviar
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD
Commell MPX-3132 Card
4GB RAM module (total of 6GB)
One Sata Power Splitter
One Sata data extension cable

Thanks to all those who posted info on upgrading iMacs on the forum!

-Tom

02-16-2012, 08:58 PM

Nice job Tom and a great bit of innovation.

02-16-2012, 09:11 PM

Aren't those pics just a bit TOO big? lol

02-16-2012, 09:27 PM

Originally Posted by iggibar

Aren't those pics just a bit TOO big? lol

agreed - lol, I didn't realized I uploaded the gigantic versions until now.

Fixed!

02-16-2012, 09:36 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

Nice job Tom and a great bit of innovation.

thanks! i might be doing some more work on it soon - I have one open sata II port on the commell card that i feel obligated to make use of... im thinking of possibly adding an eSata port on the back of the iMac by laser etching out a small hole near the rest of the ports. well see...

04-09-2012, 06:05 PM

Great post, I actually used it as a guide for my upgrade. Only problem I ran into was the clearance for the SATA cable to the mini pcie card. How did you get the sata cable sleeveless like that? Or is there a place I can purchase it. Any help would be great, thanks.

05-11-2012, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by speedbump

Great post, I actually used it as a guide for my upgrade. Only problem I ran into was the clearance for the SATA cable to the mini pcie card. How did you get the sata cable sleeveless like that? Or is there a place I can purchase it. Any help would be great, thanks.

The sleeveless SATA cable was part of the mini card purchase. Commell provides two cable of such sort which connect to the two open SATA ports on the card. Hope that helps.

see page 3 of this pdf: http://www.commell.com.tw/Download/M...Manual_V10.pdf

07-17-2012, 09:18 PM

UPDATE - I'm not sure if the OS update to 10.7.4 changed something but all of a sudden my imac no longer recognizes my Commell 3132 card (i.e. the system profiler doesn't show the "Parallel SCSI" data like it used to).

:-( has any one else experienced this problem?

-Tom

10-12-2012, 07:00 AM

Originally Posted by tomasjzc7

UPDATE - I'm not sure if the OS update to 10.7.4 changed something but all of a sudden my imac no longer recognizes my Commell 3132 card (i.e. the system profiler doesn't show the "Parallel SCSI" data like it used to).

:-( has any one else experienced this problem?

-Tom

Hi Tom!

Is resolved the problem? Has been working in Lion?