imac G4 CPU Upgrade

Hello there. I have an imac flat pannel G4 800mhz and I've decided that, with the release of World of Warcraft, I either need to update my Mac or buy a new one (it'll be difficult to get my parents to agree to the latter >_< so that I can play a game). I was wondering, is there anyway I can upgrade the CPU of my imac? I've been looking around and all I can seem to find are PowerMac upgrades, but none for G4 imacs. Thanks for any help you can offer, it's much appreciated!

Well, that's because there are no CPU upgrades for the flat panel iMac...
The CPU is soldered on the logic board, so there's no way to upgrade it.

If gaming is so important for you, you shouldn't have bought a Mac, game support for Mac just simply sucks...

You know, I vaguley remember reading something about that when we bought it. I never play PC games btw, but WOW caught my interest. Well, guess it's back to the drawing board. I need to figure out a way to get my parents to buy a new computer....hmmm...anyway, thanks for your help, you've saved me much angst (and I can finally go to bed).

i'm sorry to go for a necro posting but i 'd like to know why soldered cpu's can't be unsoldered and updated ?

harlock59 said:

i'm sorry to go for a necro posting but i 'd like to know why soldered cpu's can't be unsoldered and updated ?

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Normally my "knee-jerk" reply usually is to say no...but I don't like to think anything is impossible. But in 99.9999999% of the situations...no...a soldered cpu cannot be unsoldered & upgraded.

- Nick

Because you need robotic precision and minute amounts of solder to to put the CPU onto the logic board. No person has that skill do remove and replace without damaging surrounding components.

Because you need robotic precision and minute amounts of solder to to put the CPU onto the logic board.

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Modern multi-layer circuit boards really aren't even soldered per se. They're "dipped" in a hot solder bath done by a robot. What member "Stretch" says is true because there is no way you and I could do the same thing even if we had the right equipment.

Here's about a 10 minute video on how motherboards/logic boards are made:

How to make a Motherboard - A GIGABYTE Factory Tour Video - YouTube

In regards to the soldering process...(to simplify things) it's kind of a 3 step process:

1. The bottom side of the board is "smeared" with a layer of solder-paste.
2. Most of the small integrated circuits, cpu, gpu are placed on the board.
3. The motherboard then goes thru a "Reflow Oven" where the board goes thru a "reflow-soldering" process.

Reflow soldering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nothing is hand-soldered! Everything is just too small & too tightly packed for it to be even remotely possible for someone to desolder & solder components.

- Nick