iMac 24" Video card replacement??

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I have the 24" iMac with the following video card:
- NVIDIA GeForce 8800GS 512MB GDDR3

I recently took my iMac in to see a Genius and they said that either the video card or the system board needs replaced (see below for reason).

My question is where can I purchase another video card for the iMac? I know you can't get these types at a local computer store.

I am able to replace the hard drive myself so I'm sure replacing the video card will not be that more difficult.

The Apple store wanted to charge something like $396 for the video card which I find outrageous as this is a 2+ year old computer.


The issue I was having was the computer would not boot to the hard drive or the CD/DVD drive, or any other attached external drive for that matter. I've done the key strokes to boot to the CD/DVD drive and to select which drive you want to boot to. In both cases... it would not boot.

In the begining I could see the top portion of the screen but could not access any of the menus. After a few reboots, all I would see was the Apple logo and the spinning wheel (grey color) which would lock up. The Genius guy said that it's most likely the video card because if it were the system board, I would not have gotten that far.


Thank you in advanced for any help that I can get.
 

pigoo3

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I'm pretty sure the "video hardware" on your iMac is NOT replaceable. It's not a "video card" that can be removed like on a desktop tower computer. The iMac's video hardware is integrated/soldered onto the logic board & simply is not removable or replaceable.

HTH,

- Nick
 

dtravis7


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A close friend of mine has a 24" iMac and his after a power surge did that very thing. It would not boot from the any OSX DVD, Not from a Firewire drive. It was the main hard drive that was dead.

I searched google and found others with the same issue and everyone who installed a new hard drive made it come alive and we were able to install OSX and it runs like new again.

My friends machine runs perfectly once again. From what I read a dead hard drive on some iMacs will not let it boot from anything else including the OSX DVD.
 

chscag

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Nick is correct. The only iMac that currently has a removable video card is the 27" model, and it's not exactly an easy job to get at it. So if Apple recommended changing the video chipset, they were really saying that the entire logic board had to be swapped out.
 

pigoo3

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So if Apple recommended changing the video chipset, they were really saying that the entire logic board had to be swapped out.

To the OP: And...if the Apple folks quoted $396 to do the replacement...this is actually not too bad...considering in many cases folks are paying upwards of $700-$750 for a logic board replacement (maybe iMac logic boards are less expensive).:)

- Nick
 
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Logic board replacements for 20" & 24" iMacs are MUCH cheaper than MBs and MBPs. That is because they ship as the bare logic board. The CPU, heatsink, sound board, WIFI and bluetooth cards will be salvaged and re-used from your old logic board.
 

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