but on a Intel Core i3 4130 which leaves a lot to desire in terms of performance. As anyone knows who's done a CPU swap in an iMac before, this is NOT an upgrade for the faint of heart, but at least now I can provide definitive proof that the cheaper Core i7-4770 works like a treat in this particular iMac.I recently brought an iMac 27' 14,2 back to life after a CPU fault (which in itself was odd since I never seen a PC or Mac with a fried Intel CPU) and it runs pretty nice. It definitely runs hotter than the i5 that it came with, but that's something I expected. The iMac booted up first try and it recognizes the CPU as if it were factory installed. The much more common i7-4770 CPU is readily available, so I was able to snag one for $35 and I figured I'd give it a shot and see if it would work. I knew Apple had offered a Core i7 option, but that SKU used a rather uncommon Core i7-4771 that Intel made specifically for this iMac, and obtaining those is often difficult and expensive. Over the years I upgraded the RAM and swapped the HDD for an SSD, but it was starting to show its age with just a 4c/4t CPU installed. It was a base model, originally shipping with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, as well as a Core i5-4570 CPU. The machine was a very generous gift from my Mom and I have loved it from the day I received it. I'm sure this has been done before- however, my goal with this post is simply to provide a success story for anyone else who is considering this upgrade. I wanted to document this somewhere on the internet as I have spent hours researching this and never found any success stories.

Ifixit imac 27 late 2013