Giving a mid-2011 iMac some much needed pep

My Problem

Being the better part of three years old, our iMac was starting to show it's age. Although adequate, the stock system needed a bit of a performance boost.

My Fix

Fantastic. I watched the video a couple of times and read the guide several while I was waiting for my parts to arrive. When the time came to do the actual repair, it was smooth sailing from start to finish. Overall, the process took between 90 and 120 minutes, with the trickiest part being getting all of the cables to stay in place while repositioning the logic board. Installed a 120GB Crucial SSD (boot drive) as per the tutorial and replaced the stock drive the a 2TB storage drive at the same time. Add to that an extra 8GB of memory and you've got a very respectable machine, good for several more years of service. Overall I'm very satisfied.

My Advice

Although the repair is listed as difficult, I think it's subjective. Really, if you've ever built your own computer or own more than one piece of IKEA furniture, you can handle this repair without breaking a sweat. The critical skills you need to do this successfully are patience and the ability to identify parts/cables based on a reference.