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Model A1311 / Late 2009 / 3.06 or 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

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Black Screen after HD replacement

Hello, I was wondering about a repair that I had made on my EMC 2308 iMac late 2009.

I had the HD replaced at Best Buy. When I got home and powered it on it ran fine. however, the fans where running really hard. anyways, I found a site called Hdfancontrol.com and installed the program to monitor the hdd fan speeds, which it has worked great. But when I powered my iMac yesterday it ran for about ten minutes with a high pitch sound coming from the left top portion of the iMac. After another five minutes it powered itself down.

I felt the back of the iMac and it felt hot in the region I described. I took it back to Best Buy and said that the logic board might of fried out. But I am not buying it because the iMac powers up and boots. I can take a flash light and see images on the screen, so I know everything is running correctly. I was wondering if the tech might of damaged the V sync cable because I opened up the iMac and noticed that one of the pins on the cable was curled back, so I was able to pull the pin back in place an re-attach, but no luck.

So should I replace the V sync cable and the inverter board, or do you think its the logic board?

Any help would be appreciated because I am pretty stressed out about this whole thing.

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Ho-boy, what a mess! ;-{

First the tech put in the wrong HD or didn't put back the thermal sensor cable correctly.

You see this model requires you swap out the HD with the SAME vendor drive it came with (Hitachi for a Hitachi, Seagate for a Seagate or lastly a WD for a WD).

If you want a different drive you need to change out the thermal sensor cable to match the drive:

  • 992-9215 - Hitachi
  • 992-9216 - Seagate
  • 992-9217 - Western Digital

Running the system with the wrong sensor puts a lot of stress on it. Even when using a software over-ride for SMC like HD Fan Control While it can be useful in a pinch its not something I recommend long term. You are not the first to discover the downside of running an over-ride app. We've seen many systems crap-out due to the limits of this solution. I don't use any over-ride software on any of our 300 + systems.

OK, thats what I can tell you on your first problem. While you did fix the bent pin on the V-Sync cable I'm not sure if it can explain things here. I think you just overheated the system and something finally gave due to the heat (LED driver board?).

Now the rub...

I would bring the system back to BestBuy and ask for your money back and your old HD as they really messed you up. I would not let them fix it at this point as the tech they have is clearly not qualified.

Now you'll need to think how you want to move forward here:

Are you able to fix your own system? if not, I think you should try getting to an Apple Store and see what they can do for you. Your system is on the edge on what they will service.

Replacing the HD with the correct drive or using the correct cable for the drive you now have is what I would do here. Frankly, you may want to think about putting in a SSHD hybrid drive to give your system some zip.

Just remember your systems SATA port is only SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) so what ever drive you put in must be able to run at this SATA speed, many newer drives don't! Make sure to review the spec sheet or give us the make and model of the drive you're thinking about and we'll tell you if it will work.

Last thing here is you may want to see if an external monitor works. If it does then you maybe right the LED Driver board needs replacing. At least you can use the system until you can get the needed part.

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