Skip to main content

Model A1312 / Mid 2010 / 3.2 GHz Core i3 or 2.8 & 3.6 GHz Core i5 or 2.93 GHz Core i7, ID iMac11,3

382 Questions View all

What's the fastest LGA1366 CPU supported Apple iMac A1312

Hi all,

I have a iMac A1312 (mid 2010) with a Core i7-970 LGA1366 and my certain question is - is that the fastest CPU supported by the logicboard ? I'm thinking of upgrading it with a Xeon X5690 Hexa-Core 3.47GHz. Will the board support the CPU at stock (or at all) or I will have to flash the filmware/bios of the logicboard. Has anyone atempted this kind of upgrade ?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Score 0
Add a comment

1 Answer

Chosen Solution

I did some research on this:

From the motherboard socket LGA1366 there's a large number of CPU's supported:

- Core i7-960 or 970

- Core i7-990X

- Xeon W3580, W3690 or W5590

- Xeon X5690, X5687 or X5698

The top ones from this list are the i7-970, X5690 or X5698

The i7-970 and X5690 do have 6 cores and the X5698 only 4 cores.

BUT:

The X5687 does have:

- Higher Max Operating Temp (80.4C vs 78.5C)

- Higher Turbo clock speed (3.86GHz vs 3.73GHz)

- Slightly higher clock speed (3.6GHz vs 3.46GHz)

- Slightly better overclock speed (4.61GHz vs 4.47GHz on Air, and 3.6GHz vs 3.47GHz on Water)

If your looking for clock speed, X5687 wins

If your looking for cores, the X5690 wins

Though warning:

- Your computer is a iMac so I doubt upgrading your hardware is possible, but if it is you can try (Though the OS might conflict with it, as it's Mac OS and we all know how limited Apple is when it comes to hardware.)

- You need to make sure the RAM is compatible with the new CPU

- Also look carefully at the Power Usage and Max Temperatures of the new CPU!

As for installing a CPU, there's lots of guides out there (I believe here on iFixIt too) on how to upgrade CPU, as for me I didn't experience problems when upgrading from i5-3470S to i5-3570.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 1

3 Comments:

Thank you very much Lena Fox for the research that you have done. Yes I’ll keep in mind for the TDP and power drain, because I also want to upgrade from the stock Radeon HD5750 1GB to a nVidia GTX980m 8GB or a GTX1070 8GB, so I have to calculate the total power supply output and power drainage from the CPU and GPU.

Anyhow, thank you again very much for the research Lena Fox, cheers

by

Did you ever go ahead with with the GPU upgrade? if so how did you go about this?

by

@evgeni933 - You are limited to what Apple has used for CPU's as the micro code held in the systems BIOS (EFI) only supports these CPU's. Here's your choices iMac11,3

Also the Xeon X5690 Hexa-Core 3.47GHz requires more power and cooling than what your system offers.

by

Add a comment

Add your answer

Evgeni Valev will be eternally grateful.
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 2

Past 7 Days: 2

Past 30 Days: 6

All Time: 1,138