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Model A1419 / EMC 2806 / Late 2014 or Mid 2015. 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (ID iMac15,1); EMC 2834 late 2015 / 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (iMac17,1) All with Retina 5K displays

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Upgrading iMac 27" EMC 2834 late 2015 with Quad-Core intel i5 cpu 3.2G

So I want to upgrade my imac's cpu (detals about both are in the title), but I have no idea on what cpus are even compatible with it. I haven't really done anything related to replacing cpus and don't know which are compatible with this iMac so I wanted to figure out what cpus are compatible and where I can buy them. I'm pretty sure that the cpu is socketed and not soldered onto the board so I think it is replaceable but I don't know what other cpus will fit into the socket on the motherboard.

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The easiest way is to look at EveryMac under the given systems ID version iMac17,1 as we can see the best the systems firmware micro code can support is the 4.0 GHz Core i7 (I7-6700K) chip which is part of the Skylake family.

But before you make the jump make sure your need for performance can’t be solved in other ways!

The first is the RAM make sure you are at least 16GB and depending on your drive configuration Fusion drives are a bit tricky Vs a straight SATA HDD setup which you can easily swap out to a SSD.

In the case of a Fusion Drive setup there is a hidden second PCIe blade drive on the back side of the logic board which either will need to be removed fully, or what I prefer is to replace it with a 1TB Blade SSD drive making it the boot drive and leaving the HDD in place. You will need to do a full backup before you start as you will need to reformat the HDD as its still stuck to the Blade SSD that was being used as a cache drive for the slower HDD. You’ll also want to make a bootable OS installer drive (USB thumb drive) so you can prep both drives.

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I've already upgraded the ram to 32 gb and have replaced the 1tb hdd to an ssd, and there are still some times where it is slow so idk if theres still a problem with those. I'm not really sure what you're saying about the fusion drive, as I don't really understand what it even does. And is the i7 6700k the highest power chip that's only compatible with my imac or is there a way to install an even better chip, like an i9?

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@krishnabas67450 - the issue is what Apple installs in the systems firmware. Intel CPU’s require microcode which is stored in the systems ROM. This series used Skylake CPU’s so only they will work in this system. Intel never offered a i9 Skylake chip.


A Fusion Drive is unique to Apple, basically they married two drives a standard SATA HDD with a PCIe/NVMe blade SSD which is mounted on the back side of the logic board which you can see here in this guide iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Blade SSD Replacement. Your performance issues might be related if you still have it mounted.


To add performance you might look at getting a 1TB blade SSD to replace the wimpish SSD Apple installed. But not fuse the two drives instead run the two drives independently, here we will setup the blade SSD as the boot drive and hold your OS and App’s leaving a good portion free so the OS and Apps have some room for caching and scratch space. Your media files (music & vids) sit on the SATA SSD as well as your completed work, only your current projects on blade SSD

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Im probably missing something but isnt there already an i9 skylake cpu? I checked this site (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/...) and there seemed to be i9s.

So we can boot the OS off of the Blade SSD, which I assume is faster than the sata hard drive, and keep applications there for faster use? And what would happen if I did fuse the two drives?

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@krishnabas67450 - it’s not that simple, review this Compatibility of Desktop 9th and 8th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors I should have gone a bit deeper as it’s the support chips that also plays into this.


Fusing two SSDs would be pointless, you loose performance as the caching SSD would struggle. You also loose access to the drive for anything else. It made sense when SSDs where expensive in the larger sizes, but SSD prices fell as well as better performance they offer. Today SATA SSDs are hitting the SATA I/O limit, HDDs are just getting to about 2/3rds of the I/O channel after it’s about half full, SSDs don’t hit that at all.

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I think I understand now. This iMac is only compatible with cpus that the micro code is compatible with and are compatible with the chipset. So is the i7 6900k the best cpu I can get? and how do I turbo boost it to get faster preformance as it seems to be an option.

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