How Bad is a 16 year old iMac?

Hello everyone and welcome back to another Budget Builds Episode where today I have managed to live the dream, and get an iMac without having to go through apple...No but seriously I found these iMacs for sale for under £30 over on CeX all posted to your door. I genuinely didnt expect them to even post it, and after it arrived well it all turned into a bit of an adventure, I hope you all enjoy!
Intro - 0:00
What did I order? - 0:11
Unboxing the iMac - 1:07
What did they send me? - 1:36
Turning the iMac on for the first time - 2:03
Floor iMac - 3:34
The Cleaning Montage - 6:00
The Specs - 6:50
Internet...Over Bluetooth!?? - 8:07
Findng a Web Browser - 9:13
Settling for Chrome for once - 10:52
Lets get some programs on this thing - 11:40
The Benchmarks: 13:00
So that was an interesting experience - 15:48
Video Editing in Premiere Pro - 17:00
Photoshop and 3D Modelling Tests - 18:16
Live Usage of the iMac ... Realtime - 19:29
Conclusion - 26:12
Patreon: / budgetbuilds
Twitter: / budget_builds_
Specs:
CPU: Core2Duo (E4400 I believe)
GPU: AMD Radeon 2400XT
RAM: 4GB DDR2
OS: OSX 10.8

[@aaaalex1994]

A few things to note: - You can update the OS to macOS 10.11, but old PowerPC apps will not work with macOS 10.7 or later, due to the removal of Rosetta, the PowerPC-to-Intel compatibility layer. I recommend to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6) for that. It's a great and fast OS (one of my favorite operating systems!). - This computer, just like most Intel iMacs with dedicated graphics, has a laptop GPU (so it's a Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT on an MXM card). - Maybe I'm wrong, but this model of iMac could have some leaky capacitors, especially on the power supply...

[@supabass4003]

Yes and then you can play Simtown!!!

[@Fahrenheit38]

Can these run XP?

[@aaaalex1994]

@@Fahrenheit38 I think so!

[@pracalt1051]

@@Fahrenheit38yea. 10.6 has windows xp drivers

[@IgnacioGonOroz]

@@Fahrenheit38 it can and even up to windows 11! writing this from a 2008 imac c2d on tiny 11 with an ssd and it runs silky smooth!

[@alexkindl861]

The old Mac rabbit-hole! I've been PC since time immemorial, so checking out old Macs and finding how they're different is a ton of fun. They're weird, have open source hacks, specific IFKYK command line fixes, and a lot of archived community posts. Sometimes they work smooth as glass, sometimes they gaslight you. Thanks for the video!

[@pasanaator9874]

Ah yes, the Henry cleaner helping the Mac work

[@shaneeslick]

Henry did look happy having a PC 😂

[@Flameboi900]

There are two options you can do for an older mac like this, either use a open source modern coded browser or use open core to update to an unsupported operating systems with hacked drivers

[@TheSpotify95]

For something like this it might be worth downgrading to OS 10.6 so that you can then get PowerPC apps working on it, such as old retro games this thing was designed to run. I doubt it would be very fast trying to run 10.15 (the last supported OS for any modern software) very well at all even if using Opencore Legacy Patcher.

[@sihamhamda47]

Or a third option: use it as a mini family entertainment center. Fill it with some retro games, movies and music

[@masterkamen371]

​​@@TheSpotify95 The gaming experience on these is hot garbage. Not worth it at all. Call of Duty 2 ran at like 10 fps on my early 2006 rig. 2008 iMac is better enough to warrant something more, those can run OS X Sonoma no problem. Speaking from experience. SSD upgrade and 4GB RAM, runs it quite well aside from the CPU being a wee bit slow.

[@cor7578]

or ubuntu or windows 10.

[@nfrcomputers]

i'm running linux mint on a 2009 imac with c2d. works fine for watching movies, either via streaming or by downloaded mp4 files or DVD. it can handle basic web browsing and email tasks, although mine is maxed out with 16gb ram and an SSD which improves the usability GREATLY.

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

These have mobile CPUs, not desktop chips like the E4400. This iMac has a T7300, which makes it the slowest aluminium iMac. You can upgrade these to a "Penryn" CPU like the T9300 and have it run MacOS 12 with opencore legacy. They also have the HDD temperature sensor externally, so you can upgrade these just fine with an SSD. As this is basically a PC and includes a BIOS compatibility mode which let's it install almost all Linux distros and Windows 10 via USB. They don't work too well, but they will install. That fixes ALL of your software incompatibility issues.

[@mikespangler98]

The newer OS might work with Open Core, but the software you want may not. I found that Monterey worked fine on a 2010 Mac Pro, but software that expected AVX crashed hard, That vintage Xeon doesn't have AVX.

[@chadbranston9741]

Dankpods is still using his 07 iMac and that is still going strong

[@IgnacioGonOroz]

Im actually watching this from a 2008 imac with mac os catalina and an ssd. It only costed me 50$usd in mint condition!

[@danyuzunov]

Doom might be in the dark ages but Budget-Builds Official is ETERNAL

[@mcrazza]

I ran an Early 2008 24" iMac for 14 years as my DD right up until late 2022 when it finally died (the PSU failed). It worked beautifully. TBF I did replace/upgrade the parts multiple times over the years just to keep it going. Specs: 3.06GHz, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD, ATI HD 2600 Pro 256MB, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The only problem was most browsers weren't updated except for Opera (at the time) therfore limiting me to said browser. Almost all apps I downloaded from the Mac App Store weren't up-to-date either due to the outdated OS. Other than that, it just worked. It was still a modern PC. I still have it sitting on the floor waiting for the day I get a replacement PSU. I miss using a Mac now that I'm on PC. That's a whole other story for another time.

[@cleanycloth]

And with OpenCore Legacy Patcher you can probably even get something like Monterey running on it. I have Monterey running on a 2010 Mac Pro Server and it works wonderfully.

[@mcrazza]

​@@cleanycloth I investigated that shortly before my Mac died but decided against it because the process looked complicated and I didn't want to stuff it up given it was the only computer I had. Now that I have a PC I might tinker with the old Mac. How's performance of Monterey on a C2D?

[@kuchenblechmafiagmbh1381]

@@mcrazza Not so well, I had Big Sur on my Early 2008 17" MacBook Pro (the last non-Unibody) and it ran but not very good (despite SSD and 4 Gigs of RAM, the maximum), I then returned to 10.9 Mavericks (last with Skeumorphism) and now to 10.15 Catalina, it still runs decent. Also the temperatures (I use Macs Fan Control) are better with Catalina, while it was almost constantly running rather hot with Big Sur. They say you should at least have a quadcore CPU for newer than Catalina, so late 2009 iMac with i5/i7 (or upgrade the i3).

[@cleanycloth]

@@mcrazza Monterey was a little slow on my Core 2 Duo 2010 Mac Mini, but it was definitely usable. It was probably more down to my BX500 SSD that I've heard sometimes can be a bit weird with macOS. OCLP works with Big Sur onwards, below that you have DosDude1's patchers (and Catalina ran great on my 2010 Mini)

[@masterkamen371]

OCLP's gotten really good in the last year. They can easily be daily drivers on the latest macOS for the next 5 or so years so long as the hardware doesn't die.

[@thorium9190]

Chuck in an SSD and install more ram, then use OpenCore Legacy Patcher and you can run the current and latest version of Mac OS on it! (Albeit a bit slow)

[@TheSpotify95]

except getting more than 4GB DDR2 is going to be a nightmare unless the imac has 4 RAM slots.

[@thorium9190]

Apple says maximum support of 4GB but users have tested it with 6Gb of ram, which thinking of it, 3Gb ddr2 modules sound so odd. But even then, 4GB can run Mac OS, I ran Sonoma on a first gen 2008 MacBook Air with 2GB of ram for giggles, it was hilariously slow, but still faster than using an old mechanical hard drive

[@aftertheelectrike1847]

​@@thorium9190It's 4GB + 2GB

[@berkant_k]

You should probably update it to Mac OS X El Capitan, because it will be way more useful instead of the older OS versions.

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

Not really. MacOS 12 via opencore (only with CPU upgrade), Linux or Windows are the way to go on these.

[@berkant_k]

​@@Txm_Dxr_Bxss I meant like officially, also the old Radeon GPU would probably struggle on the unsupported OS versions because of it age.

[@AltCutTV]

Found a 2019 iMac for around €90. Still opted for a Linux OS. Dealing with unsupported systems is just not worth the effort for average use. The day the latest possible version will not be compatible with a recent program update is always closing in fast. Especially on Macs sadly.

[@berkant_k]

@@AltCutTV I would guess you meant a 2009 iMac, and yeah running a modern Linux distro on it sounds like a great idea.

[@AltCutTV]

​@@berkant_k No, definitely not that old. :) It has DDR4. But maybe it was 2017 though come to think of it. It didn't say the year on the "about" thing for some reason. It's 3.4quad, RP5604G 4K so I could probably find the year in one of those model spec charts. But yes, apart from some annoyance with sound support and sleep mode being weird Linux plays very nice with it. But that Cirrus sound thing is the only real meddling needed. The reason I got it that cheap was it seemed to have fallen out of a car or something. While moving. So there was quite some work to get the glass off the screen. As compared to no effort really on those older models of the video. It also make an even louder squeaky sound from the hinge. So that is probably also due to the traffic incident. ;D

[@montecorbit8280]

I was kind of hoping you would throw an SSD in there and clone the old disk drive onto it. I'd love to see a supplemental video and see what it runs like that way....same software just a better drive. I would also like to see what it is like running Windows, and Lenox....

[@masterkamen371]

These are trash PCs. Best use case is to give you the Mac experience on the ultra cheap. They do that job well.

[@1987FX16]

9:00 "Bluetooth WiFi" Wow, I didn't know there was a whole new wireless data transfer protocol. To think they've been hiding it this whole time.

[@EweToobUsername]

Most of us call this “personal area network”.

[@alexanrsousa]

This reminds me a bit of my brother's old 2011 Mac mini. It ran like absolute dogsh** with a mechanical HDD with High Sierra, but was snappy and fine with Lion. With an SSD It could handle High Sierra well enough, but in the end even that got too "old" for modern enough software and after he upgraded his sound interface to something that didn't need Firewire he got rid of it. There seems to be a weird trend that macOS/OSX and Windows share - Windows 7/8 (and even early versions of 10) and old OS X versions could run really well on HDDs, but then something got updated and using HDDs as the system drive became unbearably slow somewhat suddenly.

[@mikespangler98]

The optimum disk reading strategy for a spinning platter is very different from that for an SSD. An SSD has no penalty for random reads, there is no head to move, nor any rotational latency.

[@MiSt3300]

Wow so many uploads! Thanks!

[@jspencer89yt]

Mac always had a tendency to do indexing when they power on older systems. That’s why they generally feel slower in the beginning and speed up as you continue using them.

[@ChrisATyeArtist]

I inherited one of these - so it cost me nothing. I upgraded it from 1Gb to 4Gb RAM; replaced the hard drive with an SSD; and replaced the T7300 processor with a T9300. The processor upgrade means it’ll work with Catalina on Opencore. However, I just replaced MacOS with Ubuntu 24.04, and it works really well for basic computing use.

[@sprint955st]

There’s nothing wrong with that Mac, it’s your expectations that have changed and evolved with technology changes. It’s a good machine if you haven’t got anything. ‘Third class riding is better than first class walking’.

[@kevinwangsaxmusic]

Love that you’re back uploading dude!

[@cozymistbreeze]

yay more videos :D what a treat.

[@jml2343]

I've got a 2008 24inch running el capitan and that is a sweet spot with plenty of modern apps and browsers and you can dual boot leopard for power pc support. Love these things

[@rollingtroll]

12:37 Are you in a CARAVAN!? Love it.

[@dathekingofguildwars]

Best way to kick off a Sunday thank you budget you are a ledgend

[@cristianopassarelli2179]

I absolutely love your videos and I'm glad for the new uploads, I had missed my weekly dose of Budget Builds

[@dirtybird2202]

I owned a Mac . The one that was a CRT and PC built into the case one of the first all in one systems. Was a blue see through case. Made the very best door stop I ever had for the shed out back. And yes it did work just fine. Wished now I had kept it, but the neighbors boy wanted it so I gave it to him with the Keyboard and mouse that came with it.

[@swannyjedi1969]

I picked up a mid 2011 iMac 21.5 with 1tb Hdd, 8gb ram i5 2.7 with Apple keyboard for £30 !! Upgraded to 1gb SSD, 32gb Ram and works a treat !! Nice video !! Henry is great 😂

[@MintyHobkin98]

theres no way youre uploading more regularly. much thanks and god bless you mate ❤🙏

[@askialuna7717]

This is the beginning of a friendship between an iMac and Henry.

[@samshort365]

These things a beasts. I have the larger model, installed Manjaro, replaced the thermal paste, substituted the drive with an SSD and gave it a ram upgrade. Probably good for another few years.

[@procrastinates]

WE EATIN' GOOD WITH THESE NEW UPLOADS 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥

[@devisals]

Yessir

[@ayuchanayuko]

8:08 I still use Data over BT PAN for my phones. Consumes less power than a wifi hotspot. Basically sharing data to other phones via BT. For Windows its still supported as well.

[@SummonerArthur]

This is the kind of hardware I like seeing. The thing can still punch way above its weight, or could. I wish I could watch a part two in which you would test it with other OSs, Same hardware and all. just to see how useable it could get just from an OS swap.

[@MisterLettuce]

An older mac, running the intended OS, can surprise a lot of people in how well it does.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Get that thing updated!!!

[@tomvandongen8075]

Everything in your house is gloriously kitsch I love it

[@ignotumperignotius630]

I think it's not Kitsch a la pink lawn flamingo. It's rustic.

[@rubeusvombatus]

Would be interesting to see how any modern version of macOS runs using the OpenCore patcher. According to Everymac, those Core2 iMacs go up to El Capitan officially(!) with a RAM upgrade. In my experience, a lot of the issues these older Macs have software-wise can be fixed by reinstalling or upgrading the OS. I'd love to see it struggling to run Sonoma or Ventura^^ I also love these more improvised videos, reminds me of old Druaga1

[@95Comics]

I’m watching this video on the same exact iMac lol. it’s been my daily driver since 2009. In fact, I think mine might be one year older than yours. I didn’t pay for the crazy expensive for gigabyte memory stick so I just have four gigs of memory in it, but I put linux mint after Catalina was no longer supported, and it still has given me no reason to replace it. In fact, I use it as a I use it as a computer. I Disney+ and all my movies and videos right on this. I have it next to my bed. It’s literally the best computer I’ve ever had. I’ve had a problem with it. The original hard drive about a year ago so I replaced it with SsD, but I took it out. The original hard drive started to work again so I might not have even needed to change the hard drive. discount computer still makes a great daily driver. It plays video flawlessly with no buffering.

[@gojohnniegogo]

Congratulations on hitting quarter of a million!

[@neilsimpson79]

I bought the 26 inch white model from the same year and the 20 inch aluminium version. Suffered with them until loading them full of emulators and dual booting them to Linux for internet and KZbin. The screens were by far the best thing about them

[@artifex2.080]

My local CeX also has €30 imacs 😭

[@masterkamen371]

In my country they would be 300€ just because there's an Apple logo on them.

[@foxyfanfan4374]

I love the aesthetic of macos snow lepoard!

[@JayPlvg]

Crazy i was at work listening to a WAN show live stream the other night and thlught about this channel and how i hadnt seen a video in a while. Glad to have you back!

[@voltare2amstereo]

Wan show is a weekly thing for me, runs at about 11am Saturday morning here

[@MDBenson]

I got a pair of these for 40 quid a while back, one was in *sore* shape (snapped off parts, held together with blu-tac), so I stripped its for spares (I might have a good hinge, if you want one, but be warned it's a NIGHTMARE to get to).But the other was decent enough to shape to do something with. The real hot sauce is these are, for an AIO, and a non-Pro Apple product, pretty easy to work on and upgrade. The whole thing can be accessed by getting a pair of decent suction cups and popping the glass off the front (carefully) - it's held in with strong neodymium magnets. Then undo 8 Torx screws and remove the screen (again carefully) and then you have access to all the internals. It's a doddle! The CPU is a laptop-style 'Socket P' ZIF, the GPU is on a removable MXM card and the Hard drive is a full-blooded 3.5" desktop drive. I have thrown a cheap 128GB SATA SSD, a faster 2.4GHz 'Penryn' C2D CPU and a GeForce 9600M 512MB MXM GPU card and it absolutely sings.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

I recently bought one of these for $50(£40). Mine is the higher end one with the 2.66ghz cpu, and 2600 XT graphics. I have it running Mojave currently, though I plan to try Sonoma. Also your iPhine hotspot should connect if you enable "Maximize Compatibility" in the settings.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

To get Halo to work you'll need a modern launcher, the launcher is broken on newer versions of MacOS. The new launcher I use is called HaloMD. I have used it on my 2009 MacBook Pro running Mavericks, but it'll work on mountain lion.

[@henrymgray]

The thing you have to remember with cex, as long as it turns on and they can do basic things they don't care what state it's in. The one thing I won't buy are hard drives as I bought drives years ago and took them back because they were practically dead. Their excuse with them is as long as they can format it, partition it, copy a file to and from it then it works. When I took one back they tested it and put it back out to sell.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Really depends on the store, some are definitely like that. Others are far better.

[@iiisaac1312]

4:30 OMG HENRY HIIIIII ❤❤❤

[@cleengreeny]

THE LEGEND IS BACK AGAIN!!!

[@theshadowman1398]

The reason that some games don’t work is because of OSX 10.8. On OSX 10.6 snow leopard it would run fine because it still supported Rosetta Stone

[@100onTF2]

Keep up your good work 😀

[@bryo4321]

I got a whole lot of these from a school. I recycled/sold most but I kept all the 24 inch c2d imacs with 8800m gts graphics. Ive got them dualbooting xp/vista. With the 8800 graphics they make for awesome mid 2000s xp/vista gaming machines. since its an all in one unit its super easy to whip them out on an afternoon and play some older games.

[@jasongrimshaw-smith8369]

Great video, lovely iMac. Awesome caravan?

[@drewsof]

The out of box experience of spotlight indexing those spinning drives in this era was brutal

[@barrynevio4440]

around 2015 I upgraded the company I worked for from these imacs to the new i5 macbooks of the time. No one wanted these imacs but i just thought they were cool and convenient. They ran Adobe cs5 just fine. Its got a webcam, speakers, and monitor all in one package you can throw around. The screen was held on by magnets so easy to work on. I took them all home and they've been wonderful to randomly have. I have one running Ableton 8 I still mess around with beats and recording on. I have 1 running adobe cs5 which has been super convenient to just have. I have 1 connected to my ancient printer acting as a print server. I have a couple of them running arch linux and windows 7 for my kids to play old games, browse the web in their rooms, and parsec into the gaming PCs we have in the basement because they take up such little space and its all in one. Definitely don't sleep on these.

[@honkhonkler7732]

I got a similar one of these for free back in college from a previous job I worked. I just had to replace the cracked screen cover. It worked fine as a League of Legends machine and it would play the then current version of War Thunder on low settings around 45-60 FPS. I was also able to get an extra 500Mhz by swapping in a used mobile Core 2 Extreme chip which helped minimum frame rates a bit. Luckily it was one that had a Radeon HD 2600 Pro instead of the Intel GMA graphics like some of them had around that time.

[@ThatBulgarian]

i love that you used the simcity 5 soundtrack

[@kalliste23]

iMacs are great for turning into XBMC boxes so you can watch TV and movies. The 27" ones best, obviously. The real handicap of these old iMacs is the stupidly slow laptop hard disk they suffer from. An SSD makes a big difference.

[@carltonleboss]

Very cool.

[@ChrisWadge]

I recently helped my mom with an x86 iMac which Apple'd dropped support for. Put a user-friendly Linux distro on there, and now it's got supported browsers, Steam, etc. Runs faster, too.

[@cjsebes]

Those optical drives can be a crap-shoot. I've had a couple of iMacs that arrived with borked drives. They're not too terribly difficult to change out. I mean, I've opened up these enough times that I can almost do it in my sleep. Congrats on the fun find!

[@Tailz94]

My 12,1 Mid 2011 27’ iMac thanks to OCLP, a GTX 880M 8GB GPU for Full Metal Support (custom Apple Firmware flashed), 32GB DDR3 RAM, Core i7 CPU upgrade and 2TB Samsung EVO 860 SSD (with OWC HDD Thermal Sensor to restore fan speed control). I can run the latest version of macOS when OCLP has patches available. Love it ❤

[@davidrmcmahon]

Always have the urge to build a city after your videos.

[@RobertFixit]

wow, shipping that beast!

[@volvo09]

Free E waste disposal for them 😂

[@fbientertainment3275]

Bluetooth tethering is a great thing when using older tech. Used it myself, connecting an Asus pda to internet by tethering it to my android device. Worked like a charm, sadly the browser on that pda is completely useless nowadays

[@DGdescendant22]

Hamish you absolute gold geeza

[@SirTodd.]

i used to be extremely anti-apple... all the way up until around January this year. for some reason I have had a very, very strong interest develop in absolutely everything they have ever done, especially the older hardware from when Jobs was the man. this video has inspired me to find something similar instead of buying another single board computer!

[@brotherloops]

I used to have this exact model. It didn’t play games great especially when the final supported version of osx slowed it down something fierce but man those speakers were something else especially for built in speakers

[@angelsgti7]

Oh my god Budget Builds uploaded, I'm so happy.

[@ryanhamstra49]

Honestly, perfect computer for a high school kid to do homework on. I did mine on a 10 year old G4 iMac.

[@denox420]

last time i picked up a cheap mac was at the start of the pandemic. had some fun playing with it and tearing it apart. upgraded it to an ssd and flipped it. made $20 profit and got to have fun. win win.

[@O5-XIV]

Grat vid, and nice find for so cheap. There is a simple fix for most Apple products, 1. Have a Angry Aussie yell at it, 2. Beat it with a 1 Grit slab of concrete, 3. Throw it in the trash XD

[@staffyfan4K]

love the sim city 3000 music

[@ImNotPeso]

I found a 2011 21” imac in an ewaste bin and it works great! Still perfectly useable

[@chundanauk]

CEX have started to flush older stock recently, the fact that they even shipped this item which is normally not done for these types of items says much in itself. Frankly hard to go wrong at that price - especially if vouchers are involved.

[@jacobjay2892]

I just fixed Ivy Bridge era Macbook Pro. Still somewhat useful today if you will turn the blind eye on on Intel HD 4000. Plays Full HD 60fps and together with 16GB does the job.

[@zacharywalls4999]

I got a 2009 iMac for 60 bucks and it mainly being used for work purposes really like the thing thinking about upgrading soon

[@Joshua_Bee]

That hinge, flashback to old school hip-hop "what it is ***, wassup"

[@iJeremyN]

Install KDE Neon and away you go. It's literally a usable machine again in 2024. Give it a shot, I think you'll be surprised at the experience.

[@Spiderwithweb]

Awesome

[@WolfgangAmadeus117]

Nice

[@514komeiji5]

It looks really new for the age

[@AbdAbdAbdAbd]

just as what many folks pointed out you should probably install snow leopard and make sure to install rosetta for powerpc compatibility

[@BowsettesFury]

quite impressive for its age

[@walterb.9290]

Advice : browser 'Pale Moon' runs perfectly well. To my knowledge, Chromium Legacy was discontinued less than a month ago

[@emmabentley7945]

The screen issue is due to a GPU issue with the 2400XT fairly common on hit 2008 imac

[@Frostbite..]

Emotional support Henry

[@dr_vendetta8361]

Hell yeah new hamish video

[@jasonpacker9607]

I want to know more about why that HDD is so performant! Also there is room for so many more with this beast. You can get some higher OS versions on there with open core legacy patcher.

[@neilg97]

Can you get an updated os on with opencore legacy patcher or something of the like?

[@defenestratorr]

I have a slightly newer iMac like this and it is stupid fast. It has High Sierra and I can run a normal version of Chromium from around 2023. Zero slowdowns, insanely fast boot times with the harddrive. It is crazy whatever dark magic these things perform to work this well

[@robd1365]

Getting serious SC3K vibes. I rescued a similar spec MacBook Pro off a skip, threw in a drive with XP on it and it ran with it. It’s one heck of a retro gaming rig apart from finding drivers for the sound.

[@Mikey72182]

*Thank you for blessing us with another video!* 🙏

[@astrailiaous_Sempticreed]

You don't need bootcamp for installing windows, just use an ssd with a preinstalled version of windows, then have the amd or Intel drivers on a flash drive along with the sound drivers and install it there offline to avoid blue screen.

[@Q_GG]

100 % High end gaming pc

[@21dazzer]

The combination of Adobe CS5.5 and MacOs SnowLeopard is surprisingly usable. In all my years of experience, I think SnowLeopard has been the most stable OS I've used. Sonoma on an M2 Pro is far more volatile by comparison. My 8,1 2.8 C2D Extreme with 6GB RAM and 1TB HDD is just too good to throw away.

[@kenabi]

well, better than the first gen macbooks. those are basically worthless without ripping them apart to flash the efi chip with libreboot so that it will let you install linux on it. and even then, it's iffy, somewhat glitchy mess that will overheat if you don't do some more work to it. i've literally got an hp from '06 running w10 with no issues, but i can't do much of squat with a macbook 1,1. absolutely atrocious.

[@BilisNegra]

Core 2 Duo era... What you mention also applies to PCs except it goes one step beyond: they are not merely ultracheap when they do go on sale but they are quite often just tossed away. With Apple machines in working condition I guess people think "well, at least it's a Mac", and they don't go that far as often.

[@inkysteve]

I had an older one, with a Core Duo, and it ran Retropie very well.

[@Gannett2011]

I still have a 2010 Mac Mini with a core2duo and 8GB RAM. I might try and replace the 320GB HDD with an SSD and see how it performs. Your video has inspired me to have a go!

[@jakewisher4623]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I would recommend redoing the thermal paste on the CPU and definitely the GPU - the 2007 - 2009 era of imac (a1225) do not have enough thermal paste on the GPUs, so they are a common point of failure. Additionally I would suggest upgrading the CPU to a penrhyn T9300 or T9500, so you can install a version of Mac OS above El Cap. Theoretically (GPU drivers not withstanding) you could run Ventura via opencore legacy.

[@2dcatgirlirl]

cool video, glad you're back!! i kinda really wanna buy one of these if i can find one, see about replacing the HDD, and dual booting with Windows 7 for some good old software, for example an older version of GarageBand would be cool since my phone doesn't have a headphone slot so i can't exactly use it there :p