I bought 14 broken iMacs! Can we fix them?

Why spend a thousand dollars on the Apple Stand when for the same $1,000 you can get 14 entire iMacs?!? Stands included! In today's video, Noah and I unbox and refurbish 14 cheap iMacs that I bought on eBay for just 1K, can we fix all of them or did we really strike out on this one?
Parts:
Cheap SSD: amzn.to/39S9CGb
Some RAM: amzn.to/37NgnqX
Cleany stuff: amzn.to/303n59x
Follow me on Twitter: / lukemiani
Join my Subreddit! / lukemianiyoutube
Gear:
Panasonic Lumix GH5: amzn.to/2SDQrYi
Blue Snowball Mic: amzn.to/2PwASD0
Sennheiser MKE 440: amzn.to/2JRwIRU
RODE VideoMic Pro+: amzn.to/2pOCkpl
Edelkrone SliderOne V2: amzn.to/33mTZmt
Zecti Camera Slider: amzn.to/2CWmeOI

[@trbnrb2529]

Next time: „I bought 16 Mac Pros“

[@ridersk1220]

No the entire Ebay website

[@iMadrid11]

I’m expecting the Trashcan Pros would be flooding the market soon. Once everyone gets the new cheese grater Pros

[@chloedegurechaff1941]

@Andi LP Just upgrade a 2012 mac pro with 5690s and a rx5700. you'll have the same amount of power XD. In a better overall machine.

[@domchapp]

Check out my series :) 12 Faulty Macs | Repair | Diagnostics | Testing | Can i Make a Profit? | Part 1 kzbin.info/www/bejne/raGviqCmopp_aLs

[@woodant1981]

F*cking heavy then😂 especially for the old tower ones

[@z0bi_]

Loved the guy with the Powerbook, such a creative idea to take a photo with content creators you like.

[@dominikfulop7188]

it was in so vanilla condition... amazing

[@ahsanm.5905]

He looks like young Jack Black 🤪

[@libertylandsforall4689]

I thought that part was so awesome too.

[@whyjordie]

Awww he was a sweetheart

[@Stop4MotionMakr]

Those bezels have really slimmed down over the years 😂

[@chrizzz]

The fact that he gave them all away was surprisingly uplifting. Like at the end of this 20 minute video, there was some actual human connection that benefited people.

[@hello2jello4mellow34]

Good comment!

[@PurpleSucks.]

broo you spoiled me

[@rifki_rizkulloh]

11:57 i don't know it's so meme-able

[@BehradDavoudi]

yes it looks like a sitcom intro

[@rnj4209]

😂 so true

[@filmsnat3428]

@@BehradDavoudi Now you said that I can't stop hearing the "too many cooks" song for some reason xD

[@jamesgilmore3097]

Well you can certainly turn it into a GIF.

[@ecemcicek5417]

It became one on Reddit

[@monikabrauer6847]

Hey Luke, just wanted to let you know that I love your videos. I actually started to do some of my own repairs and fixes. Lately I have been given a few older 21.5 iMacs and also a mid2012 MacBook Pro i7. I have managed to put 2 iMacs out of 3 together, upgraded the ram and just gave one to a 12 year old student who really needed one. Another laptop went to a very deserving lady and lastly I kept the MacBook Pro. It didn’t work at first but all it took was a new hard drive. I chose a Samsung 500 G SSD and while I had it open, I also upgraded the RAM from 8 to 16 G. I should tell you, I’m a woman in my sixties and never had any kind of computer tech training. Your videos have taught me lots and have given me the confidence to at least try to fix something. Thanks for doing a great job!

[@englishruraldoggynerd]

Just read your post Monika and I’m in awe.... you’re fantastic. Hope your well, and ok with the for once non computer virus running amok. Take care, and keep repairing stuff!

[@robert_kotula]

Well done! I’m so glad that some older people are willing to try and learn about technology!

[@transitengineer]

This video was A+, truly outstanding from start to finish. Have been learning how to upgrade and repair some of the vintage apple desktops in my collection which, include an all-in-one G3 5500, G5 20 inch imac, white Intel 24 inch imac, and 2010 mac mini (the last model with a built-in DVD super-drive).

[@savagepro9060]

when you say "This video is A+" are you referring to CompTIA?🤔

[@PatriciaMuirMaestroQ]

“Scary fan(s)”. I’m glad you diagnosed so quickly as a fan problem. I would have been concerned it was about to blow up. So glad that these Macs found new use in a second life to teach young people about building and repairing computers. The return on investment was higher than the bottom line $$. Congratulations on a successful exercise.

[@alienwaregameralx1874]

Years ago you had great Ideas but were a little naive, now i m actually learning from your video. Congrats man for your improvements in tech!

[@Eevnos]

This is so great man. I’m glad you got so many of them working and wish I was closer so I could have come to hang out with you guys for the day.

[@libertylandsforall4689]

I think that would be a great experience as well...

[@AJUSA1]

@Luke Miani You can remove the EFI lock by removing a chip on the logic board, reprogramming it with the TL866II Plus EEPROM Programmer, and soldering it back on. There are instructional videos on YT explaining the procedure.

[@MichaelBordenaro]

Luke, this was an awesome video. I loved that you showed you can buy these macs, and get a good portion of them in working order. Then the fact that you decided to donate them to people who could really use them was very cool. Plus the interaction with your fans. Nice job man 👌

[@EdgyShooter]

Can you contact the university you bought them from? Somewhere the IT department probably has a spreadsheet with the serial numbers and their respective EFI passwords

[@NoahRubinCoding]

EdgyShooter we gave them a call but they were unwilling to help 😔

[@EdgyShooter]

@@NoahRubinCoding Ah I'm very sorry to hear that. Depending on distance you might be able to talk to them in person? As from experience sometimes the person on the phone is not actually connected to the person with the information! It's how I got so many things sorted with my department

[@NoahRubinCoding]

EdgyShooter unfortunately, they were too far away to see in-person. Luke and I actually briefly considered taking a road trip down there, but it just wasn’t worth it.

[@EdgyShooter]

@@NoahRubinCoding That is a shame, but thanks for the additional details, hope it was a fun project!

[@libertylandsforall4689]

That's a great suggestion, Thanks so much for commenting this...

[@NoahRubinCoding]

Can’t believe I got to meet THE Luke Miani in person 😮 too bad I didn’t get an iMac though...

[@joeplavin]

Hey Noah

[@itemushmush]

noah you are a cutie

[@pfpvita]

James gae

[@eeeeeeeee9381]

@@pfpvita fr

[@pfpvita]

@@eeeeeeeee9381 ya

[@kHRISl33t]

I did not expect that ending, so nice of you guys! Keep up the great work ;)

[@LifeWithJames93]

Great video Luke! Your so genuine it definitely shines through on your content 😃

[@imagesinla8575]

Very informative. Gives me the courage to buy a used iMac. Thanks.

[@RT-by4xr]

I purchased a 2015 i5 Imac on ebay. It arrived in a box that was way too big with a corner of the machine poking through the box with the display panel chipped. It was also EFI locked. I paid close to $800 for this machine and the quotes for repairing the display were close to $450 and I would still have an EFI locked Mac. I was about to return it but I had an idea. What if I could just repair the machine myself? I contacted the seller and he was willing to cover the $450 display repair cost so I took that money and bought the tools and parts I would need to repair the display, remove the EFI chip, re-write the EFI chip and upgrade the hard drive to a larger drive that was SSD. I found a laptop motherboard at a thrift store and started practicing removing and re-installing chips using my new re-flow station. It was fun and now if I ever run across a smoking deal on a decent Mac that has this issue, I have all the tools and the experience to handle it.

[@WarriorsPhoto]

Luke, if you would have sold them I would have thought what a cool business move. But you gave em away??? That's just straight classy Luke. You have more of my respect now.

[@FOBob-sr1fd]

"We got a screen! That's refreshing!" I see what you did there. 😂

[@Frank-in-NY]

Nice job guys! Very good of you to give them away. Keep up the the great work.

[@lilpopism]

Subscribed. As an electrical engineering student I’m loving watching these videos.

[@kushalchapagain241]

First pile of mackbook pros and now imac wonderful content you are superb luke keep it up...love from Nepal❤❤🗻🗻

[@KevinOrzel]

I'm so happy you gave them away! What a wholesome end to a great video :)

[@PoliBohoGlam]

This is really sweet. Love that you chose to give back.

[@JoeTourist]

That was a fun video to watch! You did better with the deal than I initially thought you would...

[@tlowee]

Thanks for putting a chuckle in my day, shout out to Noah. 😁

[@ChrisEpp]

The EFI trick worked for me with my old pre 2011 iMac! Thank you. Loved the video and would have loved to come out and meet you (:

[@billfuller1]

that was awesome giving those imacs away like that well done mr. miani

[@raymondkymsuttle]

So amazing that you gave them away. Especially glad the charity/non-profit guys got one.

[@kharakim]

Well done! Gave me a new appreciation for the couple of "old" iMacs we have stored in our apartment.

[@ralfseiler9887]

Louis Rossmann got rid of his ancient stockpile of iMacs he couldn't fix.

[@linhtuong7908]

Lol true

[@DerFliegendeMocca]

Louis Rossmann cant fix connecting a cable ? what kind of joke even is this. Louis Rossman microsoders the tiniest connectors with a microscope, with full diagnosis. if he cant fix it, shit is really fucked. and not just efi locked or with disconnected display cable xD

[@DanDan-fu6sd]

Love love love micro center. Good job Luke thank you for your service.

[@GRIBSOFT]

This is awesome! Loving the videos, keep it up!!!

[@glen4cindy]

Luke, I love your channel and your videos. I got into Mac’s because of my job. I love what you do with these. How do you begin? How do you even come across the great deals you find?

[@BruceNitroxpro]

Nicely done! Good job.

[@jamesw6484]

I love that u helped people

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Great Job Luke Thanks For Being So Generas

[@kingneutron1]

Ebay: Yo Luke, how many iMacs u want fam Luke: YES!

[@AnthonyC35]

Amazing work guys

[@richardlong1567]

Fantastic content Luke! 👍🏼 😎

[@iFix43]

I remember seeing that lot of iMac on eBay

[@fabiolazzaroni]

Nice to see Noah back again on the channel! Great video guys

[@libertylandsforall4689]

Awesome Video, Thanks so much... Please keep doing what you do...

[@MattHalpain]

good on you Noah and Luke for donating the iMac's you restored to charity. You could of made a profit but instead you gave to others, noble of you two.

[@Garrettdx1988]

"That's what MKBHD says." "Ya very good." 😂😂😂

[@DPPOfficial]

Man, You're underrated, really! Why just 150.000 Subs?! You really deserve over a Million!

[@Ivan_Romero]

I'm a PC guy that started working for a school district. I have little to no experience with Macs. I was tasked with going through the district's stock of iMacs that were sitting unused in a storage building. I have been watching your videos to get some ideas on how to get these refurbished for sale to district employees. They are mostly 27" 2009-2011 iMacs with a few 21.5 inch black back and aluminum back models in the mix. The EFI password lock was a problem until the IT director found his password stash from when he was a tech and I am now able to get into those and load High Sierra on them. A few of the 27" iMacs are newer (2012??) and thinner than the CD/DVD versions, Catalina is installing just fine on those. It has been a great learning experience and I decided to set a couple of the 27" models aside for myself (Core i5 model). I just want to say thanks for all your videos, it has made my job just a little bit easier and I can appreciate going through so many computers trying to get them to a usable state.

[@Lamprod48]

Hello good night I have a problem with my 27 inch imac, mid 2011 Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro The AMD Radeon HD 67970M 124 MB HD Graphics card no longer works can you help me which model of graphics card to change

[@adventureridergirl]

The firmware password is super simple to bypass on those newer iMacs, you just need the firmware password utility. Takes like two minutes to fix.

[@corpse74]

hey luke, i’m very curious to know how exactly a EFI lock happens on a macbook and if it’s preventable? a long while ago i bought a macbook pro from 2012 and it gave me a flashing folder with a question mark on it and i had no idea what to do so i bought another one. however i later learned it had to do with the hdd(i don’t know much about computer hardware just how to properly use one) so i’m curious if you(or someone in the comments) could let me know how you get EFI locked and what to do to prevent it, if you can. thanks in advance.

[@nathanlopez5610]

Coming up: Luke Miani teaches KZbin how to clean packing peanuts.

[@richardkoerper1630]

As usual good job. Question if I may, I have a 27 inch iMac intel that still runs beautifully with a fantastic screen, is there anyway it could be updated to an M1 or M2?

[@qwerkygurly3778]

I really liked this video! Such fun!!

[@thesurfingprospector6345]

That was AWSOME Luke nice gesture mate Crouch

[@misspotential]

I love these bulk mac videos 😩

[@djross95]

You're a maniac, Luke! I love this...

[@MACBoricua]

Wish I was there to meet you guys there.. so far away in Phoenix, AZ

[@michael5743]

Pretty easy to fix the locked ones. Re-install OS, if firmware is still locked then take RAM out try to boot, turn off, and put back in. ^^

[@nathanbravian8175]

so love with the chimes

[@robertdunsmore]

Lovely gesture fellas!

[@johnrheybustarga9085]

More power to you Anakin!

[@iWhacko]

for those EFI locked, you could replace the chip, or reprogram them. But maybe that's outsidde your skill range? If you learned that, the yield from this would be much higher. And totally doable as well

[@rrp6405]

really enjoyed that, great video

[@CrowaX]

I love this channel. Great video!

[@Barcodeali]

where are u finding these? i need a screen replacement for my 2013 27" imac

[@Newinceptions]

Nice work, Luke! From a guy who used to run a Mac hardware interest group in college (Anyone want to work on a G3, G4 or G5?) I really appreciate what you're doing. Now you just have to meet another KZbinr like Louis Rossman who actually likes doing Mac hardware repair (he gets more than he'd like it seems) and you got a 3rd leg to this creative team!

[@j.lietka9406]

Luke, do you have a video in which you explain pop - up icons (on apple systems) & their meaning?

[@RandyRydberg]

Nice video! I had a 2009 24" iMac for a long time, then my dad had it for years, and currently my aunt is using it. It's been great! I upgraded the RAM to 6GB from the highest amount, which was supposed to be 4GB, but it turns out that RAM technology keeps going after a computer has been produced, so this is a thing that can happen. The hard drive died about halfway through my use of the machine, but thanks to Time Machine, it was an easy fix (with a new hard drive). What a great value, even though I paid full price for the thing! I'm familiar with the connector that they didn't put back into place from when I had to replace the hard drive. It's amazing how the screen comes off with just a few suction cups, what a great design! Currently I'm on my second Mac Mini since the iMac, but I'm using three 30" Apple Cinema Displays, the same one you did a video on, and they work great, although once in a while I have to jiggle the connection to the white brick. Anyway, I enjoyed your video, keep up the good work!

[@andrewwichman7303]

I live in Chicago. I saw right when you posted on Twitter about the meet & greet, I really wanted to go but unfortunately couldn’t make it work out. I don’t even want an imac, I already have too many macs/macbooks because of your videos, I just really wanna meet you some day.

[@StevenCasteelYT]

Zappin' the PRAM. Haven't seen that since I was a kid! Good times.

[@saskiavanhoutert3190]

Nice that 14 I-Mac's are refurbished again, they look great,. There is also one standing in the social workplace where I worked, Perhaps now there are more, kind regards.

[@seantierre]

Do you happen to re-sell the macs that you repair. Can you suggest a site to buy refurbished iMac? I need to run final cut on it. I love the channel.

[@cody3026]

Great video one of your best videos!

[@RalfBehrend]

Thanks for your very interesting videos 👍

[@setogenico]

Can u install windows on some of the imacs with the EFI passwords?? someone answer please

[@CosmicEpiphany]

17:20 OMG those bezels!

[@AstralPhnx]

Awww it's really sweet seeing these computers go to good homes!

[@lotlotdg4300]

That was fun to watch i hope all those who came and pick a broken imac will be able to fix them 👍

[@JamesEllerbeeD]

Awesome and good job Luke!... Any iMac left? I am interested. Regards

[@niklas_mus]

i love these kind of videos

[@TheDaf95xf]

Nice video Luke 👍🏻

[@samraa2006]

hello, that was a great video ! can you help me with a problem on an imac i bought used its mid2010 ? the weird thing that happens is that the device chimes and works fine but ... at the startup i cant see anything and i cant see the apple logo( i just wait and suddenly am on desktop or log in screen only ) or the screen wont show anything or lets say shine white, and when i try to get to boot menu it wont show any thing , can boot recovery , can boot normal but cant boot from external device or use bootcamp to install windows . would appreciate if you ever faced such problem and help me figure out whats wrong ? thank you !

[@PatriseHenkel]

My venerable 2009 27” still boots but screen is black. I had a weird keyboard hack that would bring the display up briefly! But soon- blackout!

[@alexlextar9270]

For the 2011s you can reprogram the EFI chip using a raspberry pi, flashrom and a SOIC-8 CLIP :)

[@jscorpio1987]

Do you have a link to a guide for this?

[@alexlextar9270]

@@jscorpio1987 search the web for: macbook efi bios programming flashrom

[@charvelangel]

hello Luke , i have a specific question about thoses i mac for you . Can i replace a 2009 logic board by a 2011 ? i got a i mac 27" 2009 I7 with 32 gb ram . Does it worth it to do this ? i would love to jump generation of cpu this way . i think that should work ...but let me know .. cheers

[@davemengle4961]

Hey Luke, Love the channel! Question for you, what iMac (year/config) would you recommend for someone doing graphic design using Adobe and Pixelmator Pro. Using 2x MBP now but would really like to add an iMac 27" to my setup without spending a lot right now (meaning sub $800 to maybe $900 all in). Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[@dnovom]

Late 2013 27" iMac; $500-800

[@GeoRCCraft]

I saw that listing not that long ago! Thought about buying them myself.

[@allansh828]

you guys should come visit Shenzhen. In some stores refurbished Mac computers pile up like mountains.

[@boomish69]

I’ve a 2010 27 iMac that boots to a black screen however if I boot with a Pram reset (2 chimes) it boots fine , I tried replacing the cmos battery but it’s still the same. Any ideas what else to try?

[@jjohnkobbeman]

Hey Luke... I was told you can't put BOTH a M.2 nVME ssd(w/ adapter) AND a 2.5" sata ssd(like a samsung 860 evo 4tb) in the same 2017(18,3.) iMac. Do you know if this the case?

[@martinnash007]

Take the motherboard out and change the fan. Its not hard to do and its easier if there are 2 of you. Just be aware of the power supply as there is no cover on the front of it. Just ensure that the big capacitors have discharged before you attempt to remove it.

[@charlesduzzie9811]

You are a good men Luke and Noah......

[@WalterKnox]

I thought on these older macs you could do something with the RAM and the battery to remove the EFI lock? I have done it before, but it was a 2011 27 inch, so i don't know if it is different or not.

[@MichaelStiede]

A +, thank you!

[@themegatron2525]

i have an imac everything works there is a grey vertical bar in the middle of the screen one inch wide changed display cable didn't fix it any help ?

[@RoyUrrego]

Do you have any video on how to replace the entire front frame? I notice you had most of them with no frame. Thanks for your videos.

[@gjmob]

The EFI Lock is usually removed by holding down the power button with the iMac unplugged and then removing all Ram and reinstalling them one at a time. Has worked every time for me with iMac's.

[@lukemiani]

We addressed that in the video, that only works on pre-2011 Macs

[@robertmcdermott279]

seeing them being given away made me feel great inside! :) one day I'll get a Mac lol fingers crossed

[@TheStylelike16th]

This was so amazing!!!!

[@Ys-fo5gd]

Totally off topic but wanted to get your opinion...I was thinking of going phone-less for like a month and just use an Apple Watch...you think series 5 is worth it? Or should I just wait for the 6?