Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and a replacement screen

I'm not running heavy workloads, honest question:

If someone's trying to build a top-of-line bottom-of-budget system, is the best GPU they can afford attached to whatever 2006 iMac they have laying around honestly a bad approach?

All of this is moot, though, if it's just a proof of concept/I did it to see whether it was possible!

That being said, it's a good question: I always wish there was a tool where you could calculate all of the tradeoffs involved - TCO for you (both purchase and operating costs), TCO for the environment, etc.

I do recall a while back Nvidia did release updated MacOS drivers, but I’m not sure of the state of those on modern macOS.

But it certainly was possible to run an NVIDIA eGPU at some point.

You can swap GPUs, sure. But eventually the CPU will be too slow relatively speaking, so you'll need a faster CPU.

And if you need a new CPU, most sockets don't support future CPUs (or only +1-2 gen), so you'll need a new motherboard.

The power draw of CPUs and GPUs have increased, so you'll likely need a new PSU if you only just barely were getting by before.

Because of the new motherboard, you'll need new RAM. You can't socket DDR3 into a DDR5 slot.

New CPU socket may require a new CPU cooler too, depending on the brand of cooler and how good they are at maintaining compatibility. Even if it has a mount, you may need it just because power draw has increased so much that an older cooler may not be sufficient anymore.

If you're just swapping the GPU, thats easy and will most likely work for a few generations. But sooner or later, the whole computer will need to be replaced, except maybe the case.

That said if I were to do this I’d probably build a hackintosh running Snow Leopard or Mavericks or at least procure an old cheesegrater PowerMac/Mac Pro tower for the extra flexibility offered rather than using an old iMac.