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

Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by pornel on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @10:06AM (#37928876)

This makes me wonder how long does it make sense to keep running older, less energy efficient computers? There will be a point where energy wasted on less efficient components is higher than energy used to build a modern computer.

CPU in this iMac has less than a quarter of iPhone's speed. If it wasn't for macOS, this could probably run on a Raspberry Pi.

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by the_third_wave on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @11:19AM (#37929925)

A single solar panel on the roof will run a lot of computer, old as well as new. Just add a panel and you can keep on running that older hardware.

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by Shawnj2 on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @01:37PM (#37932012)

Probably not that big of a deal

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by nxobject on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @01:39PM (#37932045)

I just looked it up – if you're interested in comparing iMacs (2006) to iMacs (2021), it seems like the comparison is ~160W vs ~80W.

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.

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by tedunangst on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @06:16PM (#37935520)

Also, power is not energy. If it uses twice the power, but takes 4x longer, that's 8x more energy.

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by nxobject on Thursday October 19, 2023 @04:56AM (#37940259)

Oh my god you're right – I see high school physics teacher shaking his head at me!

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Re:Maximizing your 24″ 2006 iMac with an eGPU, Yosemite, and... by happytiger on Thursday October 19, 2023 @02:54PM (#37947030)

This is one of the reasons datacenters turn over equipment every 4 years.

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