Chosen Solution

I broke some of my mid 2011 27" iMac’s logic board sockets while trying to fix a broken GPU. And the replacement graphics card too seems fried now. Now, I can either buy replacement parts for all the boards (logic board, LED driver board, graphics card) that I broke or, I am thinking, I could salvage parts from this iMac and repurpose them into a Hackintosh of sorts. I am more inclined to pursue the latter since I think that might end up being cheaper than buying replacement parts and definitely far more repairable. Anyway, here is a list of things I already know I can salvage and use them in my new machine

  1. The CPU since it is socketed.
  2. RAM if I go for a motherboard that accepts SO-DIMM modules
  3. The hard drive
  4. The optical drive
  5. The display using a LCD controller kit.
  6. The airport card since it is just a PCIe card anyway. (Is this true?) Are there any other parts that can be salvaged and reused without a lot of modifications. Specifically, I would like to know if I can reuse the Bluetooth board, iSight camera, speakers and mic. And if yes, what connectors and/or controllers I should be looking for. Thank you. Update 1: The built in iSight camera seems like a straightforward USB cam and just connecting the respective wires to a USB type A connector’s wires looks like would do the trick.

Searching for “K62 mlb” gives the iMac 27" main logic board’s schematic diagrams. Finding the pinout for most of the peripherals is pretty straightforward from that. Going by that, Bluetooth, iSight camera, SD card reader, speakers and mic should be easy to re-purpose with simple connectors.

yes you can reuse everything in mac, but you can’t just buy some controller or connector. because it’s designed specially for apple motherboard, and only for one model,