Chosen Solution

Hi, I’ve got an iMac 27” late 2012 which came to me after a company messed with the electric in my clients home. He blew the circuits and after that the iMac is really dead. They got another and I would like to try to bring the old one alive again for my own personal use. Can anyone tell me if there is a possibility that there is more broken then just the PSU? I know with pc’s that even the CPU can blow out with electrical peaks. Is this the same with Apple products or are they better protected? I don’t want to buy a new PSU and then find out that things like the CPU or screen are also broken. Anyone an idea about this? Even if you say: get rid of that iMac, is an answer for me if you can give me a good reason why. Thanks in advance Nathalie

Hi @eaglepanther, well, IMO it is about luck, sometimes, during this case, couple of things can fail. e.g. hard disk, mainboard, etc rarely heard about cpu, rams but as mentioned, unless you have another set / close system, which you can test the other components out. if you have some electronics background….. you can take out the power supply and measure the output voltages. confirm with the part number of the power supply, and google for the pin out schematics. e.g. 12V, 5V, etc there are several youtube video tutorials, showing on how it can be done to check the power supply.

I would say follow the basics like resetting the SMC. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 On older models there used to be LEDS on the Main Board the showed if it was getting power and such but you probably want to give it a visual inspection to make sure there are no obvious faults like burnt spots. Unfortunately you will probably need a Multimeter, the Schematics for the iMac and knowledge of how to read Schematics. Worst case scenario is the that the CPU or Graphics card. If its the PSU then that is a relatively easy swap but if there is a component on the Main Logic board that died then you would more than likely need good Microsoldering skills as component level repair is not so easy.

Did you find the diagnostic LED’s?