There are thousands of old aluminum iMacs sitting around the world, doing nothing (the one in Macworld’s Podcast studio comes to mind, replaced by a newer M4 iMac). A lot of those old iMacs have perfectly good, even great, displays, and wouldn’t it be cool if you could use them as a standalone monitor for that brand new M5 MacBook Pro you just bought?
That’s what Quinn Nelson at Snazzy Labs thought, and he made it happen–he turned an old aluminum iMac into what he calls a “Studio Display” for a Mac. Being the YouTuber that he is, he posted about the project on the Snazzy Labs channel.
Now, before you get all excited, start clearing space on your desk and dig out that old iMac of storage while proclaiming, “Let’s do this!” you should know that this isn’t a simple plug-and-play project. It took Nelson a month’s worth of planning, research, shopping, and labor to get it done. Since he wanted to use the old iMac just as a display, he gutted it and installed several hardware components to make it work as such. For example, he had to decide which driver board to use that would provide the resolution, refresh rate, and power that’s required. And he designed plastic support brackets and used a 3D printer to make them.
After a lot of disassembling, splicing, soldering, crimping, hole-cutting, power testing, reassembling, and other handiwork, Nelson got a working 5K display that he’s very pleased with and spent less than the $1,599 it would cost for a new Apple Studio Display–yes time does equal money, but he did get a very cool video out of it. And you can reward him for some of that time by watching the video above.
If this sounds like a project for you, the Snazzy Labs video is an excellent reference source. As Nelson points out in the video, “information online is scarce or simply wrong” on how to do this, and Snazzy Labs provides great insight. Give it a watch. Or, as Macworld reader Van pointed out to me via email, you can look at this much simpler solution using Luna Display, though it may not perform as well as Snazzy Labs’ hack.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor, Macworld
Roman is a Macworld Senior Editor with over 30 years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the Mac and other products in the Apple ecosystem. He is also the host of the Macworld Podcast. His career started at MacUser, where he received Apple certification as a repair technician (when Apple did that kind of thing). He's also worked for MacAddict, MacLife, and TechTV.