What’s Inside the New iMac (Late 2012) – iFixit Teardown

The tinkerers at iFixit are at it again. They got their tech-savvy hands on Apple’s latest all-in-one and tore it apart without any remorse – in the name of science, of course. After prying open the entire assembly, iFixit concluded that Apple’s Late 2012 iMac is a little more than just a facelift.

Apple says the new iMac is just 5 mm thick at its thinnest point. “At its thickest, though, it is over 4 cm thick, more than 8 times the thickness of the edge,” iFixit reports.

To the dismay of the repair shop, the screen of the new iMac is held in place with more than magnets – “…we're forced to break out our heat gun and guitar picks to get past the adhesive holding the display down.”

“To save space and eliminate the gap between the glass and the pixels, Apple opted to fuse the front glass and the LCD. This means that if you want to replace one, you'll have to replace both,” iFixit notes, shaving points off the repairability scale.

Apple cleared a lot of space inside the new iMac by switching from a traditional 3.5” desktop hard drive to a 2.5” laptop drive.

“Smaller laptop hard drives are also often quieter, thanks to smaller moving parts than their big brothers,” according to the repair shop.

To further reduce noise, the drive is dressed in rubber. Because the internal components are packed more tightly, small vibrations are now carried through more components, while the rubber housing dampens the vibrations, according to iFixit.

The computer uses a single centralized fan that draws air from the bottom vents and blows it out through the grating in the back.

In the webcam department, iFixit discovered a ribbon cable that keeps the FaceTime HD camera in touch with the logic board.

Apple’s Late 2012 iMac uses dual-microphone technology to eliminate background noise during FaceTime calls. The stereo speaker assembly uses a barb “that makes them harder-than-necessary to remove.”

The RAM is user-replaceable but the bad news is that you still have to unglue the display and remove the logic board in order to access the memory modules and swap them.

“This is just barely less-terrible than having soldered RAM that's completely non-removable,” says iFixit.

For the complete teardown analysis, including iFixit's repairability verdict, visit the company’s site here.