27" iMac gets an SSD, process is not for the faint-hearted

There comes a time in a boy's life when his latest toy no longer thrills him as it did when it was shiny and new. Engadget blogger Richard Lai found that his Core i7 27" iMac was slowing down as it neared its first birthday, so he decided to liven things up by popping a 240GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD into the box.

Watching Richard tear apart his baby was a bit unnerving to me. I recall opening an iMac G5 about five years ago to swap out a noisy power supply and fan assembly, and I still shudder to think about that.

Richard was armed with the proper tools: a set of Torx screwdrivers, tweezers, a pair of suction cups for removing the glass screen and the restore disc for Mac OS X. He also had a handy tool nearby in the form of an iFixit teardown guide for the iMac displayed on his iPad.

Richard noted that boot times are almost three times as fast for the iMac after the heart transplant, and the video (after the break) shows it launching in just over 20 seconds. That's still not enough to make me take apart my iMac. Enjoy the video, if you can stand to watch that beautiful iMac being dissected.