OWC souped-up iMac program adds 2011 models

For those who want a really souped-up iMac, Other World Computing has offered its Turnkey Program, which let customers upgrade their stock units with extra solid-state drives, hard drive storage and eSATA interfaces.

The company on Tuesday said that the OWC Turnkey Program for the 2011 iMacs will include both 21.5-inch and 27-inch models.

According to the company blog, there was an issue with the storage temperature sensor with the iMac upgrades: the Apple custom firmware sends temperature data in a non-standard fashion and unless the drive's firmware supports the Apple protocol, the fans spin at full speed.

So, we went another route and developed a hardware solution that interfaces accurately and properly with what can be viewed as a frustratingly unique temperature data monitoring method by Apple. While our solution adds a little bit to the cost of upgrading the iMac’s hard drives, we feel that cost is more than offset by the advantages it has over software solutions.

While our hard drive solution is proprietary (read as: we’re not gonna tell you how we did it), we can guarantee that—unlike other “solutions” out there — it’s 100 percent compatible with Apple Hardware Test and maintain proper fan operation.

The Turnkey Program will let customers add up to 3 SSDs, up to 3TBs of hard disk storage, and RAM upgrades to 32GB.

Users can purchase an iMac and ship it to OWC for a 48-hour turnaround.