Monterey on an older iMac?

[Tim O]

My wife uses an 2017 MacBook Pro for work stuff, running Monterey, bought so she could work when we were doing some travelling. Usual office stuff, mostly based around Google suite - Drive, Docs, Gmail, Calendar etc, plus Zoom and Skype. No issues, but she has decided now travelling less would prefer a desktop. We've got a spare iMac, 2012, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, running Catalina. I understand that with a patch the older Mac will run Monterey. Obviously unsupported by Apple.

Anything to be gained by updating to Monterey with the (unofficial) patch? Any downsides? Anyone tried it? Or should we leave well alone, use running Catalina, and if she takes to the desktop just go and buy a new one?

Edited by Tim O on Friday 16th September 11:33

[megaphone]

I run Mojave on an unsupported 2009 iMac. Had no issues with it, Mac still runs like new. I used a patch by dosdude http://dosdude1.com/software.html.

I don't think he has released a Monterey patch though.

[mikef]

I switched from DosDude’s patcher to OpenCore to get Monterey on my 2010 Mac Pro

Supported Macs: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher...

The issue for older iMacs may be Metal GPU support