Chosen Solution
Hello: my iMacs screen is broken. It was dropped and the glass shattered. The computer still boots up, and can still be used as long as you are working on an external display. My question is can I remove the broken screen from the iMac and use it without any built in screen attached. I’d like to do this because the broken screen still lights up, and shows as an active display to the system, and is using vram to display an image nobody can see. So I’d like to take it off and see if it will run “screenless”.
Don’t do it! If you don’t want to see the screen or fear the glass will fall out apply packing tape to the glass and apply a piece of card board on top to hide the image. If you pull the display you will confuse your systems SMC logic as it will go into Safe Mode cranking up the fan and lowering the CPU’s clock to a very low level to help protect your system from overheating. As far as VRAM if the external screen is in mirror mode the same image is being sent to both displays and the same VRAM is being used (same image) so there is no VRAM difference! Ideally, you’ll want to get the system fixed!
