Hot Hot Hot...iBook running hot- help!

flyfish29 · Mar 24, 2006

So I am listening to a CD on my G4 12" iBook and the entire thing on the bottom (minus the battery space) is very very hot. Not so hot I am seeing anything melting or flames, but hot none the less. And it is not just under the cd drive either- basically everyplace on the bottom that is not the battery. Is there something wrong and how do I go about checking things out.

I have not been doing anything cpu intensive either - just surfing and email basically.

thanks!

calebjohnston · Mar 24, 2006

This is normal - playing a CD or ripping one on my iBook causes it to be quite noisy in some cases, and it also tends to warm up considerably. Can you download a temperature widget and tell me what the bottom side temp is?

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatnano.html

Download and install that widget. Then look along the bottom of it, and click the temperature section. It should give you a bunch of temperatures. What do they say (in Celsius, if you don't mind =) )

OutThere · Mar 24, 2006

Occasionally I'll randomly get a process that's using 100% CPU...running really hot like that happens, but isn't entirely normal if you're not playing a game or doing something really intensive...try shutting the computer down for 5-10 minutes, letting it cool down, then starting it back up and see if it cranks up and gets hot again.

flyfish29 · Mar 24, 2006

calebjohnston said:
This is normal - playing a CD or ripping one on my iBook causes it to be quite noisy in some cases, and it also tends to warm up considerably. Can you download a temperature widget and tell me what the bottom side temp is?

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatnano.html

Download and install that widget. Then look along the bottom of it, and click the temperature section. It should give you a bunch of temperatures. What do they say (in Celsius, if you don't mind =) )

Wow, 5 min. response- I love Mac Rumors! Apple should be paying us for customer support instead of farming it out abroad!

I have removed the cd about five minutes ago and it has dropped considerable. right now it says 52 C for top, 34 C for batt. and 49 C for power. I will try putting the cd in again and see what it says then.
I am running wirelessly and have two espn widgets running which the widget says are takinng 20% or more of cpu under processes??

Off topic, but could you help me with this as well: I was playing a CD today instead of importing because I lost all my iTuunes music when I did a reinstall a few weeks ago. Is there an easy way to get my purchased music off of my iMac at home to my iBook? If I place the Cd-r I made from my purchased music in my iBook, it doesn't get the cddb names of songs. So I don't want to import and end up with a bunch of track 1's, 2's, etc. instead of the names of song titles and artist. Also, can I easily move my music I own on Cd to my iBook and have already imported on my iMac or do I just need to go CD by Cd and import again? I am running Tiger on iBook and Jag on my iMac at home.

thanks,

jacqkeen · Mar 24, 2006

Do you have a firewire cable so you can use to put the ibook in target disk mode and copy them over from the imac?

flyfish29 · Mar 24, 2006

jacqkeen said:
Do you have a firewire cable so you can use to put the ibook in target disk mode and copy them over from the imac?

Yes, I have a cable- how do I make it target disk mode?

I have both on wireless network at home and plan on backing up each computer on the other HD using Back-up- Can I just move the necessary files through the wireless network? I dont' care how fast if it can be set to go and I don't have to insert each CD to inport it.

I will let you know what the temp is after I run a cd for a while-

calebjohnston · Mar 24, 2006

Those temps you gave me are maybe 1 or 2 degrees warm, but that's fine - especially because you were just playing a CD. As far as the widgets go, you might want to close them temporarily and see if that effects the heat. Widgets are fairly processor-consuming, and when it's only an iBook, that can make a difference - I'm in the same situatioin as you.

sonictonic · Mar 25, 2006

I bought my first Mac, my 12" G4 iBook about 1 month ago, and one of the widgets I run is iStat Nano, which does show the temp. Mine seems to be running around the same temps as yours, so I would assume this is normal. I hope anyway! Can someone somehow verify this?

flyfish29 · Mar 25, 2006

flyfish29 said:
right now it says 52 C for top, 34 C for batt. and 49 C for power. I will try putting the cd in again and see what it says then.

So it ended up reading this after playing a cd for a while.
53C for top
34 C for battery
54 for Power

Does this seem a bit too high?

I had shut down both espn widgets as well and was only sending email through wireless connetion and listening to a cd.

calebjohnston · Mar 25, 2006

While playing a CD in the drive, that's not hot. If you stop playing the CD, it will probably cool down to abotu 50 in 20 minutes or so - 50 is quite normal.

flyfish29 · Mar 25, 2006

Thanks for all the help!

flyfish29 · Apr 13, 2006

So I was importing some CD's and surfing on the web, running wireless net and here are the temps now. I am running off of the power cord as well if that matters:

top cpu 66 degrees C
Memory/Power 55 degrees C

This minute I stopped importing a CD it dropped to 62, then to 59ish about two min. after importing, but that is still way higher than the numbers I gave you the other day.

Is this way too hot for what I am doing?

calebjohnston · Apr 13, 2006

I recently switched to a 12" PB, but my 12" iBook would get very hot and noisy when importing CD's. Give it a few more minutes, I'm sure it will cool down more.

After using garageband for an hour or so, I have to put my PB to sleep for a good 10 minutes or so before it's useable again, and when just using it on my lap, I give it a few minutes break every half an hour or so.

These things are quite cool, and powerful, computers, but we definitely pay for the cool factor with the heat.

EDIT: Heh, cool/heat. Kind of a play on words.

BTW, is that your kid there for your avatar? Cute.

flyfish29 · Apr 13, 2006

calebjohnston said:
BTW, is that your kid there for your avatar? Cute.

Yup, that is him a few years ago. I actually have three pics similar to all diff. facial expressions but have not had time (nor do I really know how to) make a multi-image avitar- do you know how to?

thanks for the info on the heat. It did come back to 49 after about 10 or so minutes. I was just worried it was getting too hot and might damage something.

I have to be careful about the heat on my lap- don't want to become sterile just yet!

calebjohnston · Apr 13, 2006

I don't know about the multi-image avatar, but I do know that even tho the temps you had were high, you were doing 'heavy' things with the processor, so it's fine. You really don't need to worry about temperature until it's over 72-73 constantly - you can really damage the harddrive and logic board then. Other than that, heat is really just uncomfortable.

My advice is to ditch the temperature widget. Otherwise, you'll check it every 20 seconds. I know I did until I got rid of it.

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