iMac Too Hot!

I am afraid that is the nature of todays computers with more power comes more heat, but I would not of thought even touching the mac would be a problem, there is not much you can do apart from calling and asking apple, but those temps do looks pretty normal to be honest.

What GPU did you get the Imac installed with? generally the gpu produces the most heat and bumps the rest of the components temps up.

Nick. said:

Thanks for your help! I might give Apple a call I'm not sure.. but it's just so warm it's unbelievable, anyone would think I lived in Spain or something...

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The last card I bought from ATI was a X1800 and I personally dislike ATI cards because of the heat issues, just give them a call and explain that your not happy with the heat coming from your Imac

but one thing to note, all imacs tend to feel hot, if there not hot then usually theres something wrong with the heat circulation, there usually hot on the top to dissipate the heat from the components.

If you want to cool down your Mac you could always run SMCFanControl. This will obviously not fix any issues your machine potentially has, but will at least reduce the temperatures in the interim.

Nick. said:

Thanks for that Shard, is it dangerous setting fan temps too high? What's the highest safe speed would you say?

And thanks to the post above Shard's (forgot username, sorry! ). I think I might give them a call and try and claim a free desk fan jokes.

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Well the only real problem you will get is the computer being louder, fans can sometimes die earlier than intended as well if there used constantly at a high degree.

Just to note. I got my imac (2.4GHz, 24") last winter. The PSU was always over 60c.
Sometimes 80c ! My ambient was 25c. My hard disk was also 55c

Well, my hard disk died after 6 months of use and they also told my PSU was "fried". No wonder. After getting replaced PSU and hard disk. Its much cooler ! So maybe the original PSU was a rotten apple from the begining?

My new PSU is now 53c !
BTW, i upped my fans a litte from the dafault(1200,1200,700) to keep the hard disk below 50c
Picture is 1000 words:

I believe one of the reasons Apple switched the casing on the iMac is because Aluminum is great about transferring heat, and thus acting as a giant heat sink. My MacBook Pro is running about those temps if not higher, and I also have a small media server underneath it, so I understand what you are saying about your room being warmer. Something you just have to endure having the most powerful computer you can get, they get hot!

Nick. said:

Thanks for that Shard, is it dangerous setting fan temps too high? What's the highest safe speed would you say? (For HDD and CPU?)

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Not really dangerous other than the fact that running your fans faster technically adds more wear to them since they are working more. Will your fans die sooner as a result? I honestly don't think a few hundred rpm would make a big deal in the grand scheme of things but nonetheless there would be added wear to them.

Play around with the app and see what type of a temperature difference a few hundred rpm make and then go from there.

Also, keep in mind the only temps you can control via SMCFanControl are the CPU, HDD and optical drive - nothing specifically for GPU etc.

those are similar temps to what macbook pro users are getting and the imac uses mobile parts right? mobile components can take higher temps so your imac should be fine.

Nick. said:

I got my 24" (2.8Ghz, 2GB RAM) Alu iMac at Christmas and I've dealt with it for 7 months but now I've had enough.

The temperature this thing reachers, although it may be normal operating temperature, it's too hot! I sit here sweating in my room every night - even with a window open! Plus I don't like to open the windows as they let mosquitos, midgies, moths and other flying things in (I'm scared of flying things... :/)

How can I keep my iMac cooler? It's just too warm, I can't keep my hand on it!

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My iMac 2.8 Extreme his similar temps. My studio has no AC and the past few days it has been over 80 in the room. imac functions just fine.....not sweating by the way either, (me that is)! No shut downs or kernel panics, and no loud fans either!

My temp readings as well as others show similar results, too.

I have the Same issue with my 2.4 20" imac that I got in November. It gets to hot to touch, once I actually got burnt by it, I then decided that it was time to take it to the Apple Store but they said that my temps were fine (it was also making a very annoying buzzing/humming noise). And to make this all worse, my bed room has horrable insulation (the asbetos is starting to show its age) and my parents almost never turn the A/C on so the thermomitor in my room consistently reads 80-85 degrees, it gets worse when I turn my XBOX 360 on. But I'm going to take a trip to the Apple Store this weekend, because now the upper left corner of the screen is cloudy and there is a dark line running through that part of the screen to (joy oh joy I can't wait to be treated like an idiot by a "Genius").

END RANT

I would recomend installing SMCFanControl and uping your fan speeds abit, I tried it, but I couldn't stand the noise (remember mine is already noisy).

Hope your issue gets resolved!

Don

tdgrn said:

I believe one of the reasons Apple switched the casing on the iMac is because Aluminum is great about transferring heat, and thus acting as a giant heat sink.

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The ALU case is useless for conducting heat away from stuff that's not
bolted to the case -- such as the hard drive. Regardless of case material,
all iMacs are basically fan-cooled. That's why there are three fans inside.

58C is insanely hot for an idling hard drive. Every drive used in iMacs is
spec'd, by the manufacturer, for a maximum ambient operating temp of
either 55C or 60C (depending on model). As far as the drive is concerned,
the "HD Bay 1" temperature is its ambient.

Install smcFanControl and increase the idle speed of all three fans by
about 300-500 rpm. You'll be amazed at how much the HD Bay 1 temp
drops, and you won't hear any significant difference in fan noise. A few
hundred rpm will have no significant effect on fan life -- they might
even live longer as a result of the lower temperatures.

...heat kills hard drives,

LK

I to have a 24" 2.8 2gb but with the NVidia 512 card.

I do a fair amount of format shifting DVD's to iTunes with MTR and Handbreak so the computer is almost constantly under load.

I am not at the computer at the moment so I can't post a grab of SMCFanControl. Wonderful program by the way.

My fan speeds are set with may profiles. I have three fans I can set.
Profile 1 - fans +200 rpm, Profile 2 - fans +300, Profiles 3 -fans doubled, Profile 4 - little over doubled. The computer sounds no different then my Dad's white or alum 24" when you put them to work, only difference is they sound like they are working all the time with the fans on over double speed.

Myself I'm not terribly concerned with the fans going as I can replace them no issue. Also AppleCare 3yr, sadly they can't do anything about a blown hard drive that had all your data on it unless you made a backup.

My temps range a fair bit depending on the work at hand.

Web only with Wireless HDD~43C, CPU~35C, GPU~42C, Wireless~51C (Profile 1)
iTunes and Wireless HDD~50C, CPU~40C, GPU~48C, Wireless~52C (Profile 2)
Gaming/Processing and Wireless HDD~51C, CPU~48+C,GPU~52C, Wireless~54C (Profile 2)

johto said:

Just to note. I got my imac (2.4GHz, 24") last winter. The PSU was always over 60c.
Sometimes 80c ! My ambient was 25c. My hard disk was also 55c

Well, my hard disk died after 6 months of use and they also told my PSU was "fried". No wonder. After getting replaced PSU and hard disk. Its much cooler ! So maybe the original PSU was a rotten apple from the begining?

My new PSU is now 53c !
BTW, i upped my fans a litte from the dafault(1200,1200,700) to keep the hard disk below 50c
Picture is 1000 words:

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After my iMac was repaired optical drive fan is running at 1000 rpm. You are not the first with 700 rpm and i hear that strange noise. Any ideas?

For what it's worth, I have my set at 1600, 2400 and 1000 for my CPU, HDD and Optical Drive respectively via SMCFanControl. It makes a significant difference in my system temperatures, doesn't add too much extra stress to the fans (presumably) and the extra noise is negligible.

Put it to sleep at night, it doesn't get as hot, and turn up the air conditioner and leave your door open. That should help with it keeping a little cooler in your room, at night especially. I wouldn't mess with smcfancontrol personally. I trust apple to set the fans at a good speed, and don't want to kill my fans, and, in turn, killing my computer due to over heating.

Povilas said:

After my iMac was repaired optical drive fan is running at 1000 rpm. You are not the first with 700 rpm and i hear that strange noise. Any ideas?

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My optical drive fan runs at 1000 rpm, too. Maybe they changed it due to hot optical drives? (I got my iMac last saturday, btw)

Thought I'd fried my iMac yesterday.

It's a 20" 2.4 from January this year, with an ATI GFX card. Can't remember the spec at the moment.

Anyway, I was in Vista under bootcamp and playing Guild Wars for about 3-4 hours when it happened. Went into an instance and the screen went kalidoscopic . . . well, all the 3D generated stuff. The 2D GUI was fine.

Deffinate heat problem. Rebooted back into OS X and checked the temps with iStat and the GPU Diode temp was hovering around 71 - 72!

Downloaded the fan program mentioned before and cranked them up which quickly brought the temperatures down.

Booted into Vista and played Guild Wars for another few hours and it was fine. This iMac has been fine running WoW under OS X for months, no idea why GW nearly killed it.

Deffinate heat problem.

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How do you know it wasn't a software glitch?

The smoke coming out the top was a sure sign of it being too hot! *

I've seen graphical glitches caused by heat before and it's always the 3D component of the scene that goes funny whilst the 2D element remains fine.
Plus the heat of the GPU Diode . . . never seen it reach 70 before.


*Joke

Lol.

Something isn't right though. I'm puzzled why the 2D and 3D should be different.

What drivers are you using in Vista?

I'm not at home so I can't tell you for sure right now but I haven't updated them since installing Vista and running the bootcamp wizard from the Leopard DVD.

Played GW since and it's been fine so corrupted graphics driver is unlikely.
As I've already said, when I used to play around on a PC, overclocking and the such, heat problems would show themselves in this way. 2D GUI would be fine but the 3D graphics would go all kaplewy . . .

Something like this WoW screen I've just found through google image search caused by a graphics card overheating.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r250/holymnky/fckedup.jpg

Nick. said:

I got my 24" (2.8Ghz, 2GB RAM) Alu iMac at Christmas and I've dealt with it for 7 months but now I've had enough.

The temperature this thing reachers, although it may be normal operating temperature, it's too hot! I sit here sweating in my room every night - even with a window open! Plus I don't like to open the windows as they let mosquitos, midgies, moths and other flying things in (I'm scared of flying things... :/)

How can I keep my iMac cooler? It's just too warm, I can't keep my hand on it!

Click to expand...

Hi, I've recently just purchased a 24' and the first thing I noticed was how warm it gets. Could anyone please tell me where I find the box with all the information about its temperature etc please? I haven't learnt my way around this yet.
Thanks a lot.