Looks like after waiting weeks, mine has a damaged screen or GPU. :/ There frequently comes a line down the center-left of the screen which stays for a while and comes and goes. It persists after resetting SMC/NVRAM, happens in both Windows and OSX, and according to Google is an issue with some parts inside being loose.
I don't have an Apple Store anywhere near me, so I'm guessing I have to ship this back. Was hoping it would fix itself, but doesn't seem likely. Really disappointing after waiting so long. :/
Sorry to hear of your problems, and as well as the problems I've read from others.
On the surface my iMac seems to be perfect, but I still have some concerns. My screen seems perfect - it's extremely snappy. Honestly, performance and noise wise, I couldn't be happier. I can hardly even hear this thing when I'm running modern games, BUT, my concern is with the heat.
I got this thing to do heavy video rendering, photoshop/illustrator, heavy audio production, web design, and every now and then, some gaming. My adobe creative suite is a windows license, so I have to pay to switch that over to OS X; my rack mounted sound card needs new drivers to work with El Capitan, and my video editor is a windows version of premier, so I was looking at buying Final Cut. To summarize, all I really have to try and push this thing at the moment are some games.
In terms of performance, I think it performs really well considering it's a laptop card. In Tomb Raider I get a mix of 60 Fps that will dip to the high 40's, and that's basically the same that I get in Alien Isolation, Bioshock Infinite and BorderLands the Pre-Sequel - all with highest settings (except AA which is just FXAA) and at 1440p. The concern I have is that the GPU regularly and constantly hits 100 - 103 Celsius and depending on the game, the CPU will hit and stay at around 89 up to 101 as well.
Ive tried manual fan control, and when setting the fan at 2300 RPMs the GPU won't cross 89 degrees and the CPU in the high 70's, but it's still in the high range, and I feel like the mac should do this without me having to use 3rd party software and custom fan curves.
I called Apple to see if they knew what the safe temps were, as Googling about it for many hours got me nowhere. The tech said he didn't know so he'd try and find out. He talked to his Co-workers who said that it's normal for the iMac 5K to be anywhere between something like 50 (unsure of the low number) and 120 degrees. He wasn't specific to a part, he just said in general which doesn't tell me a whole lot. He said that I shouldn't worry unless it hit 150 degrees, because then there would be a problem, and that if there was heating issues I would experience lag and slow down, which is very true, and in the case of the GPU, I know from experience that you generally see artifacting, which I also did not experience.
That said, I am concerned about the temps still. I upgraded this iMac so that I COULD push it heavily, not just to have a pretty screen to type emails on.
I'm used to building custom PC's where the CPU never goes above 60 and GPU never above 70 under heavy loads, so the iMacs numbers are alarming to me. What's everyone else thoughts? Does anyone have any official safe temps?
I want to be able to use my iMac without worry that I'm going to burn it out. I'm most concerned about longevity - I don't want to cross the 3 year mark out of warranty to have a heavy paperweight.
Any thoughts?
