Do Imacs overheat?

[DeF46]

Hi,

I just curious if Imacs overheat. How do you know when they are too hot. I'm playing Star Wars The Old Republic MMO and or dual screen photoshop. Either or seems to feel like the Imac runs hotter. I hear no fan, but just wondering? Should I be careful and concerned? Usually I don't care because my PC desktops are well ventilated or have room, but this is my precious small enclosed Imac.

The fans scaling in response to the GPU temps is NOT properly balanced in OS X and Windows. GPU running at 90 + C is no good, no matter how much "protection" there is. It's a problem waiting to happen. Always use a small fan increase (MacFan, smcFanControl) under OS X and Windows when playing AAA Direct X / OpenGL games.

Been gaming on a late 2009 iMac, no screen issues;, never replaced or returned. This thing DOES get very hot, up to 95C if you play a long stretch without fan control.

Some games are much more intensive on the GPU than others, so you can't assess the GPU temps from just one game.

 

[Neodym]

The question may be, what exactly is meant by "overheating". The classical understanding would be that components of the computer reach a temperature where they fail or get damaged.

Modern components like e.g. CPU's have integrated protection mechanisms that prevent damage and failure by throttling or switching to emergency shutdown. The iMac probably also sports some emergency routine in its firmware.

However, with a less strict approach, one could say that overheating is already taking place when the computer operates at temperatures that lead to a significant impact on components, leading to noticeable deterioration over time, which eventually results in damage or failure without an acute overheating happening at the time of failure.

For the iMac, things like early dying hard drives come to mind or the infamous "screen burn-in" symptom on the 27" machines.

Depending on part tolerances and usage profile, the very same machine can be affected very differently, which makes it difficult to evaluate a model generally.

In my opinion the iMac seems to operate with too high temperatures under continuous load (like e.g. demanding gaming), thus shortening component live below a threshold i personally would require as minimum.

 

[gmanist1000]

Hi,

I just curious if Imacs overheat. How do you know when they are too hot. I'm playing Star Wars The Old Republic MMO and or dual screen photoshop. Either or seems to feel like the Imac runs hotter. I hear no fan, but just wondering? Should I be careful and concerned? Usually I don't care because my PC desktops are well ventilated or have room, but this is my precious small enclosed Imac.

They don't overheat, but they get HOT. The top of the backside of the iMac gets very very hot, and it is untouchable. The computer would shutdown before it overheated.

 

[G51989]

Before the haters swoop down on me, I AM a mostly PC user ( Love mah Windows and Nix ). HOWEVER, at home. In addition to my gaming tower, I have a 27 inch iMac 2011, I've always had a soft spot for Macs, my first new Computer was a iMac G3, my College laptop was a Pismo till 2004

I love my iMac, but at other times I do want to burn it ( **** you 10.7 ).

Will it overheat? As long as all the sensors are working, and fans are good. It will not overheat.

However, iMacs run hot as hell. Its the price you pay for stuffing all that hardware into such a tiny form factor.

To put this into prespective, my gaming tower has an OCed I7 running at 4gzh, 32gb of ram, and two ATI 7970s.

It doesn't get CLOSE to as hot as the iMac. Its all in the form factor.

Yes, will it run hot? Of course.

Will it overheat as long as its working properly? No.