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G5 over heating issues

S

SeVeN

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2006
621
10
San Jose
Hi, I bought my imac g5 (15") used a few months back. Everything worked fine. But recently it has been shutting off by itself and I can smell a light scent of something burning or something getting too hot! I can hear my fan(s) going but my istat is telling me its 143 F and I know that is way too hot!

p.s. The imac will not shut itself off unless i leave it alone and it goes to sleep. It happens only when it sleeps or if i leave it alone for an hour..:confused:

Is there anyway that I can diagnose or troubleshoot this? I would hate to take it in. TIA! :D
 
143 F is about 61 C < it's not that hot...what were you doing at that moment? Usually when doing surfing online the computer should usually stay at low 50's and in high 50's or low 60's if you are staying on the computer for a long time or if you open multiply programs. I don't think it's the temp. problem it's probably something else. Maybe it's the hard drive? Usually they don't shut itself down at that low temp. iMac can take up pretty high temperature....o_O
 
Oh yeah to add to my previous post I also have an iMac G5 17"( I have it for over 2 years) and I just burn a DVD yesterday and I left it open for like 5 hours and it didn't shut down. And it was also using a lot of CPU and I felt the back of my computer quite warm and I'm assuming the temperature was around the high 70's C. So it's probably not the temperature's problem.
 
Thanks! Is there any way to find out for sure if it is the hard drive? Also, after I came home and found that it was warm, and it wouldn't come back on, I took it apart and looked around. When I took off the back cover, there was a strong smell of something burnt it seemed like! :( And I actually ended up burning some skin from touching the G5 processor cover (the big silver cover with G5 on it). It was that hot!

So I left it apart for an hour to let it cool down a bit. Then I put it back together and it worked just fine again... But it still does the same thing... Is there anything that I can go thru and check to see what exactly it its? I'd like to do a process of elimination with it... I do not want to take it in if its something that I can fix myself.. Thanks again! :)
 
SeVeN said:
Thanks! Is there any way to find out for sure if it is the hard drive? Also, after I came home and found that it was warm, and it wouldn't come back on, I took it apart and looked around. When I took off the back cover, there was a strong smell of something burnt it seemed like! :( And I actually ended up burning some skin from touching the G5 processor cover (the big silver cover with G5 on it). It was that hot!

So I left it apart for an hour to let it cool down a bit. Then I put it back together and it worked just fine again... But it still does the same thing... Is there anything that I can go thru and check to see what exactly it its? I'd like to do a process of elimination with it... I do not want to take it in if its something that I can fix myself.. Thanks again! :)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't risk it if I were you. Do you have applecare? If you do then take it to apple care and have them look at it. Can you determine where the smell comes from exactly? From my point of view..I really think your hard drive is burning up and I suggest that you stop using it right now b/c it may cause more problems like completely crash your computer. I think taking it to an apple store would be a wise choice. But if you want to make sure try take a carefully look at the computer.

Oh yeah try using disk utility to see if there's a problem
 
I think he means the hardware test that comes on your install cds. Honestly, I have the random shutdown problem on my G5, and I have been told it could be, from smallest to largest, a burnt out transistor, faulty battery supply, faulty motherboard, bad processor.

Running it in reduced performance mode keeps it from shutting down. I would check your console log to see what message code it throws up when it shuts down, then google that code.
 
Solemony said:
I wouldn't risk it if I were you. Do you have applecare? If you do then take it to apple care and have them look at it. Can you determine where the smell comes from exactly? From my point of view..I really think your hard drive is burning up and I suggest that you stop using it right now b/c it may cause more problems like completely crash your computer. I think taking it to an apple store would be a wise choice. But if you want to make sure try take a carefully look at the computer.

Oh yeah try using disk utility to see if there's a problem
Click to expand...

Solemony said:
Click Go*on the top of your comp. screen* click utilities and you should see disk utility there.

To decksnap: I'm a she actually...
Click to expand...


ya and then?
 
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