Hi there!
First of all, here's what I think you need to know about my Mac:
It's a 24" 3,06 GHz 8,1 iMac (early 2008) 10.6.8
Then, a "short" introduction:
So... As the title of my post suggests, I have an issue with my iMac's Hard Drive fan.
Let me clarify: the fan doesn't spin regularly. As I have iStat Menus I can see that the ODD and CPU fan spin at their expected (idle) speed +/- 2 rpm, silently. The HD fan makes a lot of noise, and can go as much as 50 or more rpm faster or slower than the expected speed. SMC fan control tells me that it should spin at 1200 rpm in idle, but that value goes from 1130 to 1300 rpm in a blink of an eye.
Sometimes it even stops spinning and after a moment of silence starts again. Well, I tried the SMC reset but nothing changed. So I opened up my iMac, cleaned the dust off the fan (and everything else, believe me, in 4 years that's a lot of dust in there!) and started it up again.
I was most relieved when my iMac booted up (seems like I didn't mess anything up when I disassembled it and put it back together), but at no avail. My fan is still loud as hell!
Note that I'm not talking about the vacuum cleaner noise fans do when spinning at full throttle. Fan Control lets you adjust the speed as you desire, so I tried to spin it to the max. Well that was definitely not the usual vacuum cleaner sound. That was the sound of a dying vacuum cleaner owned by an evil child who opened its gearbox and put marbles and metal shards inside just to see it destroy itself, gears grinding against eachother. Believe me, that's a sound you never want to hear coming from your Mac..... It's not a SMC settings problem either. I'm talking about a fan that has probably reached its end. As strange as that might seem to me, after only 4 years of work, well... I think my only option is to buy a new fan.
So, at last, my question is: Does anyone of you guys know if you can buy a replacement? ifixit.com doesn't even have it. macpartsonline.com offers me that fan for about 50$, but that seems quite a lot to me, for only a fan...
I don't want to go to an Apple Store because it would probably cost even more...
Also, on ebay there's noone selling early 2008 iMac fans. There are fans for early 2009 iMacs but I think those are not the same...? Right? Otherwise for 10$ I would try one of those.....
edit: Oh yeah, if it is relevant, the model part number for my mac's HD fan is 922-8460
First of all, here's what I think you need to know about my Mac:
It's a 24" 3,06 GHz 8,1 iMac (early 2008) 10.6.8
Then, a "short" introduction:
So... As the title of my post suggests, I have an issue with my iMac's Hard Drive fan.
Let me clarify: the fan doesn't spin regularly. As I have iStat Menus I can see that the ODD and CPU fan spin at their expected (idle) speed +/- 2 rpm, silently. The HD fan makes a lot of noise, and can go as much as 50 or more rpm faster or slower than the expected speed. SMC fan control tells me that it should spin at 1200 rpm in idle, but that value goes from 1130 to 1300 rpm in a blink of an eye.
Sometimes it even stops spinning and after a moment of silence starts again. Well, I tried the SMC reset but nothing changed. So I opened up my iMac, cleaned the dust off the fan (and everything else, believe me, in 4 years that's a lot of dust in there!) and started it up again.
I was most relieved when my iMac booted up (seems like I didn't mess anything up when I disassembled it and put it back together), but at no avail. My fan is still loud as hell!
Note that I'm not talking about the vacuum cleaner noise fans do when spinning at full throttle. Fan Control lets you adjust the speed as you desire, so I tried to spin it to the max. Well that was definitely not the usual vacuum cleaner sound. That was the sound of a dying vacuum cleaner owned by an evil child who opened its gearbox and put marbles and metal shards inside just to see it destroy itself, gears grinding against eachother. Believe me, that's a sound you never want to hear coming from your Mac..... It's not a SMC settings problem either. I'm talking about a fan that has probably reached its end. As strange as that might seem to me, after only 4 years of work, well... I think my only option is to buy a new fan.
So, at last, my question is: Does anyone of you guys know if you can buy a replacement? ifixit.com doesn't even have it. macpartsonline.com offers me that fan for about 50$, but that seems quite a lot to me, for only a fan...
I don't want to go to an Apple Store because it would probably cost even more...
Also, on ebay there's noone selling early 2008 iMac fans. There are fans for early 2009 iMacs but I think those are not the same...? Right? Otherwise for 10$ I would try one of those.....
edit: Oh yeah, if it is relevant, the model part number for my mac's HD fan is 922-8460
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