Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iMac exploded.

AlbertEinstein

AlbertEinstein

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 3, 2013
132
0
Yup, My faithfull iMac 24", 2.8GHz, late 2008 has exploded.

I was sitting with it today and all of the sudden i heard a loud POP and then it all went black and there was smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

I only need all My files today. Jolly good.

And om top of that: My PowerMac G5s screen broke and i lost the ADC to DVI connector i had for My old Studio Display, so now i'm stuck With A G4 Cube alá 450Mhz and 512MB memory running OSX 10.4. Jolly good.

Rest In Pieces iMac, it only aged 5.:apple:
 
Well, it sounds as though it's worthless now.

If you agree, then the upside is that you don't need to be careful in pulling the disk drive out. Get the right tools (suction cups, torx drivers) and have at it. You'll be putting everything but the drive in the rubbish (or taking it to a recycler) anyway.

Just rip it apart and pull out the drive. Pop the drive in a temporary USB housing, and pull your files off and onto the G4 for today or until you replace the iMac.

Obviously if you intend to get it repaired then this is useless advice.
 
Power supply

Happened to me on my 2010 iMac. Loud bang and it went dead. Apple store popped in a new power supply and all was well.
 
Definitely sounds like a power supply failure. Unfortunately when the PSU goes out it can take other things, expensive things (logic board, cpu, RAM, hard disk, etc) with it.
 
jmpage2 said:
Definitely sounds like a power supply failure. Unfortunately when the PSU goes out it can take other things, expensive things (logic board, cpu, RAM, hard disk, etc) with it.
Click to expand...

Very unlikely these days. It was common in pre-2007 machines, but post 2007 ones have extra protection to stop that.

You'll need a new PSU - which is about £80 + labour. So your baby isn't quite dead yet. Sometimes PSUs die quietly, sometimes they go out with a bang - guess yours was the latter :D
 
Brian Y said:
Very unlikely these days. It was common in pre-2007 machines, but post 2007 ones have extra protection to stop that.

You'll need a new PSU - which is about £80 + labour. So your baby isn't quite dead yet. Sometimes PSUs die quietly, sometimes they go out with a bang - guess yours was the latter :D
Click to expand...

Yes, sounds like an electrolytic capacitor exploded and probably in the power supply.
 
To you demanding pictures: i really hope you mean the inside of said mac, as it didn't literally explode.

However, it wont turn back on. Opening it up reveals a destroyed motherboard, harddrive, superdrive, RAM... you name it. It looks like A nuclear bomb went off.

The sad thing is that this was a studio machine. I cant count the enourmus amount of audio, graphics and video editing that has been done on this machine. And guess what? It dies when my son tries to start The Sims. Not a worthy death of the iMac.

Thank Buddah for Time Machine!:apple:
 
AlbertEinstein said:
Yup, My faithfull iMac 24", 2.8GHz, late 2008 has exploded.

I was sitting with it today and all of the sudden i heard a loud POP and then it all went black and there was smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

I only need all My files today. Jolly good.

And om top of that: My PowerMac G5s screen broke and i lost the ADC to DVI connector i had for My old Studio Display, so now i'm stuck With A G4 Cube alá 450Mhz and 512MB memory running OSX 10.4. Jolly good.

Rest In Pieces iMac, it only aged 5.:apple:
Click to expand...

Most likely only a power supply, if you don't mind doing the work for less than $200 you can fix it.

EDIT: Whoops should have read your last post, well RIP.
 
AlbertEinstein said:
To you demanding pictures: i really hope you mean the inside of said mac, as it didn't literally explode.

However, it wont turn back on. Opening it up reveals a destroyed motherboard, harddrive, superdrive, RAM... you name it. It looks like A nuclear bomb went off.

The sad thing is that this was a studio machine. I cant count the enourmus amount of audio, graphics and video editing that has been done on this machine. And guess what? It dies when my son tries to start The Sims. Not a worthy death of the iMac.

Thank Buddah for Time Machine!:apple:
Click to expand...

With that kind of damage, it looks like a catastrophic power supply failure that put +12 volts on the +5v and/or +3.3v lines, causing major component destruction and charring. I once had +12v connect to the +5v pin of a hard drive power connector, and the result wasn't pretty. It only takes a fraction of a second to do the damage.

Being a serious work machine, and faced with running the Sims, it chose the honorable way out.
 
The iMac seems completely dead and my attempts to bring it back have been unsuccessful. I tried replacing the PSU, but to no avail. I put in some new RAM but it's completely dead.

And in other news i have ordered a brand new Mac Mini. It wont feel the same, but it will do it's job.:apple:
 
I guess I got lucky. My late 07 24" 2.8 imac power supply went quietly in its sleep last week. Kids work up and it just wouldn't turn on. After popping it open i found that the standby led no lit. Took out the power supply and found the line in fuse blown. Ordered a replacement supply and put it in yesterday. All is good. Sorry yours was so catastrophic.
 
"The sad thing is that this was a studio machine. I cant count the enourmus amount of audio, graphics and video editing that has been done on this machine."

Of course, you were backed up….

Right…. ?
 
The troube when a PSU goes that dramatically is that it probably took the Logic board with it....At least you have the HDD. Removing it and sticking it in a caddy might help you recover those lost files if you don't have backups.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back