Rude wake up!

[mdmoran]

Long-time lurker here who's gained a lot of great knowledge from this board. Wondering if anyone might be able to help me out.

We (like a lot of people) were waiting for the new iMacs to come out, and opted for a 3.4GHz i7 on release day. Long story short, that one ended up getting returned because it would continually be unresponsive. I lucked out everywhere else though - silent HDD, no yellow tint/dead pixels etc.

So the replacement arrived yesterday, and I spent a few hours getting it all set back up again. Noticed that there was a considerably noisier HDD in there and a dead pixel on the screen, but am quite happy to live with that. But, at about 3AM we were woken up by a REALLY loud noise that I was convinced was the fire alarm. Turned out it was the iMac making a series of beeps - all I could do was kill the power and get back to sleep.

When I got up this AM, I expected not to be able to boot up due to bad memory or something similar - but it booted just fine, passed Apple's hardware test and got through the GeekBench test with the same scores as before.

Could anyone shed any light on this please?

 

[jgo78]

Long-time lurker here who's gained a lot of great knowledge from this board. Wondering if anyone might be able to help me out.

We (like a lot of people) were waiting for the new iMacs to come out, and opted for a 3.4GHz i7 on release day. Long story short, that one ended up getting returned because it would continually be unresponsive. I lucked out everywhere else though - silent HDD, no yellow tint/dead pixels etc.

So the replacement arrived yesterday, and I spent a few hours getting it all set back up again. Noticed that there was a considerably noisier HDD in there and a dead pixel on the screen, but am quite happy to live with that. But, at about 3AM we were woken up by a REALLY loud noise that I was convinced was the fire alarm. Turned out it was the iMac making a series of beeps - all I could do was kill the power and get back to sleep.

When I got up this AM, I expected not to be able to boot up due to bad memory or something similar - but it booted just fine, passed Apple's hardware test and got through the GeekBench test with the same scores as before.

Could anyone shed any light on this please?

haha, did you set an 'alarm' on your mac?

on the noisy harddrive, do you have a western digital? on my replacement imac, i have wd and is definately noisy compared to my first one which had the seagate which you couldn't hear at all. Do you have the WD?

 

[mdmoran]

haha, did you set an 'alarm' on your mac?

on the noisy harddrive, do you have a western digital? on my replacement imac, i have wd and is definately noisy compared to my first one which had the seagate which you couldn't hear at all. Do you have the WD?

I wish it was just an alarm! I can't really be arsed sending the computer back to Apple again because I'm just at the beginning of starting a business. At the same time though, I don't want something that's going to give me no end of problems in the future.

Not sure what the HDD is in the new machine - didn't get chance to look. It's not loud so that it's a problem, but the last one was silent!

What was the issue with yours to cause a replacement, just out of interest?

 

[jgo78]

I wish it was just an alarm! I can't really be arsed sending the computer back to Apple again because I'm just at the beginning of starting a business. At the same time though, I don't want something that's going to give me no end of problems in the future.

Not sure what the HDD is in the new machine - didn't get chance to look. It's not loud so that it's a problem, but the last one was silent!

What was the issue with yours to cause a replacement, just out of interest?

i had the famous 'yellow tint' problem on the bottom half of screen (check the yellow tint poll thread). My replacement doesn't have the yellow but has a bit of 'reddish tint' in the upper left corner. Guess I'm gonna live with it because don't want to go through anymore hassle as this is a BTO and can't just go to a store. My HD is WD which is louder and runs hotter too according to Istat. But the good thing is when I run a HD benchmark, it is slightly faster than the previous Seagate (although the SG is silent). Seems almost impossible to get a 'perfect' machine. You might win in one area and lose in another.

 

[tsugaru]

Long-time lurker here who's gained a lot of great knowledge from this board. Wondering if anyone might be able to help me out.

We (like a lot of people) were waiting for the new iMacs to come out, and opted for a 3.4GHz i7 on release day. Long story short, that one ended up getting returned because it would continually be unresponsive. I lucked out everywhere else though - silent HDD, no yellow tint/dead pixels etc.

So the replacement arrived yesterday, and I spent a few hours getting it all set back up again. Noticed that there was a considerably noisier HDD in there and a dead pixel on the screen, but am quite happy to live with that. But, at about 3AM we were woken up by a REALLY loud noise that I was convinced was the fire alarm. Turned out it was the iMac making a series of beeps - all I could do was kill the power and get back to sleep.

When I got up this AM, I expected not to be able to boot up due to bad memory or something similar - but it booted just fine, passed Apple's hardware test and got through the GeekBench test with the same scores as before.

Could anyone shed any light on this please?

Sounds like the issue I was having with mine (bad RAM slot.)

 

[Georgio]

The Western Digital cavair is the HD you want, if you look in profiler it will start with wdcxxxxxxxx. The seagates generally are noisier, you must have had a Wednesday morning one....^^

 

[jgo78]

The Western Digital cavair is the HD you want, if you look in profiler it will start with wdcxxxxxxxx. The seagates generally are noisier, you must have had a Wednesday morning one....^^

Im experiencing the exact opposite! The seagate was dead silent and had low temps, the WD i have now is much more audible and runs hotter. Although the WD is slightly faster according to HD test.

 

[tsugaru]

Im experiencing the exact opposite! The seagate was dead silent and had low temps, the WD i have now is much more audible and runs hotter. Although the WD is slightly faster according to HD test.

Agreed.

Both my iMacs have the same Seagate drive. The 2009 one is much noisier. The 2011 one is basically silent. You can hear seeks and writes if you really listen carefully, more so than the old one.

Maybe Apple set the performance/AAM mode to quiet/lowest setting.

 

[mdmoran]

Didn't have chance to check what the HDD in the old machine was, but this is a Western Digital, and is considerably noisier than the last one. Have already called apple support about this, and the guy couldn't even tell me what might be causing the beeping. If it continues, I guess we'll be looking at sending it back again. Hey - it keeps the refurb store in business at least!

 

[TallManNY]

I've got the seagate in my new iMac. It is silent, which is one of the things I like about iMacs. I know some people say Western Digital is better, but for me silent is important. I will just have to hope for longevity.

 

[koesac]

Mdmoran,

I had exactly the same thing happen to me last night, at just after 3am as well.

My iMac is a 2010 27".

Did you ever get to the bottom of this?

 

[mdmoran]

Kind of, but not completely. The loud beeping in the night only happened once, but the OS X lockups happened a lot. We went through 4 iMacs I think, until me of the Apple Care guys told me that it was a known problem, and they were working on a fix for it.

After one of the software updates (although I don't remember which one) the lockups problem disappeared completely. At least in OS X. Windows on Boot Camp is almost unusable - it freezes every 10-15 mins. We've had different versions of windows on there, multiple installs and nothing has fixed it.

So, all I can suggest is to make sure that all the software updates are applied, and get rid of windows. If you still have a problem, and have apple care - give them a call. They're always pretty helpful!

 

[jertronic]

Speaking of HDD's..... I noticed that the 500Gb drive in my iMac is SATA. How are SATA's considered? Noisy? Quiet? Good/bad?

 

[paulrbeers]

Speaking of HDD's..... I noticed that the 500Gb drive in my iMac is SATA. How are SATA's considered? Noisy? Quiet? Good/bad?

Ummm SATA is just the type of connection used for your hard drive. All computers now come with SATA hard drives (old PATA is hardly even made anymore and really only for those who want to upgrade an old machine). SATA has no bearing on how loud or quiet a hard drive is....

 

[doktordoris]

Speaking of HDD's..... I noticed that the 500Gb drive in my iMac is SATA. How are SATA's considered? Noisy? Quiet? Good/bad?

To work out your HDD manufacturer got to "about this mac", then choose "more info", then "system report" and under Hardware look at "Serial-ATA", there you will find "model" followed by a bunch of letters an numbers mine, for instance, says ST31000528AS. If you look that number up online you will learn the make and model of drive. Mine turned out to be a seagate barracuda.

 

[thekev]

haha, did you set an 'alarm' on your mac?

on the noisy harddrive, do you have a western digital? on my replacement imac, i have wd and is definately noisy compared to my first one which had the seagate which you couldn't hear at all. Do you have the WD?

Western Digitals sometimes have more noise on random reads and things. It can be annoying, but Seagate as a whole has a number of other issues. Hard drives today are made incredibly cheap. They are designed more around cost than quality.

I wish it was just an alarm! I can't really be arsed sending the computer back to Apple again because I'm just at the beginning of starting a business. At the same time though, I don't want something that's going to give me no end of problems in the future.

Not sure what the HDD is in the new machine - didn't get chance to look. It's not loud so that it's a problem, but the last one was silent!

What was the issue with yours to cause a replacement, just out of interest?

Bleck... not my favorite choice of computer for starting a business. My issue with it is the same as always... if you need it for work, too many things can require sending the machine in for servicing. The hard drive is not user serviceable (note the temperature sensor issue on the forums). Gpu failure isn't that common, but if it happens, the entire logic board goes with it. If I have display problems, I can send a display in for service and use an old one. With an imac, the entire machine has to go in. It's really the hard drive thing that pushes it over the edge for me. Hard drives aren't reliable at all, so being unable to swap out a bad one is a real issue for me.

 

[jertronic]

Okay. After searching I discovered that my iMac sports a Western Digital Caviar (WD5000AAKS-402AA0). The thing runs like a charm, quiet, fast and cool.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Something I recommend to every person who owns a computer, specially if it's an expensive unit, is to purchase a UPS to protect it against power surges and related problems.
A Surge Protector IS NOT ENOUGH as it only protects agains surges. There are many other electrical problems that could easily cause data loss, damage of computer parts, etc.

And if you buy one, don't buy the cheapest and smallest you can find, the one the salesman is trying to get rid of. Buy an APC UPS, and one that at least doubles the requirements of your computer; and make sure not to connect your printer to the battery backup side of it.

For an iMac I would recommend at least the BackUPS 1200. It will last you a long time and protect your computer.

 

[MJL]

A Surge Protector IS NOT ENOUGH as it only protects agains surges. There are many other electrical problems that could easily cause data loss, damage of computer parts, etc.

And if you buy one, don't buy the cheapest and smallest you can find, the one the salesman is trying to get rid of. Buy an APC UPS, and one that at least doubles the requirements of your computer; and make sure not to connect your printer to the battery backup side of it.

Get one of the recommended /advertised ones in the Apple store. I have not so much a problem with a spike but do have issues with "brown outs" where the power falls away for a few seconds (lights dimming/flickering/going out for a few seconds). Brown outs are very hard on your computer....

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Get one of the recommended /advertised ones in the Apple store. I have not so much a problem with a spike but do have issues with "brown outs" where the power falls away for a few seconds (lights dimming/flickering/going out for a few seconds). Brown outs are very hard on your computer....

That's a huge reason to get a UPS over a surge protector.
The only one I would recommend from the Apple Store is this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H0880LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDEwMQ

And if you shop around (Sam's Club, Amazon, Office Depot, BrandSmart, etc.) you may be able to save 10% of more.

 

[tyche]

That's a huge reason to get a UPS over a surge protector.
The only one I would recommend from the Apple Store is this one:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H0880LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDEwMQ

And if you shop around (Sam's Club, Amazon, Office Depot, BrandSmart, etc.) you may be able to save 10% of more.

I have the same one and it's great. I use one for my computers and another for the home theatre equipment. Around my area we get a lot of short power drops in the summer. I've had some more basic UPS that were cheaper but this one handles the load much better.

 

[jertronic]

If one were hoping for a smaller, local solution would this one be sufficient?

http://www.amazon.com/APC-BE550G-Back-UPS-Outlet-550VA/dp/B0019804U8/ref=pd_sim_e_3%22%5D"]

 

[tyche]

If one were hoping for a smaller, local solution would this one be sufficient?

http://www.amazon.com/APC-BE550G-Back-UPS-Outlet-550VA/dp/B0019804U8/ref=pd_sim_e_3%22%5D"]

I had that one and a week after I bought it, I plugged my vacuum into one of the non ups plugs and the ups fried - made a big popping noise and cooked something inside it. That's when I decided it might be best to pay a little more and get something more sturdy.