iMac dissatisfaction.

LordSplodge said:
Really? The CPU is well within the thermal limits. Now if the back of his case was 80 degrees he might have issues. Apple have designed the iMac to handle prolonged running at temperature. Not a little bit of gaming but day in, day out video, audio and photo editing pushing the CPU and GPU to the limit.

What I don't get is this heat is vented (partially) via the aluminium at the back. Why would that being warm be even a concern to the OP? It's obvious to even people without CompSci degrees that an all-in-one like the iMac is going to get warm in places under load.
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Yeah to be honest the more i think about it it doesn't seem too bad considering the design etc. I was just coming in from the angle of what happened to my MBP, but that may have been a one-off tbh.
 
Disco Boy said:
It's a giant heatsink, of course it gets hot! 80degrees is well within the thermal limits.

It is an all in one, of course it doesn't dissipate heat as effectively as a gaming PC with loads of space and fans!

Basically you bought it because you thought it'd be really cool, not because of what it is, and now you regret wasting your money. I agree with the poster above.
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This

The iMac takes advantage of the huge aluminium back to use it as a heat sink and radiate the excess heat.

It will get hot to the touch. Stop thinking its a PC and start thinking its like a mac. Until it actually shuts down because it's too hot you have nothing to worry about
 
I fancy boys said:
Yeah to be honest the more i think about it it doesn't seem too bad considering the design etc. I was just coming in from the angle of what happened to my MBP, but that may have been a one-off tbh.
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Yeah probably. My wife's 15" MBP runs a lot warmer than the older MacBook its replaced. She's pointed this out to be and I answer: "Yes, dear but notice the fans aren't howling away as much." :o:D
 
Fragil1ty said:


I went ahead and bought an iMac because of the fact that I thought it would be a good replacement for my current computer even though the specifications are more a less identical, I thought because I have used Macs in the past (MBP's, Mac Minis) that it would be a good step up, they use applications that I really enjoy such as: Transmit, Coda, Final cut, xCode, Unison and so on, I thought it would be great for me to buy one and then have one around incase I wanted to use these programs, obviously it was a mistake buying this machine.

I do a web/programming degree, hence the need to go ahead and buy one of these machines, now granted, I could do my work for the most part on dreamweaver/notepad & filezilla, but they are not my preferred apps.
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I guess if they are your preferred apps it makes sense to go OSX. As an OS I prefer the Mac side of things. I'm also Apple certified and up until Feb of this year I was a Broadcast Engineer / support provider.

The temps of these Macs was, and I'm assuming is still a massive question by people in general, and it got to the point where people were wanting to return them becuase of this but all we could do was reassure the customers.

They do run a little high in general, it's just a fact of these systems. Every single one I've ever seen is always hot on the back. Not being an expert but I always assumed the use of the aluminium was a means of both form and function, allowing the metal to dissipate the heat caused by it being an all in one.

It's the same with laptop temps, even just doing basic stuff on my MBP makes it warm.

One thing to remember as well is if you do start gaming on the Windows side, it will likely get even hotter. The fans do increase in speed to accommodate but the call from someone earlier to go for SMC fan control is a good one.

I think the best thing for you to do is accept the temps it runs at. Everyone in here, in their own special way is telling you that it's normal :) and as there have been a lot of revisions of the iMac, and the design also follows through their displays and portables now I wouldn't see it as a fault when they all behave in a similar fashion.

Apple are **** at admitting there are faults with stuff yes, but it wouldnt have taken them this long. I'd stick with it if you can. Though with you wanting to game I'm surprised you only went with the 512MB card I have to say! :P
 
dav3evans said:
Apple are **** at admitting there are faults with stuff yes, but it wouldnt have taken them this long. I'd stick with it if you can. Though with you wanting to game I'm surprised you only went with the 512MB card I have to say! :P
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*cough* 1st gen nano *cough* :p

In all seriousness though, very valid points.
 
Its a tough sell to get them to do it. I'm not sure if it is the exact same material (although it seems like it) but the cracks that we saw were in the exact same place as the top case but they would never agree that it was the same fault.

The interesting thing I always found about that was they said they had redesigned these top cases with a different material to prevent the issue, but there are people who are on their 3rd or 4th top case. I'm sure I saw someone on here recently who will get a new MBP if it happens again too! Definitely not "the usual" way they deal with the issue though so I hope that doesnt give people any ideas =P
 
dav3evans said:
The interesting thing I always found about that was they said they had redesigned these top cases with a different material to prevent the issue, but there are people who are on their 3rd or 4th top case.
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It only ever happened once to my wife's MacBook when it had just past it's second birthday.
 
The aluminium casing acts as sort of a heat sink, the heat displacement across the casing is part of what allows it to be as thin and quiet as it is.

While I don't use my iMac for gaming (I have a dedicated windows machine pretty much just for my gaming, I even run visual studio on the mac (vmware unity) as I have more monitors hooked up to it), I do some intensive stuff on it and have felt it get rather hot. But I don't worry about it, there is no need, I don't touch it while I'm using it because why would I? I have a the standard three year Apple care warranty that came with it by buying it as a student and if anything goes wrong with it, then they are the ones fixing it.
 
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All this anger and frustration and it's all because of the acceptable temps your quoting!

I don't have a iMac but a custom water cooled pc, CPU and gpu are water cooled, yes my temps are a lot better than yours but if I bought an iMac I would expect them sort of temperatures.

I can't believe how worked up you have got over it and think its best you send the thing back as you sound to me like you don't deserve to have such a nice system and your taking it completely for granted.
 
Is the computer shutting down? Is your desk scorched? Is there a pool of molten aluminium spoiling your carpet? Has you house, in fact, burnt down?

No?

Sounds like it's ok then.
 
MrLOL said:
This

The iMac takes advantage of the huge aluminium back to use it as a heat sink and radiate the excess heat.

It will get hot to the touch. Stop thinking its a PC and start thinking its like a mac. Until it actually shuts down because it's too hot you have nothing to worry about
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********

Stop thinking of it as an enthusiast built computer and thinking of it as a consumer built PC...

Enthusiasts have obsessions with making things cooled way below the actual need. Consumer PC's have a price/size/temperature ratio.
 
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This thread is real then? I actually thought I had dreamt about this. Why is the thread still running? Scenario - some plonker buys a product without any meaningful research, complains bitterly because it hasn't been delivered by the time the mouse click has completed then whinges on and on about it getting a tad aired when playing the latest game. Did I miss out the bit about not wanting to use MS Office for uni work? I'm off for some self-flagellation to break the monotony.
 
dav3evans said:
MacBook case cracking is a great one. We'll replace your top case but if your screen bezel is cracked too that's your fault. -_-
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Bezel is included in the 'part' for a replacement top case for a non-unibody MacBook.

I've got one here.

If you mean the display clamshell on a unibody MacBook, I've replaced them for people for free too.
 
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