Cause of concern? 2019 27" Base model w 256GB, froze + fan noise

[thadoggfather]

I recommended a family member get a refurbished iMac as its a lot cheaper, and same deal as new from good word of mouth in the past / I think my experiences with refurb gear from apple.

She said she had to pull the power plug on the thing today , after getting it yesterday + using it without issue then, as the following day it was frozen and holding power button didn't work to power down + restart it and it wasn't going into screen saver mode either which made her observe it being locked up. has had an iMac in the past / not a new thing to her when things go wrong, relatively speaking.

I said to hold off on updating (in case it came with Mojave, instead of Catalina, to avoid bugs for a little bit.. coincides with this model , being 2019 but I don't know the OS)

but she also reported she can hear the fan, and I can only assume she isn't doing processor intensive stuff (idle workload). seems noise is noticed on this model from a quick google search but just want to make sure these two combined don't warrant a swap, or some form of paranoia.

I think the 'freezing' thing (which I wasn't there for) could just be an os bug or an app locked up. not being able to power down holding power seems odd, but... if it were to repeatedly happen then id think more of it possibly being hardware related.

and I thought I recall these retina iMacs being pretty quiet unless taxed. some people are saying 2019 is louder than 2017 but just want to be sure. thanks. I think its fan noise, to clarify, not like grinding noises or anything too strange.

sorry I don't have more info / my observations, as I'm doing long distance troubleshooting / support for the family

 

[TheIntruder]

Having to pull the plug would be of concern to me.

Was the pointer frozen as well? I haven't seen a Mac completely frozen up since the days of Classic OS, and even then, the PM 7/8/9 series onward separated the pointer from OS control and moved it to hardware to keep it alive even after a big crash, which in those days, were not uncommon. Windows had its BSOD, Macs had Bomb dialogs.

I haven't pushed it, but my 3.7 (which is also a refurb) has been utterly silent since I've had it these couple months.

I'd have them run the startup diagnostic to see what that returns, and/or remove any third party memory it has.

There can be bum refurbs, but at least it's under warranty.

The only sign my refurb was any different was that it came in a white box. Otherwise, it appeared brand new. I suspect it was returned for an issue caused by a bad RAM stick since one of the two has no serial number programmed into it.