Hmmm, first ever mac, don't know whats going on

[riship10]

Hi guys, was wondering if somebody could walk me through this

ive got a 2.4 duo 20inch imac, 2gb ram, and have the lowest hard drive

I'm running istat pro and my CPU and hard drive fan speeds are not budging from 1200rpm, i mean they go up and down a few rpm about 4 or 5, but they don't move in huge leaps and my optical sits at 1000rpm with a small difference now and again.

i opened the whole adobe suite, all the programs that came with the mac, and about 5 different .avi files, and ran them all at the same time, and nothing changed. CPU temperature went up to 40c then worked its way down to 37c

is something wrong? and i'm not too sure but i think its slightly louder than usual, but i can't say when it got loud, or if it actually has, as i listen to alot of music, and i may just be taking notice of normal imac noise more than normal.

please help i'm a mac newb, oh and i've got the latest model

thank you in advance

 

[bob vansteel]

Hi guys, was wondering if somebody could walk me through this

ive got a 20inch imac, 2 gb ram, and have the lowest hard drive

I'm running istat pro and my CPU and hard drive fan speeds are not budging from 1200rpm, i mean they go up and down a few rpm about 4 or 5, but they don't move in huge leaps and my optical sits at 1000rpm with a small difference now and again.

i opened the whole adobe suite, all the programs that came with the mac, and about 5 different .avi files, and ran them all at the same time, and nothing changed. CPU temperature went up to 40c then worked its way down to 37c

is something wrong? and i'm not too sure but i think its slightly louder than usual, but i can't say when it got loud, or if it actually has, as i listen to alot of music, and i may just be taking notice of normal imac noise more than normal.

please help i'm a mac newb, oh and i've got the latest model

thank you in advance

sounds like you've either got a software bug sending off crazy signals, or your HDD went bad.

 

[eji]

I don't know what sort of problem you're claiming to have. HDD temps? Or that the fan speeds don't vary, even when the CPU and/or HDD are under a heavy load?

If the latter, I think that's a "problem" by design -- the blueprint being Mr. Jobs' quest for absolute quiet. He'd prefer that you can fry an egg on the upper left corner of your iMac than, heaven forbid, being able to hear it cooling itself once in awhile.

Provided my memory's not distorting what I've read on these forums and elsewhere, ideally your HDD shouldn't run at more than 50C for a very long time. If it's currently running at 40C... well, that's about as cool as mine ever gets, so you don't really need the fans to kick in.

Personally, I get very worried about heat buildup in these machines, so I use smc Fan Control. It gives me total control over the fan speeds, so when I'm, say, playing the CPU-frying Civilization, I can crank them up to my own "Wind Tunnel" setting (ODD: 2000, HDD: 2500, CPU: 2500) and set them to "Zephyr" (1000, 1500, 1500) when I'm back to just Web surfing. It keeps most of the temps down to a point where they look acceptable to my unexpert eye. Maybe you might like to give something like that a try?

 

[bart rijksen]

Hi guys, was wondering if somebody could walk me through this

ive got a 2.4 duo 20inch imac, 2gb ram, and have the lowest hard drive

I'm running istat pro and my CPU and hard drive fan speeds are not budging from 1200rpm, i mean they go up and down a few rpm about 4 or 5, but they don't move in huge leaps and my optical sits at 1000rpm with a small difference now and again.

i opened the whole adobe suite, all the programs that came with the mac, and about 5 different .avi files, and ran them all at the same time, and nothing changed. CPU temperature went up to 40c then worked its way down to 37c

is something wrong? and i'm not too sure but i think its slightly louder than usual, but i can't say when it got loud, or if it actually has, as i listen to alot of music, and i may just be taking notice of normal imac noise more than normal.

please help i'm a mac newb, oh and i've got the latest model

thank you in advance

Nothing's wrong. I had the same problem with my macbook pro, but it went over after some time.

 

[riship10]

thanks for the replies guys,

Ok, sort of come to a conclusion, just opened my all my applications at once again, and i think i may have found the problem. all temperatures increase, so looks like that part of my imac is working, but the fan speeds don't increase dramatically or lower at any point, they stick to 1200, 1200, 1000 with a few degrees in difference. the optical changes when cd in inserted.

Could it be that what ever is giving out the readings of the fans is broken, and fans or fan are running at a higher speed than usual, and the imac does sound slightly louder than usual, I'm not getting this complete silence that people seem to be talking about, is there even a silence? or am i being a whiny little idiot, its just that i've paid a fair bit of my student money, and would like this perfect machine to be perfect.

can i send it back, and get a new one? i bought it on the 28 of april. i don't have applecare

 

[ditzy]

thanks for the replies guys,

Ok, sort of come to a conclusion, just opened my all my applications at once again, and i think i may have found the problem. all temperatures increase, so looks like that part of my imac is working, but the fan speeds don't increase dramatically or lower at any point, they stick to 1200, 1200, 1000 with a few degrees in difference. the optical changes when cd in inserted.

Could it be that what ever is giving out the readings of the fans is broken, and fans or fan are running at a higher speed than usual, and the imac does sound slightly louder than usual, I'm not getting this complete silence that people seem to be talking about, is there even a silence? or am i being a whiny little idiot, its just that i've paid a fair bit of my student money, and would like this perfect machine to be perfect.

can i send it back, and get a new one? i bought it on the 28 of april. i don't have applecare

You have a year warranty free so if you have an apple store near you I would bring it in to see them. Otherwise phone apple up.

 

[AlexisV]

There is nothing wrong with your machine. Try using it for what it's for instead of worrying over fan speeds and temperature readouts!

There's two settings: normal and too hot. In the second instance the fans will really rev up for a couple of minutes before settling down again. This scenario is very rare - it's only happened to me a couple of times.

Don't worry - Apple hasn't produced millions of overheating machines.

 

[riship10]

thanks for the help, guys

i think i've been looking for a problem, my mind has settled and i can except that minor humm

 

[danny_w]

Provided my memory's not distorting what I've read on these forums and elsewhere, ideally your HDD shouldn't run at more than 50C for a very long time. If it's currently running at 40C... well, that's about as cool as mine ever gets, so you don't really need the fans to kick in.

He said his CPU ran from 37-40C, not is HDD. Sounds pretty cool to me. When I used to build PCs and worked them hard they would often get to 44-45c, and that was with very good (and loud) cooling with lesser cooling 50C is not uncommon for a pc cpu. 37-40C is quite good IMHO.

 

[eXan]

Opening all your apps doesn't necessarily tax your processor, it just fills up the RAM.

If you're really interested in seeing the temps during heavy load, open Terminal and type

yes

This will load both CPU cores at 100%. Wait a minute for iMac to heat up and check your temps.

EDIT: My iMac G5's HD is running at constant 55-56C for over 2.5 years and I have no issues with it.

 

[riship10]

oh and i was just playing C&C 3, cpu temps are 60c and 70c, is that normal, and cpu fan speed is still 1200rpm