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

ryanflucas

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 28, 2006
146
17
Milwaukee, WI
I'm ready to buy a new iMac 21.5" within the next month. What I'm bouncing around is if I want the i5 model for $1499 or the i7 for $200 more.

The extra speed is nice, but my main concern is the heat output. I'm using a early '08 24" iMac (2.8GHZ Core2Duo, 512MB Geforce 8800GS) and when I run a video conversion/rip or game, it makes a loud fan blowing noise. It's fairly quick to cool off though which is nice. Otherwise it's whisper silent.

Does anyone have any experience with the BTO i7 option? Is the fan kicking in more often then usual?

I work as a self employed IT Consultant, so if you ask me what I'll be using the computer for, it will be everything. If it helps, the most intensive thing I would do is video encoding, handbrake conversions, etc. For gaming I'll stick to my Xbox 360 & iPad 2 (buying one soon). I plan on upgrading the ram in this to 8GB by the end of the year.
 
The i7-2600S has the same 65W TDP as the 2.7GHz i5-2500S, so I wouldn't expect heat to be any more of a problem than if you ran the same tasks on the i5 model.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.