New i7 2.93Ghz Owners Thread

[xraydoc]

Are you sure?

If you dim the screen and listen above the imac. Do you hear a buzzing/short-circuit sound?? It can also happen if the cpu is above 50C.

This is bad.

No buzz on my machine at all (2.93GHz i7).
As far as I can tell, my machine is a showroom-quality machine. No buzz, no yellow tint, no dead pixels... and fast, fast, fast. 256GB SSD, 2TB HDD, 8GB RAM.

Just sheer iMac perfection.

It does get hot (as designed) when it's been Handbraking for 20 minutes straight, but if you think that's hot, you should have felt my 2006 Mac Pro doing the same thing. It would develop heat-related RAM ECC errors unless I ran the fans at a minimum of 1300 RPM at all times.

 

[leftroom]

No buzz on my machine at all (2.93GHz i7).
As far as I can tell, my machine is a showroom-quality machine. No buzz, no yellow tint, no dead pixels... and fast, fast, fast. 256GB SSD, 2TB HDD, 8GB RAM.

Just sheer iMac perfection.

It does get hot (as designed) when it's been Handbraking for 20 minutes straight, but if you think that's hot, you should have felt my 2006 Mac Pro doing the same thing. It would develop heat-related RAM ECC errors unless I ran the fans at a minimum of 1300 RPM at all times.

Do you have any backlight bleeding as well? If not, that sounds perfect. You're lucky!

I'm on my second iMac 2,93 i7 with the backlight bleeding problem. I will return this as well I'm waiting for an email from the Apple support team to cancel my order. It takes forever! I just want a screen that is perfect. Is that so hard?

So incredible annoying that the computer works well but the screen is washed out on the sides.

 

[sho33hoku]

Got my iMac 27" 2.93 GHz i7 last week. Stripped the RAM from my old iMac 20" (2 piece of 2GB DDR3 1067MHz Crucial RAM) and add it to my new iMac. Now it reads that it has 8GB total but of 1067 MHz RAM! (The original RAM are 2 piece of 2GB DDR3 1333 MHz) Is that normal?

Also, performance wise, tho the speed is significantly faster than the 20" 2.66GHz core2duo iMac with 4GB RAM (when using aperture 3), I still feel that it's a drag to work on Aperture 3. RAW Image "loading" takes 4-5 second, sometimes even more. The good thing is any adjustment feels snappier and seems on the fly. I put my Aperture Library on an external HD (Firewire 800 WD Studio), because lots of time I also edit photos using another iMac at my office.

Any tips on making Aperture experience a joyous one? When I decided to start using Aperture 1.5, I already compared it with Lighroom 1.0. Preferred the DAM on Aperture better. If it couldn't get any better, I might switch over to Lightroom 3, but it's gonna be laborous to migrate the library.

Help Aperture Gurus.

 

[Felias]

Got my iMac 27" 2.93 GHz i7 last week. Stripped the RAM from my old iMac 20" (2 piece of 2GB DDR3 1067MHz Crucial RAM) and add it to my new iMac. Now it reads that it has 8GB total but of 1067 MHz RAM! (The original RAM are 2 piece of 2GB DDR3 1333 MHz) Is that normal?

Yup, perfectly normal, as the total RAM is always as slow as the "weakest link".

 

[aliensporebomb]

!

Yup, perfectly normal, as the total RAM is always as slow as the "weakest link".

Yes. He'd have to get all DDR3 1333 mhz speed ram to get back to the speed the machine was designed for.

All of the 2009 models can run on DDR3 1333 mhz ram at that speed too but at the time those came out it was cheaper to get the slower kind.

 

[terryd]

Another perfect iMac

Hi all,

Well, just thought I'd post that having read so many posts about past issues with yellow screens and backlight bleed etc, that having received my new China built 27" i7 with SSD and 2Tb drive - it's absolutely perfect!

This thing is so so fast, haven't timed it, but the boot time must be in the region of 10 seconds. In fact, it almost seems to take just as long for my SATA drive to spin up when I occasionally access it!

Very pleased that I went for the SSD option in the end (a close call) - it's well worth the money. I'm sure you can get a better model drive at a cheaper price, but if like me and you've reached that point in your life where you really can't be bothered to take a beautiful expensive piece of kit to bits before the dust has even had a chance to settle, then I doubt you'll be disappointed with the factory fit SSD!

Also, for anyone in the UK, Scan are selling an 8Gb Corsair DDR3 1333 kit (2x4Gb) for around £155 delivered which is substantially cheaper than any other 8Gb upgrade kit that I could find, and less than the 4Gb upgrade from Apple.

Unfortunately though, despite the SSD speed, I just can't get round the bottleneck which is me trying to use windows shortcuts and instead switching the desktop (spaces) on the Mac!!

 

[Robert Grant]

Congratulations terryd.

My first iMac i7 2.93 GHz had a half dark screen, my 2nd vibrated and was noisy (faulty 2TB drive) and my 3rd had exactly the same problem in addition to dust under the screen and yellow tint. My 4th iMac was shipped last Thursday and the van delivering it was stolen yesterday (would you believe it?), so now I have to wait 3 days for UPS to attempt to locate the van before Apple will issue me with yet another replacement.

 

[Crunch]

All of the 2009 models can run on DDR3 1333 mhz ram at that speed too but at the time those came out it was cheaper to get the slower kind.

The 2009 iMac's with the Core 2 Duo E7600 3.06GHz is spec'd for DDR3-1066 only. You had to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz to be able to run DDR3-1333 RAM. The two Quad's (i5-750 2.66GHz and i7-860 2.8GHz) were definitely 1333MHz-ready.

 

[symbology]

Well crap......... I have heard the sound on my previous 4 iMacs, only if I held my head up at the top / back of the display. On my otherwise very nice 5th i Mac I have the annoying buzzing / hum. it seems to go away when I turn it to full brightness. However, with the brightness turned down a little bit it is pretty annoying.

I think I will give give it a few days and see if I can ignore it. A little buzzing is much better than a yellow tinted display, or the dark gray banding at the bottom.

Damn, and I thought that I finally had a good iMac and I was going to be one of the happy iMac owners.

 

[gotanimac]

Well crap......... I have heard the sound on my previous 4 iMacs, only if I held my head up at the top / back of the display. On my otherwise very nice 5th i Mac I have the annoying buzzing / hum. it seems to go away when I turn it to full brightness. However, with the brightness turned down a little bit it is pretty annoying.

I hadn't noticed the buzzing so I checked out what you said. I turned the brightness all the way down and heard the buzzing at the top... once I hit midbrightness it stopped.

 

[stealthman1]

I don't know what got into me, but I pressed the button for the 2.93 I7 w/ 8gb & SSD+2tb. Since I live in Sacramento I sure hope it ships from Sac and cuts the ship time down to....well tomorrow would be good! vie got a 2006 MP and it will be interesting to see the performance boost...the MP will stay in the office, the iMac will go on the coffee table. Never thought they'd have enough horsepower to make them really interesting, but here we are...

 

[Felias]

Just got my exchange-iMac. I was unhappy first, as the packaging has been opened before. I was within the first 14 days, so i was expecting a completely new one.

Issues with the device:

- minor gray banding
- noisy HD when accessing data (idle noise okay)

NO yellow tint, NO PSU noise.

Everything else seems ok so far... Still not perfect, but i'll keep it. I just can't stand any more exchanges and I just love the iMacs in general.

 

[macrumorsmo]

iMac i7, no other upgrade, from the Liverpool store.

Got my i7 from the Liverpool Apple Store. Did not know Apple stores had them, thought they were BTO. Bought an extra 4GB of RAM. It had 1TB HDD with no SSD and the original 4GB RAM.

No humming, no yellow tinge and no problems. Had three 2009 27" iMacs and this is the first one that worked. Either I got lucky or they are getting better with the screens. Sorry to hear all these other problems. Could these problems occur during delivery? If so, is getting them from the store better (if bulk shipment is better than the single deliveries to households?). Just a thought.

 

[diotav]

Noticed 3 dead pixels on my brand new iMac. Replacement is coming next week. Bummer!

 

[aliensporebomb]

Ah

The 2009 iMac's with the Core 2 Duo E7600 3.06GHz is spec'd for DDR3-1066 only. You had to upgrade to the Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz to be able to run DDR3-1333 RAM. The two Quad's (i5-750 2.66GHz and i7-860 2.8GHz) were definitely 1333MHz-ready.

I stand corrected. So if I ever upgrade to DDR3-1333 memory I can give my wife the 8-gigs of DDR3-1066 memory I have in here now and she'll have 12.

 

[Crunch]

I stand corrected. So if I ever upgrade to DDR3-1333 memory I can give my wife the 8-gigs of DDR3-1066 memory I have in here now and she'll have 12.

Absolutely! You can even install a mixture of 1066 and 1333 DDR3 RAM in one machine, in which case all RAM will automatically run at 1066MHz.

 

[Maltkvist]

Been at this forum for 3 months now, waiting to get the iMac i7..

AND TODAY I FINALLY BOUGHT IT!!

It's the most beautiful thing i've ever seen, it's also my first EVER mac!
Been using PC for several years, and last june when my last PC broke down I swore that i'd never buy another PC.

Also, i'm very new to the mac-family, so i'm finding myself very lost atm! Haha. Trying to find stuff etc on the iMac

Soooo, basically what I want to say (if none understood me above) is that I love my new iMac and that i'm very happy to have it
No problems with it that I can notice!


iMac 2010, i7 4gb ram, 1tb hd

 

[swissmann]

I've had my iMac for about a month now. Configuration 27" i7 2.93 with 2 TB HD and 8 GB of RAM - of which 4 GB is aftermarket Crucial RAM.

I traded in my 2006 2.66 4 Core Mac Pro with the Apple Cinema Display 30" and a flashed ATI 4870 card and 4 GB RAM.

Screen has no issues - no yellow, bleeding, banding, dead pixels, etc. etc.

Overall seems much faster than my Mac Pro especially when all the cores are being used like HandBrake encoding.

The graphics card seems fast/ample.

The Hard Drive is quiet - I'd rate it average. I've had louder and quieter. I can hear it but it is not that distracting - it makes a little clucking noise.

The optical drive is much worse than my Mac Pro - very slow at burning a DVD. I wish Apple would just jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon already.

The screen seems more vibrant than my 30" ACD but I don't like the glossy although I notice the reflection way less than I had feared - but it is still there. I don't seem to miss the extra 3" very much.

Overall the machine is very quiet - I can hear when the cooling fans come on but it takes a lot for that to happen.

I kind of wish I had gone with the SSD drive option as the HD really seems to be the slowdown but it was just so much more expensive.

It uses way less energy than my Mac Pro/30" combo:
Mac Pro idle - 360 W vs. iMac idle - 160 W
Mac Pro maxed - 450 W vs iMac maxed - 280 W
(Maxed means a Handbrake encode on the HD to ramp up the processor, Unreal Tournament 2004 at highest settings for the Graphics Card, and a DVD movie playing to spin the optical drive)

So really I am loving my machine and only see some slight room for improvement to be perfect if the screen looked this good but wasn't glossy, the Optical Drive was a Blu-Ray and was faster, the SSD option was much cheaper, the Graphics card was a bit faster. We'll see if I ever feel cramped in the future not being able to upgrade the internal components.

 

[davidw]

I got my 27" 2.93 i7 with 8 gigs of Apple RAM, 256 GB SSD and 2 TB HD. As best as I can tell, my computer is having ZERO problems. It's ridiculously, ridiculously, ridiculously fast. I can't even believe how fast it starts up, how fast programs load from the SSD and how seamless computing has become. The screen is by far the best computer monitor I've seen in my life. My previous computer, a 24" 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM, looks pathetic in comparison.

Only one problem: I can't seem to install Windows 7 via bootcamp. I'm having huge issues... I get a black screen with a blinking white underscore after installing Windows 7 and then Bootcamp 3.1. Does anyone have a fix for this, or at least know how I can find one? I want to play Civ 5!

 

[Cuda13]

I got my 27" 2.93 i7 with 8 gigs of Apple RAM, 256 GB SSD and 2 TB HD. As best as I can tell, my computer is having ZERO problems. It's ridiculously, ridiculously, ridiculously fast. I can't even believe how fast it starts up, how fast programs load from the SSD and how seamless computing has become. The screen is by far the best computer monitor I've seen in my life. My previous computer, a 24" 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM, looks pathetic in comparison.

Only one problem: I can't seem to install Windows 7 via bootcamp. I'm having huge issues... I get a black screen with a blinking white underscore after installing Windows 7 and then Bootcamp 3.1. Does anyone have a fix for this, or at least know how I can find one? I want to play Civ 5!

I hope mine is just as fast with no problems. I have the exact same set up as you except only 4GB of ram. It should be here any day. Can't wait!!

 

[Runemacca]

I got my 27" 2.93 i7 with 8 gigs of Apple RAM, 256 GB SSD and 2 TB HD. As best as I can tell, my computer is having ZERO problems. It's ridiculously, ridiculously, ridiculously fast. I can't even believe how fast it starts up, how fast programs load from the SSD and how seamless computing has become. The screen is by far the best computer monitor I've seen in my life. My previous computer, a 24" 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM, looks pathetic in comparison.

Only one problem: I can't seem to install Windows 7 via bootcamp. I'm having huge issues... I get a black screen with a blinking white underscore after installing Windows 7 and then Bootcamp 3.1. Does anyone have a fix for this, or at least know how I can find one? I want to play Civ 5!

I have the solution. Took me a while to find it, but now it works flawlessly

Look here link-->
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1004214/

//RB

 

[Maltkvist]

Bought an eyetv diversity for my new iMac, so now i never have to leave my iMac!

Works great!

 

[amband]

Imac

About to order a New i7, not heard from any of you lucky people yet..
Post your thoughts, reviews or problems.

I pick up my second Imac soon, 27 inch, i7, 10GB, with 27 in display, choc full of Adobe CS5 design premium, aperture 3 etc. At this power, what use the low end mac pro?

I love the Imac. Great bit of kit

 

[The JTizzle]

Hope to be picking up mine next week. The iPad and made me realize I really don't need my MBP any more so this will be my 1st non tower Mac, really looking forward to some space savings with the all in one design.

 

[lbeck]

I'm curious ... does anyone here have the 27" i7 with 16gb of ram installed? have you had it installed for more than 2 days?

The reason why I ask is because I had two different i7's and 5 different sets of RAM. No matter what, 16gb of ram would eventually cause my iMac to randomly shut down. Other users on Apple's forum has the same issues. Lnks to threads are below.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2567907&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12310738&#12310738

Anyone have 16gb of ram installed and can report no issues? I actually sent both my iMac's back and bought a Mac Pro. There is something that wont allow the max amount of ram installed. Maybe a firmware problem? Hopefully Apple will fix it.