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what makes my iMac burning hot?
- Thread starter zoran
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Well, nothing can do that. That’s not really how it works. Activity Monitor can let you see how much an app is pressuring your hardware and you can infer heat generation based on that, but each app doesn’t contribute a certain percentage or temperature to the system heat.
Well the CPU pane will show how much CPU activity each process is demanding; that and the GPU will be the biggest producers of heat
While you're in that CPU pane, sort by "% CPU" and the most active processes will come to the top. "CPU Time" can be useful as well, to see what's cumulatively been using CPU time the most.
I'm not exactly sure how "Energy Impact" is calculated. I assume a combo of disk activity and CPU?
I'm not exactly sure how "Energy Impact" is calculated. I assume a combo of disk activity and CPU?
It’s a more complicated equation than just that; GPU, wake ups from idle, network calls over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
While a lot of the time, a program will show up as high on the energy impact list, if it’s also one that will produce a lot of heat as a result of a lot of computational load, but it can also just be that it keeps waking up the processor all the time, even if it never gives the chip a substantial load.
Interesting -- thanks for the clarification.
I find CoconutBattery is really helpful for keeping an eye on my MacBook's power consumption. You can set it to display the watts being drawn. If I see a high value, I know to look around and see if any process is getting greedy
One of the 'burning' questions that I'm suprised nobody has asked is "how old is your iMac?"
If it's new or less than a 2-3 years old it should be pretty clean inside. If older and subject to your environment you may have fans that are partially blocked and unable to supply essential cooling air to the CPU/GPU.
I have a mid 2010 27" iMac, and 5 years ago when I first opened it up to install an SSD, I was horrified to see the amount of clogged dust/debris in all the fans (all the more surprised as my wife keeps the home near spotless). Prior to that I'd felt that the iMac was getting pretty warm at the top (which is where the hot air exits from), but it had always performed well. As it was 5 years old at the time, I completely disassembled it for refurbish, cleaning/re-pasting the CPU, and thoroughly cleaning the 3 fans and re-lubing the spindles. With a 500GB Samsung SSD installed and RAM added to a total of 12GB the iMac was truly transformed, and it's still in regular daily use today. I cleaned the fans again last year. It's still an excellent performer.
What model of iMac do you have? It may just require a spring-clean.......
questions that I'm suprised nobody has asked is "how old is your iMac?"If it's new or less than a 2-3 years old it should be pretty clean inside. If older and subject to your environment you may have fans that are partially blocked and unable to supply essential cooling air to the CPU/GPU.
I have a mid 2010 27" iMac, and 5 years ago when I first opened it up to install an SSD, I was horrified to see the amount of clogged dust/debris in all the fans (all the more surprised as my wife keeps the home near spotless). Prior to that I'd felt that the iMac was getting pretty warm at the top (which is where the hot air exits from), but it had always performed well. As it was 5 years old at the time, I completely disassembled it for refurbish, cleaning/re-pasting the CPU, and thoroughly cleaning the 3 fans and re-lubing the spindles. With a 500GB Samsung SSD installed and RAM added to a total of 12GB the iMac was truly transformed, and it's still in regular daily use today. I cleaned the fans again last year. It's still an excellent performer.
What model of iMac do you have? It may just require a spring-clean.......
The mini is much easier, and safer to open than the iMac, but i hear what youre saying ;-)
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