iMac users - Fan Speeds


Do you increase your fan speeds manually?  

10 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you increase your iMac's fan speeds manually?

    • Yes
      1
    • No
      9


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I was doing some housekeeping the other day behind my computer desk (It sits against a wall), and pulled my iMac from the desk to tidy up some wires etc, and was shocked to feel just how hot the aluminum back side felt. It was almost too uncomfortable for me to touch, (I can hold onto a hot plate from a mexican restaraunt bare handed for longer than most - the ones they heat before you get your food on them) so I know it was pretty hot.

Since then, I have gone ahead and taken the liberty to take the fan speed control away from the system and do it myself with third party software and things are much better temp wise.

I know these are designed to be tight fitting components and handle the high heat they put off, but honestly, I didn't feel comfortable having it so hot putting probable stress on the system over time. (Especially the hard drive).

So, do you use a third party software to give your iMac an extra boost of 'cool'?

BTW, our temps outside have been sizzling on the West Coast (Around 105F), and our Wall A/C can barely keep the house lower than 85F when it gets this warm, so reducing any additional heat generated off of this system is a big plus. :) (They are like a heater with the heat put off sometimes).

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Right now, in the summer (even if the Amsterdam summers really aren't all that impressive), the upper left corner of my 27-inch iMac becomes so hot it's almost impossible to touch. According to Apple there's nothing to worry about.

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Right now, in the summer, the upper left corner of my 27-inch iMac becomes so hot it's almost impossible to touch. According to Apple there's nothing to worry about.

Theoretically it means the heat is dissipating through the chassis, no? :D

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Theoretically it means the heat is dissipating through the chassis, no? :D

Yup. So far my iMac hasn't gone into a forced shut down. Until that happens I won't worry too much about it.

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Yup. So far my iMac hasn't gone into a forced shut down. Until that happens I won't worry too much about it.

Yep. And I honestly worry more about my "features" after having had the MBP in my lap for a few hours than I worry about the MBP itself.

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Pressing my "features" against the back of my iMac doesn't seem very appealing either. For a magnitude of reasons of course, heat being definitely one of them.

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On my rMBP, yes, I manually ramp them up to 50% because you simply can't hear them. On my iMac, never, it's thermal management can handle that as needed.

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The thing I've worried about with the heat management though with the iMac's is just how hot they can really get. I have to the best of my knowlege never had the system ramp up the fans to try to lower the temp. While I am certain the engineers at Apple are quite amazing when it comes to the design, I sometimes wonder why they would allow it to get so hot anyway.

I did notice something I hadn't thought of before with the iMac was when I ramped up the fans to the highest level, air was coming out of different areas rather than just the usual suspects. Right now, though at peak (Doing photo editing, running a virtual machine at full speed, browsers, Filezilla, email, iTunes etc, all running at the same time, with the fan settings i have now, (Don't hear them), I am maintaing a steady 95-100F for the CPU and around the same on GPU. This was compared to system management sans the software running - around 145-160F. Reaching back to check the chasis temperature also is warm rather than HOT like it was.

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Depending on where you're getting your temperatures from, and what processor you have, 145F isn't that bad. Especially considering it's an all in one.

I also wouldn't worry much about the back of an iMac getting too hot. CPUs die when they don't have a way to remove heat (no thermal paste, bad fan connection, etc), and even then they're usually built to take some heat-abuse (i.e, low power CPUs can run fan-less, and a powerful CPU at idle might not necessary need active cooling), and they should shut down if the temperature gets too high. If the heat is hitting the back of your iMac (where it will radiate out quite nicely), it shouldn't be an issue.

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No, I don't worry about my iMac temperatures anymore, I was at first because I am used to temps at like 30c on my custom built desktop machines. I think I did make a post about it here or at Apple about temperatures being really hot and everyone said it was fine and that OS X is supposed to warn you if it gets too hot or eventually shuts down.

On a really hot day I saw my hard drive up at 53c

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No, I don't worry about my iMac temperatures anymore, I was at first because I am used to temps at like 30c on my custom built desktop machines. I think I did make a post about it here or at Apple about temperatures being really hot and everyone said it was fine and that OS X is supposed to warn you if it gets too hot or eventually shuts down.

On a really hot day I saw my hard drive up at 53c

Hard disks can handle up to 60c and CPU can be upwards of anything 105-110c - the system will automatically shut down if it becomes too hot to the point that damage will be caused. I honestly think that far too many people are paranoid about things that they shouldn't really concern them.

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I am quite new to the MAC, what software do you guys use to monitor the temps ?

Is there any particular reason to distrust the fact your CPU won't melt right through the screen?

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Your hard drive was at 53c? That's terrible.

I've got a server here that puts out a LOT of heat, and the highest the drives (2.5") are at is 42c.

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In all honesty - I have trusted my iMac's ability to dissiapte heat just fine. Where I have come to my decision to ramp up the fans a bit, was when I moved the Mac (See my first post), and felt just how HOT the back side of it got. I do have full faith and trust in Apple's Engineers to build a sturdy heat resistant machine. Look at the photos from iFixit to see just how engineering they are. :) Where I draw the line though is when it becomes so hot that it is uncomfortable to touch on the back side. Now, I do have tough hands when it comes to temperatures, I have a high tolerance to heat. So when it comes to minor discomfort on my end, I know it must have been quite hot.

My past experience with the iMac's has not been favorable hardware wise, two HDD's 1 CD, 1 Logic Board and 1more major issue before they replaced under Applecare. This one I have now (The replacement), already within 1 year had to have the Superdrive replaced. Not saying heat has anything to do with it, but, you must admit while most HDD's and components can *withstand* or "Handle" the heat, it doesn't quite mean all the time unless they are built to be run in a specialized environment. And even though you pay a premium for the hardware, I highly doubt they are using specialized hardware to handle high heat.

Maybe I will go ahead and remove the software, reset SMC and see if it runs cooler, if not, will bring out my infared thermometer to measure the outside.

My whole point on whether or not others here run the Fan controller was to see if anyone else did. I appear to be one of two who answered. (I was null vote) and other was a Yes.

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Now, I do have tough hands when it comes to temperatures, I have a high tolerance to heat. So when it comes to minor discomfort on my end, I know it must have been quite hot.

You actually think your tolerance to heat is the golden standard for hardware as well?

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Well..Neo - I don't think of my tolerance to heat as a gold standard for hardware. But I do think that if it is as hot as it was then yes - I would think that would be a good way to think it is not good for the system after a while. Plus - like I have said, with it being like a radiant heater by being so hot, it wasn't really something I wanted. Forget the fact that I have shelves above the mac which pick up the heat and the contents of said heat are also warm.

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Forget the fact that I have shelves above the mac which pick up the heat and the contents of said heat are also warm.

That's most likely an indication your setup simply doesn't allow for enough heat dissipation.

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No iMac here, but I'm always doing that with my MacBook Pro. It doesn't seem to ramp the fan speed up itself until it gets to about 90?C, which is way too hot for my liking.

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