iMacs and overheating

I know this is a notebook forum, but it looks like we have a lot of very knowledgeable Mac people here so I thought I'd ask... Is overheating a known issue in iMacs? I just got back from my second session of what I like to call "drooling on the Macbooks and iMacs at the local Apple store while trying to decide what to buy", and noticed that some of those iMacs feel VERY hot - despite just sitting there, not running anything really challenging. Is this normal? If I do go for an iMac rather than a laptop, it would be to run some more resource-intensive games and so on, and I don't want this to cause my nice new machine to melt down...

 

if it never messed up.. is not overheating, its just getting hot, as all electronics do.

You can usually install something like smcfancontrol and crank your fans up faster and keep some extra heat down, but its not really required.

 

I've had my iMac that's in my sig for quite a while now and it has never overheated under any circumstance - even playing games or running heavy video, audio and photo editing, under both Windows 7 and OSX.

The new iMacs have an all-metal back (as opposed to plastic on mine) so the whole back acts as a large heatsink so they'll actually feel hotter than my iMac on the back but they're also quieter.

I've been meaning to get one of the new 27in iMacs to replace my 24in but in all honesty I haven't found a real reason to upgrade except maybe for the new larger display.

 

Cool, thanks for letting me know. I'm leaning towards the 27" myself, although I'd prefer it if they had a 21" with the processor and GPU of the 27".

 

Which would likely cause more (over)heating since it's a smaller form-factor with components who produce more heat

My MBP tends to get hot as well, but as doh123 and ATC have remarked already

- it's electronics, so they produce heat, no matter what
- Apple likes using whole alloy-cases (for laptops as well as for their iMac desktop-line) which act like huge heatsinks and thus get a little hot

If you'd ask me, it's actually better that they give off heat directly into the air as opposed to computers where the heatsink gives of heat inside the enclosure, which heats up the air inside the computer, and then the hot air needs to be transported outside the case with fans.

 

CPU-intensive tasks on the iMac will ramp the cpu temp up to the 70s, which will result in the top upper chassis shell on the left side becoming hot to the touch after a few minutes. I get this all the time when video encoding on ours.

As others have noted, this is normal for the iMac and also for the electronics inside, and is nothing to be concerned about.

 

We've had a 27 inch iMac since March and my daughter uses it for gaming and hasn't reported any issues with heat or glitches. There is an issue with the speakers running Windows but I think that it was fixed with a recent update.

The back does get warm but I think that it was designed to do that. There is a fan back there too and the fan will come on - it vents in the back so it is fairly quiet from the front.

 

Thanks everyone. I was concerned because the back of the iMacs felt hot even just running the demo in the store, but I guess it makes sense if the entire frame of the computer functions as a heatsink. If my current PC laptop would get that hot, I'd be worried! I'm still on the fence between an iMac or MacBook Pro - it all depends on whether I get more desk space or not!

 

If the iMac gets too hot inside, the fan will kick on. Most of the time it is quiet if the system isn't doing much.

MacBooks and iMacs are both very nice. Get one of each.

 

If I had a spare $5K, I'd definitely get one of each. As it is, just one of them is twice what I'd pay for a new PC laptop, so I have to pick just one - unfortunately.

 

Well, I just found out that yes, I WILL be moving to a new place that will have enough space for a big desk, so I guess it'll be an iMac! Now I just have to decide exactly which configuration. I'm drawn towards the i7 at the moment.

 

I'd wait to see if Sandy Bridge is offered at CES (January). Nehalem is very good but I've read that Sandy Bridge is quite a bit better.

 

Ah okay, thanks. I'm definitely waiting until January anyway because that's the earliest I'd be moving. I may have to go back to a 2002 Dell dinosaur for a bit because my current laptop has to be returned by the end of this month... it'll be an amazing change to go from that ancient Dell to the iMac.

And then I get to come back here and bug all you wonderful Mac experts with my newbie Mac questions