[experimental]

rev.a 20 inch with 2 gig memory and Tiger OS. Purchased Oct'04
9.00 am start up , whisper quiet.
9.40am (Ilustrator, real player streaming radio), LCD heats up = fans crank up. Resonance begins, the vibrations are at such a pitch it makes you turn your head from time to time to escape them (obviously impossible). Various apps going up during days work.
5.40pm same pitch of sound can be heard in the next room.
8.40pm pop in a dvd and put on your headphones, sit back and be amazed how the audio out picks up the vibrations and stuffs them through your 200 dollar headset. Star wars dvd is not bad during battle scenes as the noise is offset, but put on a quieter more serious film and the noise is offensive.
Apple will not fix my iMac, they maintain there is nothing identifiably wrong enough to be able to fix it. Location Tokyo, applecare owner. These noises are picked up by my recording equipment and cannot be filtered out, which is a serious problem. I dont know how to get it out of the Audio out either! Thinking to open it up and modifying it, applecare cannot fix it and I need it fixed. These fans resonate on the casings for sure.

Apple forums deleted my post asking for members advice to modify the iMac. Any help posted here will be greatly appreciated.

[galtman]

That's really strange. There must be something wrong with it--mine is whsiper quiet. Even with the fans going, mine doesn't affect recording guitar or vocals at all. The audio out is free of fan noise as well.

You probably won't have much luck moding your iMac. Have you looked into USB or Firewire recording devices? That might combat your noise issues.

[experimental]

I am looking for people who know of this issue and can help with a fix, any kind of mod or repair. btw, i have seen the mods on a rev.b 20inch, the fan housing had been simplified with a band saw. The owner reported little improvement. Any reports available on the remounting fans on silicon?

No more "oh mines ok, yours must be broken" please. Serious attempts to fix an increasingly popular issue only. Thanx.

[SpaceRockness]

If you can't get the iMac repaired by Apple Japan, have you tried contacting Apple state side via calling or email someone higher up within Apple?
Macintouch had a few user reports of the same exact issue before rev b.

As for mods, this is a hardware level problem if the noise is picked up by recording equipment. Try calling AppleCare again and pressure them to switch you to Tier 2 or 3 tech support. Since each Apple office in other countries have different customer service 'rules', you may have to demand filing a complaint against the last "tier 1" tech which left you thinking of modding the iMac.

I hope you will pressure Apple a bit more for a solution... you paid for AppleCare afterall

[Rob van dam]

Originally Posted by experimental

rev.a 20 inch with 2 gig memory and Tiger OS. Purchased Oct'04
9.00 am start up , whisper quiet.
9.40am (Ilustrator, real player streaming radio), LCD heats up = fans crank up. Resonance begins, the vibrations are at such a pitch it makes you turn your head from time to time to escape them (obviously impossible). Various apps going up during days work.
5.40pm same pitch of sound can be heard in the next room.
8.40pm pop in a dvd and put on your headphones, sit back and be amazed how the audio out picks up the vibrations and stuffs them through your 200 dollar headset. Star wars dvd is not bad during battle scenes as the noise is offset, but put on a quieter more serious film and the noise is offensive.
Apple will not fix my iMac, they maintain there is nothing identifiably wrong enough to be able to fix it. Location Tokyo, applecare owner. These noises are picked up by my recording equipment and cannot be filtered out, which is a serious problem. I dont know how to get it out of the Audio out either! Thinking to open it up and modifying it, applecare cannot fix it and I need it fixed. These fans resonate on the casings for sure.

Apple forums deleted my post asking for members advice to modify the iMac. Any help posted here will be greatly appreciated.

while i havent suffered the same problems as you i did suffer quite a lot of problems with my screen looking washed out.Since you have apple care your really gonna have to grab apple buy the balls and take this to customer relations or in my experience your local consumer organisation.At the very moment customer relations are less then helpfull take this higher.In my experience i had to take it higher because apple's response was that i would simply have to wait my turn(24 days) for repair becuase the couldnt "push the store to do the repair.

[Troll]

On Macbidouille, they had an article about the fan vents getting clogged up with gunk (dust etc). A guy from a local AppleCare wrote in to say that he had seen this with a lot of iMacs and the solution was to take the iMac apart and clean out the vents.

Here it is in French.
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2005-09-15/

En juillet dernier, un de nos lecteurs travaillant dans un CMAA Apple nous avait envoyé cet avertissement:

Après quelques SAV sur les Imac G5, j'ai constaté au démontage un détail qui peut devenir un problème.
Sur le circuit de ventilation sur du processeur G5 à l'entrée du radiateur, qui est composé d'ailettes en cuivre séparées entre elles de quelques mm, la poussière s'accumule à l'entrée en quantité suffisante pour pratiquement boucher le circuit de ventilation du radiateur.
Comme l'air circule mois bien la turbine tourne plus vite.
Ce problème je l'ai constaté sur les Imac G5 les plus anciens.

Il nous a envoyé une photo pour illustrer le problème.


La machine en question n'a que 6 mois. Une fois que la poussière s'est ainsi déposée, les ventilateurs doivent tourner plus vite pour que le processeur soit refroidi convenablement.
Le réel problème est qu'il est très délicat de pouvoir démonter le cache pour accéder à ce radiateur.

[experimental]

Troll - amzing picture of the clogged fan. Tnx, i am sure that could cause an imbalanced rotation or vibration. Therefor I will take it apart when possible and clean it out! Merci beaucoup.

Rob/Space - The trouble with the apple genius bar is, they can't hear the sound in context. Its full of people buzzing around, traffic crawling by outside, and even in the back, the ambient noise cannot replicate sitting at home trying to work. I appreciate the boosters though very much and I am ready to re-confront them after checking fans for dust. I certainly dont want to modify and lose my Applecare if at all possible.