[kasabian]

hello everyone, I have a quick and probably rather stupid question.

I have an iMAC. Had it for a few years. When I open up and use a lot of software at the same time (photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver..etc..) my mac makes a loud fanning noise. A bit like an air conditioner or a fridge or something. Is this simply down to the fact that my computer can't cope and I need to buy more memory?

thanks in advance.

[Full-Auto]

Any time your Mac runs a CPU cycle intensive program your core temp will go up. When this happens the fans kick on, which is normal.

Install iStat Menu's and you can watch as your system heats up while you're running various applications.

iSlayer.com

When I am converting an AVI to an MP4 file, for example, my CPU temp goes from about 101 to 148+ degrees. When it's done with the conversion, the temp drops back down to the 100 range and the fans kick off.

It's normal.

[Cold Warrior]

How much RAM do you have now?
What's your hard drive capacity and how much is free space?

[kasabian]

hello, thanks for the replies and advice!

I have one of the early imacs. 1.6 GHZ PowerPc G5.

It has 512 MB DDR SDRAM

I store a lot of my large files on an external hard drive, but I guess it's not enough. I need more memory huh?

I do graphic design, so I always have photoshop, quark, illustrator, dreamweaver all up and running. Sometimes at the same time. Add to that, MAIL, MSN, firefox, itunes...etc.. all running, i guess it's just too much for my computer to cope, right?

Do you think adding more ram will give my computer a nice boost? Or shall I just upgrade to a new imac? I was thinking of getting a new one soon anyway...

[Cold Warrior]

512 MB RAM is way too little for what you do. Everymac.com lists the max RAM at 2 GB for your model iMac. If you're a professional graphics guy, all those programs still won't run well even with 2 GB. Consider upgrading to a Mac Pro.

But if you can't upgrade to a Mac Pro and speed isn't a concern, then definitely max out the RAM on your iMac and get a fast, Firewire external hard drive to store your files and scratch disk (if these apps use it) on.

[mduell]

Yow, yes, you want more than 512MB for all those graphics apps. But if you're going to get a new one soon don't bother, as you can't reuse the memory from a G5 to an Intel.