[l008com]

I shutdown my mac pro completely while I went away for vacation. I came back to the soothing sound of a vacuum cleaner under my desk. The fans in the lower CPU section of the tower are both running at full speed. I've narrowed down the reason to a bad motherboard temperature sensor.

I'm pretty certain its a bad sensor because the air and case are very cool to the touch. And the Temperature Monitor app reads normal temperature CPU Cores but a more than boiling heatsink:


This machine is well out of warranty. And I'm absolutely NOT going to go and pay $1000+ for a new motherboard. I did the SMC reset... through the motherboard and through unplugging the machine. I reset the PRAM. Theres really not much else I can think of doing.

I'm wondering if anyone else has any ideas?
I found an smcFanController app, but it won't let me turn down the fan speed, probably because it sees the temp being so high I'm told. If there is some way I can override and manually slow down the fans I'll gladly do that. This computer is not usable as is. But I'm not going to spend half what I paid for it just because one tiny temp sensor went bad, even when the other temp sensors say all is fine.

[Big Mac]

Did you run the Apple Hardware Test to confirm your diagnosis?

[l008com]

Apple Hardware Test tells me.....

4SNS/1/40000000:TCAH

But I left my magic decoder key at home, what does that mean?

[Big Mac]

Some info: http://discussions.apple.com/thread....mp;tstart=3270

But I didn't read the part where you noticed the heat sink temperature reading. Sorry I don't have better help to offer.

[l008com]

Of course I can't get a peep out of apple unless I drag this whole Mac Pro all the way through the mall, to the apple store.

Anyone know the costs of mac pro repair? Do they have a flat rate? Or is it full parts + labor?