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athinamj · Feb 13, 2009, 04:50 PM

I installed istat yesterday and it's a very useful program. I got a bit worried about the temperatures and I want to ask you if the temperatures it displays are normal. I was playing WoW and I have Firefox opened as well. My CPU temp reached 68 and my HDD 63. Are the temperatures normal or should I be worried? Right now I have Firefox and Skype opened and my CPU is 38oC and my HDD 56oC.My hard drive is ST3500630AS Q Media I have an imac 24'' 2 months old and this har drive is just one week installed in the computer. Should I do something or it's normal for Seagates to be hot?

ghporter · Feb 13, 2009, 07:37 PM

WoW is pretty processor-intensive (which implies a lot of HD activity too), so getting your CPU up to a pretty warm level isn't terribly surprising. My late 2007 20" iMac is running with the CPU at 41ºC and the HDD at 42ºC just for surfing, so 25º higher is notable but not necessarily "bad" per se. What are you using to measure your temps?

athinamj · Feb 14, 2009, 07:35 AM

I'm using istat.

ghporter · Feb 14, 2009, 09:34 AM

I'm using iStat too, so our measurements should be at least done the same way. What are your GPU temperatures like? Mine are 10º-15º hotter than my CPU's.

NickelLessNick · Feb 14, 2009, 10:52 AM

I have a mid 2007 24" 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM ... when I first got this thing, I noticed high temperatures (right out of the box); my prior computer was a rev A G5 2GHz Dual Processor that chewed up three video cards in four years (both ATI & Nvidia), so the high temps in the iMac concerned me. I installed smcFanControl and cranked up the fans. As we speak, I have 10 apps opened (including WoW; Dashboard enabled) ... my CPUs are running at 111.2F (44C); GPU, 125.6 (52C); HD 116F (46.7C); normally, when playing WoW, I turn off all the apps and disable Dashboard. Temps usually stay fairly low. My only issue is the anemic video card (ATI HD2600) which seems to throttle FPS unless I turn down a lot of features in the game.

mduell · Feb 14, 2009, 10:05 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

is pretty processor-intensive (which implies a lot of HD activity too)

WTF? There's no relation between CPU usage and HD activity.

athinamj · Feb 15, 2009, 03:58 PM

My GPU temperatures are alright considering that when I play WoW it's about 55-60C. My CPU reaches up to 60C when I play WoW for many hours and my HD reaches 63C maximum. I consider it a bit high for a HD. Keep in mind that my HD is new because I replaced it due to my previous Western HD failing after just two months from buying the iMac. Should I worry about the temps and refer it to the technicians? I just turned on the iMac and the istat temps are the following:
CPU 25C
GPU 30C
HD 27
fan speed 1199rpm
they will increase gradually especially the hard drive and the fans rech up to 1800rpm when I play WoW for hours.

ghporter · Feb 15, 2009, 06:44 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

WTF? There's no relation between CPU usage and HD activity.

Looking back, I wasn't clear in what I said. From what I've read, WoW uses the drive quite a lot. I think the game caches a lot of stuff locally, and thus uses the hard drive a lot. I didn't say it that way, and so it sounded like I was directly connecting CPU load and HDD load, which is NOT what I meant.