[Ji Eun]

My specs:
12" iBook G4 800 / 640
purchased March 2004

Since doing an "erase and install" of Tiger i notice the left-side palm rest seems a little hotter than before and the fan is certainly coming on more frequently than under Panther. I believe the GPU is under the left-side palm rest, and it's my understanding that Tiger offloads processor tasks to the GPU. Could this be the reason? Is my machine a good match for Tiger or should I go back to Panther?

this is the only thread i found on the topic: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ger+hotter+fan

i don't have virex, and the bgrd tasks are minimal like synergy and quicksilver.
also running shapeshifter here, but i'm going to disable it now and see if it makes a difference.

TIA.

[indigoimac]

I believe the HDD is located under the left palmrest which leads me to believe that despite your 640megs o' RAM it is prolly using the hell out of your page file check-> TERMINAL-"top"

[D'Espice]

The GPU is not under the left palmrest, it's the harddrive. And during the first hours it'll get a lot hotter since Spotlight has to index your harddrive first

[Ji Eun]

if the GPU isn't there then why when playing a DVD or photoshopping does the left palmrest area get so hot?
anyway... assuming it's the HDD causing all this heat the big question is: WHY? i know it's nothing to do with indexing, i'm an avid reader of the forums and i'm talking about heat issues long after indexing has run its course... like many days after. thx for replying, but any other ideas?

also, this ibook forum seems pretty damned dead right now. :/

[Kreamy]

Hmm, i reccomend the iLap, keeps a better airflow under the machine.

Also avoid placing it on a carpet or soft surface. Something does seem strange about the hard drive spinning up more frequently when watching a DVD but its completely understandable when working with Photoshop (It's accessing the Page file a lot)

[cold aspiration]

when you watch a DVD try setting your "optimized energy settings" to "DVD Playback" in your energy saver under system preferences. Maybe that will calm your HD.

[Ji Eun]

cold aspiration, we have the same config, do you not notice tiger running hotter at all? i guess not. i'll adjust the energy settings next time i watch a DVD and see how that goes, thanks.

kreamy, i know nothing about the 'page file', is that to do with how often the drive is being accessed to retrieve / write information?

i DO however know about airflow issues... and of course i don't run the ibook on a shag carpet or featherbed. i have the back propped up a good inch or two with an old pocket dictionary whenever i'm at home.

[cold aspiration]

well I know the left palmrest gets hot for me too, but I have panther right now. So i can't make a comparison. I have a question though, do you think tiger runs slower than panther did on your ibook?

[Kreamy]

Originally Posted by Ji Eun

cold aspiration, we have the same config, do you not notice tiger running hotter at all? i guess not. i'll adjust the energy settings next time i watch a DVD and see how that goes, thanks.

kreamy, i know nothing about the 'page file', is that to do with how often the drive is being accessed to retrieve / write information?

i DO however know about airflow issues... and of course i don't run the ibook on a shag carpet or featherbed. i have the back propped up a good inch or two with an old pocket dictionary whenever i'm at home.

The Page file is effectively virtual memory, when the computer runs out of physical RAM and starts throwing things at the hard drive; needless to say, the computer slows down significantly and heats up.

[CrusaderSean]

my ibook is really hot after installing tiger. i think it must be pagefile because i only have 512MB of ram. seems like i have 5-10MB of ram free most of the time so probably a lot of paging to hd. i guess i need to upgrade ram... kinda pathetic that 512 isn't enough

[wojtow]

My ibook G4 does seem to run hotter under Tiger, especially under the left palm rest as has been mentioned... and yes, spotlight finished indexing long ago. I don't think I'm imagining this because I've always appreciated that my ibook has run much cooler than my previous Windows laptoaster. Since I upgraded to Tiger last week, I've been noticing that it's been getting uncomfortably warm where I've not noticed that in the past.

If you want to get quantitative measurements and you have a G4 ibook or better, I highly recommend ThermographX
http://www.kezer.net/thermographx.html

Unfortunately I didn't record previous numbers anywhere to compare. The GPU is definately the warmest thing in the system at 122F (50C) and all I'm doing is typing in a web page in this forum. However, I know that the chip in my machine does not support the "Core Image" feature that offloads fancy graphics tasks to the GPU.

[Ji Eun]

turns out my HD was failing. big-time. i had no idea. running tiger from my external firewire for the time being and the ibook is back to its original snappy not-help self, and tiger kicks ass.