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wetstuff · Oct 14, 2005, 01:53 PM

I know it's been Summer here for a while...but man this fan is annoying. It runs about every moment the Mac is not asleep. Does yours do the same?

Jim
Salisbury MD

cleanup · Oct 14, 2005, 09:55 PM

Got a Rev. A?

There's your problem.

nJm · Oct 14, 2005, 10:38 PM

Our Rev.A 17" sounds like a hair dryer whenever it is doing anything slightly taxing like copying a CD into iTunes, or even just having a few programs open at once. I tend to use my iBook more as it is so much quieter, and it isn't hugely less powerful.

ahmed_88 · Oct 14, 2005, 11:17 PM

I find the fan on my Rev. B annoying aswell...
Sometimes I can the buzzing from the following. But my biggest problem is that it does not always go to spleep on its own: sometimes while it has been idle for hours, I have put it to sleep manually!!!

Grrr · Oct 15, 2005, 02:31 PM

Mines dead quiet actually.. but then that is because it IS dead

Has the dreaded video problem..

eddiecatflap · Oct 15, 2005, 03:36 PM

i hate noisy machines , this kinda stuff makes me want to buy a laptop

applenut1 · Oct 16, 2005, 02:54 AM

Vacuum the bottom grill of the imac. It will get rid of the problem. Believe me, I just did it. It's amazing how much crap gets rammed into the gril

wetstuff · Oct 16, 2005, 08:10 AM

Nut - Thanks! I'll try that when I get to the shop. This iMac (Gum Drop) is really quite quiet...jes' the slightest hum.

Don't know about Rev.A ? I'll check 'About this.." to see?! ..and then do a search here.

Again, thanks to you guys here. I always know where to come when I'm mac-troubled. Cheers.

Jim

wetstuff · Oct 16, 2005, 09:21 AM

.....half the noise. It now sounds more like quarter speen than a full-on hair dryer. Tolerable..but my next Mac will need to be able to be placed 50' away from the display. I don't like my laptop as well as I like to bluetooth the mouse and keyboard where I want. ...and the better ones are too expensive for me.

I took the 'wand' tool of a shop-vac to it. Sucked every hole from top to bottom. You can hear it now, but it's NOTHING like before. Thanks Nut.

Jim

eddiecatflap · Oct 17, 2005, 08:30 AM

my imac g4 is virtually silent

makes me wanna wait until intel

siMac · Oct 17, 2005, 09:36 AM

Just got my iMac G5 (Rev B?) last Monday and I am very disappointed with the amount of noise it makes. It makes more noise at idle than my old iBook G3 did when it was overheating, and a lot more noise than my dual 1.8GHz G5 at work. If I actually do something with it it quickly becomes intolerable. Turning on iTunes visualisations, for instance, is pointless as the iMac's fans drown out all the sound that it can generate from its wimpy speakers. It also has problems sleeping, when I press the power button to sleep it the screen blanks but the sleep light never comes on. It is then impossible to wake it up and after a while the fans come on full blast, the only fix is a hard reboot.

I don't think hoovering the base will help since it hasn't been out of its box long enough to gather crud/dust. I've also followed Apple's instructions to reset the chip that manages fans, sleep etc but it hasn't helped.

Not Very Impressed™.

Zubir · Oct 18, 2005, 06:09 PM

A few months ago, I bought a 20" Rev. B, and took it back the following week due to the fan noise coming from the bottom. It wasn't very loud, but the pitch wasl annoying. It was dead silent until I loaded WoW on it. After that, anything that pegged the CPU made the iMac sound like a muffled hair dryer. If the noise wasn't being reflected off of whatever surface you have the machine sitting on right into your face, it would probably be tolerable.

WizOSX · Oct 22, 2005, 05:15 PM

When everyone says Rev. A and Rev. B, do they mean the ones before and after the 512mb of RAM. Is that the way to tell the difference? The ones with 512 came after the beginning of May. Was there really an improvement in noise?

Zubir · Oct 22, 2005, 05:58 PM

Rev. B are the ones with 512mb of ram and the Radeon 9600 video chip. Ergo, anything before that is Rev. A. Rev. C was just released.

jjlannoo · Oct 22, 2005, 06:31 PM

Wow I'm back in the mac world...been gone for a few years. Anyways My New Rev C iSight iMac I picked up last thursday seems Silent so far. Cant even hear the hard drive.

gonadman · Oct 23, 2005, 03:39 AM

This is a well known problem. As an owner of a 17" iMac G5 Rev A I've read all the stories and complaints. Yes, you can hear the fan. No, it's not as bad as a PC would be. Believe me, my wife's PC sounds like a wind tunnel in comparison - even when I'm encoding a DVD.

I, too, was spoiled by the absolute silentness of my old iBook - but the performance boost with the iMac is worth it. At some point in the future I may go back to a portable and rediscover silent computing, but for now I'm more than happy with my slightly buzzy iMac. Those new iMacs do look a treat...