Overheating?

My 20" aluminum iMac seems to be overheating while running boot camp and playing some games. The games run perfectly fine (and look great - Oblivion and Mass Effect), but the top-left of the unit gets extremely hot and at times starts to make a whistling noise. At first I thought it was my speakers acting up, but then I felt how hot the unit was getting and realized where the noise was actually coming from.

Like I said, this hasn't actually affected the game at all. No slowdown, no forced quits because of low virtual memory or anything. I'm curious if this is something I should be concerned about and, if so, how concerned. Is there any remedy (i.e. can I force the fans to run more to keep it cooler)?

I have zero problems with it otherwise. I'll putting off games for now.

EDIT: Despite no errors of low virtual memory, could that be the problem anyways? If so, it'd probably get me to pull the trigger on upgrading to 4GBs, which I've been meaning to do for a few months.

It's meant to get hot. Don't worry, it's not overheating.

Could it maybe be the Hard Drive because its located in the middle of the top of the unit. Maybe since its running windows the HD is working on running the game and the application at the same time?
Mine gets hot while using FCP

Alexis said:

It's meant to get hot. Don't worry, it's not overheating.

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I understand that it's supposed to get hot. That in itself does not worry me. My machine making loud whistle noises in conjunction with being hot worries me.

MikeIsGood,

That whistling sounds like the fan working overtime (because of the high load) or possibly it need some lubrication.

If your Mac is in warranty, I'd check that out with an Apple store, or at least call Apple tech support.

Noel

I could fry an egg on my iMac

I disagree with the statement that "it's supposed to run hot". Barbecue cookers are supposed to run hot, not computers, especially a finely built machine like an iMac or MacBook. Heat has the single most detrimental effect on a computer.

Having said that, when running fast action graphical games in Windows from a Boot Camp partition, the CPU is going to work hard. SMCFanControl works fairly well when in OS X to compensate for heat build up by allowing you to manually control the fan(s). However, there is no SMCFanControl for Windows.

There is a small utility that's free and can be downloaded from here:

http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml

As the name implies it's called "rmclock". The use of this utility allows you to control the temperature of the CPU in Windows by "throttling". Works very well for most graphical intense games that tend to drive the CPU temp upward causing the fans to spin harder and harder. Even allows monitoring CPU temperature directly from the system tray.

One note: It will NOT work if run in a VM. That means if you run Windows from Fusion or Parallels. It only works if Windows is run natively.

Regards.

It shouldn't whistle. Check the vent isn't blocked with dust, otherwise it might be worth taking it back.

I disagree with the statement that "it's supposed to run hot". Barbecue cookers are supposed to run hot, not computers, especially a finely built machine like an iMac or MacBook. Heat has the single most detrimental effect on a computer.

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The only way to keep a computer cool is to keep the power off.
I'm not sure what your point is.

Alexis said:

The only way to keep a computer cool is to keep the power off.
I'm not sure what your point is.

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Or play games in Iceland - seriously tho - thats what some data centres are looking at. Maybe Canada and Iceland will become the new data hubs