A question on iMac noise.

Hi,

My imac (white C2D 2Ghz) when I purchased ran rather silently and the fans were idling at around 1000 rpm. And temperatures mostly nothing over 65 degrees C. I had 10.4 back then though.

Now I have 10.5.4 and my fans are idling at 1200 rpm, and the temps are 50, 40 and the rest lower than 40 decrees C. But it's running rather noisily now. As in the constant hum from just having the machine on is rather noticeable now. And that's without accessing the HD or anything. Sure I can hear that to but it's not so bad.

Would anyone know why my machine is becoming slowly more noisy to run? Would it be a dust problem, or is it just the fans spinning faster to keep my machine cooler? Cause it's not annoying but very noticeable this hum.

Is there a fix for this issue or just something I have to live with?

get something called smcfancontrol, its free and it lets you control your fans, but there are limitations, so if your mac is getting too hot then it will automatically up the speed of the fans. I'm not sure if it will solve the problem but it's worth a try!

You shouldn't need to mess about with the fans. If the machine has become noisy after 10.5.4 then something is up. Odd.

Mine is a week old and kicked in this morning with obscenely loud fan noise. Shall I just take it back to the shop?

To mclaren_jk: Yes I think you should do the hardware test. And a Onyx clean. And if nothing, then take it back to the shop. Cause it should be near silent for the first few weeks at least. I know mine was.

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And about my issue. I dusted around my computer. Cleaned up my HD as much as possible, and tried to use that fan app. But I couldn't get it to work. But actually I count not get the app to work. It just never opened when I clicked on it. It did give a warning though that it might not run on my mac when I installed it.

Actually is there a way to record or analyse the sound from the mac to determine if it's too loud or not? And what is too loud. Cause I know for me my mac is a little noisy but to some people I know from the PC world, they say it's silent. Mind you their massive home brew towers are very very noisy.

So is this just a each to his own level of tolerance thing of is there a level which each mac should be at?

And thanks for the responces so far.