iMac (Loud fan)! Please help.

Hey everyone,

I have a brand new iMac that I purchased in October of 2010. I had several problems with it and recently had all the hardware replaced because of this issue. One thing came back and I want to know what it is so I can get it fixed.

As soon as I turn the power on the fan comes on, very loudly! This was initially fixed (or so I thought). I exported a couple of short video clips to use in iMovie and after that this loud fan noise came back, and is now there every time I turn it on.

I deleted those video clips and I am using a very very small amount of memory in total. Please let me know if you've had this problem, if you know what it is, or if and how it can be fixed.

Thanks in advance!

PS: I am also wondering if it is okay to use it when the fan is this loud. I feel like it's bad like it will blow up or burn out but I am a full time student and have a lot of work to do on it on a daily basis. So I have been using it even with this loud fan on.

Thanks again!

Download iStat pro and check your temps/fan speeds. The base on a 2010 iMac should be about 1000rpm at idle.

hth
-Mike

@heatherlee003

Don't mess with it. Take it on back to Apple and let them deal with it. The loud fan could be a problem with the heat sensors on the logic board. I don't know what kind of hardware work they did for you but obviously something is still not right. It's under warranty. Let them repair it.

It's possible a temperature sensor didn't get connected properly. If the Mac can't register a temperature sensor properly, it'll ramp up the fan full speed to keep things from burning out. If multiple components were replaced already, it's possible the technician missed moving a temperature sensor over to the new part. If the technician ran his hardware diagnostics following the repair, it should have caught that and failed.

If, however, it sounds as though something is hitting the fan blades, like a playing card in bicycle spokes, it could be a wire or a piece of tape catching the fan blades, which should be easy enough to slide out of the way.