normal operating temps for imac

Raz0rEdge

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Your Mac's Specs
2022 Mac Studio M1 Max, 2023 M2 MBA
Normal depends on a lot of things like ambient temp, load on the machine, amount of air flow, state of her intake vents and so on.

Tell us what you are seeing and wel'll tell if you should be worried or not..
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Air temperature 26ºC and my iMac shows the following:-

HD 40º. CPU 37º. Ambient 26º. CPU Diode 46º. GPU Heatsink 43º.

Power Supply 40º all in Celsius.
 
C

chas_m

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If your iMac is ON, then it is probably working perfectly normally.

PC people get confused by the fact that the Mac doesn't require this level of "micro-management." They also particularly seem to think it is odd that the top of their iMac is rather warm. This is called convection cooling (aka "heat rises") and is used by Apple's super-clever engineers to reduce the need for excessive fan noise by allowing the machine to vent heat naturally. Cool air is drawn in from the bottom, passes over the components and warms up, with the heat venting near the top. It's ingenious, really.

Should your machine *actually* overheat (which almost never happens), it will automatically shut down to protect the processor. So if that's not happening, your machine is likely working exactly as designed. As HarryB points out above -- computers are perfectly okay with being hotter than humans would find comfortable.
 
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M3 iMac, 24 GB RAM, 10 core GPU
I could fry eggs on the top vents of my iMac (probably not too far from the truth on a hot day), but it never seems to be a problem. I'll take the convection cooling design over loud fans any day.
 

chscag

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2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
An iMac is normally very quiet although it has three fans going all the time. I run some fairly graphic intensive apps and have never experienced a situation where the top vents became so hot that I couldn't touch them. If your top vents are that hot, I would have the machine looked at. It could be that one or more of your three fans are clogged with dirt and not providing proper cooling. The air flow upward is by convection but keep in mind that you need those three fans to provide proper internal cooling.
 

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