CPU Temperature issues (iMac Intel)

Hey guys,

What is the max temp that the CPU can handle (Intel Core 2 Duo)?

I'm running at about 55 degrees.. Should i be worried?

Not really I think. All of my temps range from 38-60 Degrees C on average. And my imac seems to be just fine.

I would say anything 70+ is worthy of being concerned about. But by then the fan rpm would be much higher to accommodate this. And yes it's not an ideal situation to have all the time.

According to this document from Intel:

http://www.intel.com/design/processor/designex/317804.htm

depending on the model of Core 2 Duo, the maximum operating temperature ranges from 60.1 C to 73.3 C. So, 55 C is fine, but likely pushing it a bit. I hope that you are not reading that temp when the machine is sitting idle?

I'm getting the following temps on my 20" iMac after maybe 45 minutes to an hour of use. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm editing photos or web surfing. I don't do any gaming.

CPU A 59
GPU 67
GPU Diode 73
GPU heatsink 70
Ambient 25
Memory control 57
Airport card 65
HD bay 1 51

The fan speeds are:
Optical fan 999
CPU fan 1198
Hard drive 1200

This seems excessive to me but I haven't had any problems with it since I bought it a month ago.

Hey

Noob here how do you check the temp? Is it at activity monitor?

Cheers

Max temp for desktop procs is 60c, laptops can go to a little over 70c. Of course if you take the machine apart and clean off all the thermal paste and then apply a proper amount of high quality thermal paste then you will likely see the temps drop by 10c under load.

jj213 said:

Hey

Noob here how do you check the temp? Is it at activity monitor?

Cheers

Click to expand...

Get the iStat Pro widget. It is free and does all this and more.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html

iStat Pro is invaluable. Don't leave home without it!!

bsavitz said:

HD bay 1 51

Click to expand...

This concerns me. The maximum operating temperature specification for most desktop drives is 50*C, and it has been shown time and time again that there is a dramatic drop in reliability once they start to approach or exceed that temperature. The rest of the temperatures that you posted, while higher than I'm happy with, are well within spec... much more so than they are in a MBP, for example.

I find it highly irritating that Apple-a company that certainly has competent engineers on their payroll-cannot produce a cooling system for most of their computers (the Mac Pro being the exception in the current lineup; also possibly the Mini, I haven't looked at the temps on those) that qualifies as anything more than "barely adequate" at best.

Admittedly, Apple is not the only company to do this-I've dropped CPU temperatures on Dells 15*C before by flipping the fan around and using a little bit of cardboard as a duct-and I find it just as irritating that Dell does the same thing. But "Well Dell does it" is no excuse for Apple to do it too.

I find it highly irritating that Apple-a company that certainly has competent engineers on their payroll-cannot produce a cooling system for most of their computers (the Mac Pro being the exception in the current lineup; also possibly the Mini, I haven't looked at the temps on those) that qualifies as anything more than "barely adequate" at best.

Click to expand...

Why do you find it irritating? What event in particular has caused you to conclude that the cooling is not up to scratch?

Your MacBook Pro is 91C - so what? Keep it off your lap and don't worry about the life of the thing. It'll be landfill in 10 years time.

Very strange. My iMac was running much hotter up until a few days ago when all of the temperatures have dropped, under the same operating conditions.
The temps have consitently been running cooler since then.
Here's an exanmple compared to a week ago.
CPU A 59 - now 38
GPU 67 - now 52
GPU Diode 73 - now 55
GPU heatsink 70 - now 51
Ambient 25 - now 22
Memory control 57 - now 40
Airport card 65 - now 58
HD bay 1 51 - now 44
fan speeds are about the same

Granted, the ambient temp has dropped but would it make THAT much difference?
It's noticeably cooler to the touch now also.

I have gotten up to 66 degrees celsuius. Right now I am at 28 degrees.

Alexis said:

Why do you find it irritating? What event in particular has caused you to conclude that the cooling is not up to scratch?

Your MacBook Pro is 91C - so what? Keep it off your lap and don't worry about the life of the thing. It'll be landfill in 10 years time.

Click to expand...

I have no concerns about the lifespan of the machine; While I have little doubt that it would suffer catastrophic failure within 5 years were I to use it for that long, it will have been replaced and relegated to my parts drawer-after I disassemble it and fix as many of Apple's screw ups as I can, mainly to prove how stupidly easy it would've been to do it right in the first place-long before the AppleCare on it runs out.

The issue comes down to a philosophical difference between how I believe a computer should be built (or really, how I believe things should be done period) and how Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, et al. believe a computer should be built. I am a perfectionist. I expect things to be done to the highest possible practically achievable standard.

Apple, Dell, Alienware, HP, <insert every other mainstream computer manufacturer here> do not share that view. They exist, of course, to make money. And, given that they are businesses and generating income is, oddly enough, the primary purpose of most businesses, this is not really unexpected.

However, there are (as I see it at least) three ways of going about making money: Being cheaper than everyone else, being near-as-makes-no-difference the same as everyone else in terms of quality, features, and pricing (which will keep you afloat, if not necessarily hugely successful) or being distinctly better than everyone else and demanding a huge premium for your products. Apple sure as heck isn't the former, and they definitely aren't the latter (well, except for the cases where they go for the 'demanding a huge premium' bit).

It would have been, at the time the machine was being designed, a trivial exercise in terms of cost and additional development time to bring the MBP's CPU temperature under 100% load down into the mid 60*C range, if not lower, while keeping noise output under normal conditions similar to what it is now. It would have been a trivial exercise to engineer a cooling system for the iMac that would keep bsavitz's machine's hard drive within the maximum operating specifications set forth by the manufacturer of the drive, which in all likelihood it is not (and I'd be happy to check that if he'd care to post the drive information from the system profiler), and again, doing it without a noise penalty to speak of.

It would have been laughably easy to keep the hard disks in my friend's G5 below 55*C (again, well out of the allowable range according to the drive manufacturer) at idle, just as it would have to keep the CPU temperature nearer to 45*C than 65, without any significant increase in noise, considering that the PPC970 did not become a particularly power hungry processor until clock speeds were pushed past about 2.3GHz. I'd find you the IBM datasheet on the 970's power consumption if I could, but I can't track it down at the moment. This article: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/ppc970.ars which lists the 1.8GHz part as having a TDP of all of 42w (less than the current C2D desktop processors) will have to suffice. Air cooling a 42w heat load, while keeping the cooling system functionally inaudible AND keeping the CPU temperatures significantly lower than what I've seen from G5s is child's play for myself and many others; it would not have been challenging for Apple, either, had they had the desire to do so.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: They could do better. Much better. Without a great deal of expense or additional effort. All of them could. Not just Apple; just about every computer manufacturer save for some of the very small boutique companies could stand to improve in some way or another. And, by choice (read: because of the impact it could have on the bottom line, or on their development time, or whatever the excuse du jour is), they don't. They ship stuff that's "good enough" rather than "the best we can do". And while half(blank)ing it and calling it "good enough" might be, uh, good enough for you, I expect better.