Intel Imac with bad logic board.

Add me to the list.. My 2006 intel iMAC is shot. The GENIUS told me the logic board is going. I have 2gigs of RAM but it will only allow me to use 1. The store tested both chips separately in both slots and it started up fine. As soon as he put both chips back in I got the white screen and 3 loud beeps.. it would not boot up. 700 to fix.. Kidding me?// My 3 year warranty ran out 7 months ago so no help there..

Now it has only 1 gig while the other sits on my desk staring at me... Final Cut runs like crap on 1 gig.. might as well give up editing... even iphoto is sluggish.. What is the point.. I bought this machine specifically for editing and now after spending 2300 I can not! This is obviously a defect.. why are they ignoring it??? Time for APPLE to step up and fix there defective boards. We are loyal customers..

I've had the same problem with my early 2006 imac g5 20" with RadeonX1600 graphics card... horizontal lines, strange shadows/artifacts, occasional crashes. Problem started sometime in 2007. Using SMC Fan Control helped for the most part until this summer when problems became worse. Now computer will not run at all, sometimes displays an entire screen of vertical lines but usually just crashes immediately upon start up.

BUT what I don't understand is that when I do a Safe Boot, none of these issues appear at all. No horizontal lines or artifacts, nothing. Computer runs perfectly. Anyone know why that is?

the circuitry on the video that allows basic video operation is still functional, and safe mode runs without loading the drivers to activate the main [and dysfunctional] circuitry. if there were a way to bypass the video circuitry all together, the main motherboard would probably still be perfectly functional. the problems start when you start up your machine in standard operation mode, and the machine starts loading up the drivers for all the peripherals. as soon as the video drivers load and the video circuitry activates, you machines crashes. this is a "simplistic" explanation, but it should give you some idea of what is happening.

we deal with these things when we buy computers with on-board video vs. removable video cards, or buy TVs with built-in DVD players, or stereo equipment, or phones, or anything else we accept for the "convenience" of having extras built in. for the cost of one of these machines, you would think they would (at least) last longer than 2 or 3 years before they started showing problems like this.

Hi,
try to turn off Quartz Extreme. Search for iMac freezing topic.

I downloaded free Fan Control 1.2 for Imac from Derman Enterprises and cranked up all three fan speeds; 2000 rpm on CPU and 2500 rpm on hard drive, which was running warm. Horizontal lines gone from screen (so far), no color artifacts and no crashes yet. I may have a real computer back! Hope Apple checks this out- I will keep spreading the word if it keeps working!

Many thanks to Bodomann!!!

From Bodomann's original message:

*"Following up on my previous posting regarding my son's late model 2006 iMac that required a $900 logic board replacement:*

*Turns out the problem is apparently related to a bad CPU temp sensor. I installed 'iMac Fan Control' (Google it) which reported the CPU temp always at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (obviously incorrect). The same software allowed me to adjust the CPU fan manually. After multiple trials I set the CPU speed to 2800RPM after which the system would run forever - never freezing with the dreaded grey box 'reboot me' screen. I tried several times reverting the software to default speeds and the system would always crash within 10 minutes. "*

Whatever you do, +do not+ buy AppleCare. It's a rip-off. AppleCare is how Apple milks extra money out of you, which in turn encourages them to build even worse products.

I had AppleCare on my PowerBook G4. When the PowerBook's backlight failed, Apple swapped out the entire LCD assembly with a refurbished part containing a cluster of bad pixels and a backlight with about half the brightness of a new one. I was outraged.

I now have a 24" iMac which is failing. It overheats, slows to a crawl, beachballs, then seizes completely. I don't know if the drive is what's overheating, or if the overheating is killing the drive, but I took the iMac to the Santa Barbara Apple Store — which was a pain in the a** since I don't have a car — and they kept it overnight and then returned it to me having declined the repair, telling me that after running diagnostics they couldn't find anything wrong. I brought it home and of course it overheated, slowed to a crawl, beachball and then completely seized.

Note: This thing still has two months on the original 1-year warranty. It is failing, but Apple +declined the repair+.

The best part was that at the Apple Store, the helpful genius told me to buy AppleCare. I wanted to knock his teeth out.

it is pretty obvious increasing the fan speed hlps. maybe an App;e tech will read this and put out a memo telling everyone to do this....if you make it hteir idea, they will think it is a god idea. I MEAN "GOOD" IDEA...

Message was edited by: rtabish

Thx for the info, I knew something simple could be made to fix this problem.

I think apple did not want to race up the speed of the fan because it will be no more a quiet computer but who cares.

I fix the cpu fan at 2800 rpm and it did not bug or freeze yet.

sly442

My 20" 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo had become almost useless due to freezes and crashes- with NO crash reports in the logs.

They were often preceeded by video glitches, so I assumed it was a bad video card- unfortunately soldered to mother board.

Apparently, from forum postings, this is not an uncommon problem. The computer would run longer if the day was cooler, but rarely more than 10 minutes, so I suspected it was aggravated by heat.

Then I found this post from Bodomann on an Apple Support forum:

"Following up on my previous posting regarding my son's late model 2006 iMac that required a $900 logic board replacement:

Turns out the problem is apparently related to a bad CPU temp sensor. I installed 'iMac Fan Control' (Google it) which reported the CPU temp always at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (obviously incorrect). The same software allowed me to adjust the CPU fan manually. After multiple trials I set the CPU speed to 2800RPM after which the system would run forever - never freezing with the dreaded grey box 'reboot me' screen. I tried several times reverting the software to default speeds and the system would always crash within 10 minutes. "

I downloaded free Fan Control 1.2 for Imac from Derman Enterprises (they have an Intel iMac and a Mac Book/Pro version). It installs as a system preferences control panel. I cranked up all three fan speeds. The fans sped up noticeably. Horizontal lines have gone from screen (so far), no color artifacts and no crashes yet. I may have a real computer back! Hope Apple checks this out-

The control panel also gives the temps sensors are reporting at the CPU, hard drive and DVD drive. The CPU sensor reports the CPU temp as 32 degrees F- which is clearly wrong, unless Apple has been installing little refrigerators inside.

So thanks to Bodomann for posting- Hats off and three cheers to Derman and Cristoph for source code.

http://www.derman.com/iMac-Fan-Control
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html

Now it's my turn.
Suddenly, my iMac is not starting. you hear something running, but nothing happens...no startup sound, no picture. so i went to the genius bar and those geniuses told me, that the logic board turned bad...repair costs about $700?

just after I installed Snow Leopard. conincidence?
1.5 years after I bought the iMac, it's already dead.

I heard the problem appeared on MacBook Pros as well and that (in Austria) they have a product recall on those notebooks.

Anyone heard something like that for iMac?
Any ideas?

Well it must be my turn now. I've just spent almost an hour reading page after page after page of the problems that are plaguing the Intel and G5 iMac and I must say I am terribly disappointed with Apple.

I will start by saying that I have pretty much always been a PC user.. Right back to my first 386sx25 with 4mB of RAM and a 40mB hard drive running Windows 3.1. But occasionally i've used Apples and have always been impressed with both the quality and usability of their computers. I remember way back in primary school when we had a couple of Apple IIe's and an Apple IIgs (it was colour!!).. Later on I used the classic-style macs at high school and have randomly come across iMac's since.. The blue G3's, pedestal/sunflower G4's.. Always a quality, easy to use product that LASTS. The only service i'd ever heard of with friends who owned a Mac, is opening it up to clean the dust out of it!

Recently, I had the pleasure in taking on a G4 "Sunflower" iMac with a failed hard drive.. The previous owner was not too concerned with the old machine, but wanted about 200 or so photos that were on it. Sometimes it would boot but most of the time it failed at a unix-looking command-line screen.

After screwing around with it a bit trying to get it to boot, I eventually gave up on it and it sat in my cupboard for a few months.. Last week, I decided to have another crack at it.. It booted! .. Quick! Get a LAN cable in this thing and get those photos off it! I got them ALL! I was stoked.. It soon-after froze when I tried to copy all his music from it so, I shoved another 80gB drive in it that I had laying around, and re-installed Panther on it.. It is now a fully functional machine! And kicks *** for its age too.. More-so than my old P3/800 running XP anyway. I'm very happy I now own such a cool little Mac.

So yet another quality machine created by Apple to add to the many that are out there.. Now I come to my recent disappointment:

A very good friend of mine bought an Intel iMac 20" 1.5gB RAM just over 3 years ago. He got Applecare, but that only covers 3 years.. So now, just outside of warranty, it starts randomly turning itself off. Sometimes it will power back on again, but most of the time it won't. It has to be unplugged from power for an extended period of time before it will want to turn on again - Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. Of course, he took it in to an "Apple Authorized Service Centre" and, surprise surprise, it requires a new logic board. $900AUS he was quoted.. Ridiculous. Just over 3 years old and he now has a lemon.

He brought it down to my place because I said I might have a crack at looking at it seeing it is just a large plastic paper-weight at the moment anyway.. So he transferred anything he might want to use in the interim to my sunflower mac and I let him borrow that. Now I have this iMac 20" sitting on my desk next to my PC.. It's been on and doing stuff most of the time since it was left here. I'm trying to make it fail again to see what happens and how (and more importantly, how warm the case feels when it does) - Of course, it won't.. It seems to run fine. Maybe it doesn't want to fail in front of me because it thinks I look threatening or something.. It must be that shirt I have that says "I void warranties". I have always been a bit of an electronics and PC hack.

So I read on... and on.. and on in these forums everywhere, what seems to be an endless supply of complaints about these iMac's. Most people seem to conclude that the issue is the design of the plastic casing and the fact that these poor logic boards are just cooking themselves, unable to cool the fire that dwells within. I must admit as I type this and check the temperature on the back panel of this iMac it is pretty warm.. I imagine what the temperature would be like on actual components inside?! I've had similar temperature-related issues with PC's and the result is the same - Sudden power-down (mother-board protects itself by turning the PC off when temperatures reach critical levels).

There is no video corruption on this iMac so far, just this weird problem where it turns itself off maybe once or twice a month, enough to be massively annoying and make you not want to use it because it may lose your work at any moment. If this is an overheating issue, maybe I should just rip the thing apart and drill some holes in a nice pattern across the back of the case? or maybe just cut a square hole on the back and mount a cooling fan? Perhaps this will fix the power-down issue and stop the machine from ultimately frying the video card or itself? Noisy it may be, but at least it will continue to be a functional machine. What do you all think? Worth a go? No-one would want it with the fault so I suppose it is only due for the bin anyway...

Shame on you Apple.. Fair enough there is only a very small number of overall Mac users experiencing problems, but f *, if I paid nearly $3000AUS for a computer I would expect to get more than 3 and a bit years out of it.. And if it was going to fail in a short time and Apple know this as a common fault among a minority of their users, you'd think they'd come to the party on a cheaper repair or do a recall. Obviously the minority is larger than we all think, and the outlay of money by Apple to fix this issue is a bit more than they think they can handle? Opened a big enough can of worms yet? I think so...

My intel iMac went out in about April '09 (about 5 months ago). I bought it in August '06, it was my first mac. I was on it one night, put it to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning the screen was black and the light sensor was on. I tried resetting the PRAM, every remedy on the internet, nothing. It ***** that it's gone. I had no backup, so I lost all my files (I know this is my fault) and I did have AppleCare but it ran out in August '08. I took it to Apple, they said it was a logic board failure and would cost $799 for them to fix. Instead I bought a June '09 MacBook Pro. I am happy with my MacBook Pro, but I LOVED my iMac, it is still broken, and I still have it, and I would LOVE to fix it. I took it apart today to see if remedies on the internet would help to fix it, but it failed. Any help would be amazing!

Its very interesting to read about this topic.

I recently encountered the same problem. Switched off the mac in the night. Come early morning, there was no response from the unit. It just wouldnt switch on. I sent it to the repairs and they quoted me a price of $2521! The new iMac in the market is $1299!

I called up Apple and discussed this issue with them. I had not purchased the extended warranty! I purchased the unit in April 2008 and just 6 months off warranty, the unit has just stopped!

I was very angry, but at the same time, calm and cool. I did understand the statutory rights i have over purchases under the Trade Practices Act. And what Apple is doing is a total outrage! Their representatives were agreeing to shell out only 50% of the cost of the part which was $1000 which left me with an expense total of $1500.

For the time being, I have left the mac as it is. I have served them a notice of 10 days before they either respond to repair the Mac free of charge or I take them to court!

It is a crime to sell products as such in the market. It is even more a crime to sell your extended warranties in a manner as such! There are legal implications to such actions. Apple have designed their sales in such a manner that users are punished for not purchasing their extended warranties. They have purposely hiked the prices of their parts by not producing older parts and consumers are either forced to purchase new macs or pay a hefty amount if they wanted to retain their existing unit!

I have decided to go forward with this case as far as I can.

I want to resolve this case for myself and for other consumers such as you all!

If anybody wants to add substance to my case, they can contact me at nnidhin@gmail.com

ta!

Seems there are lots of problems with the ATI x1600 graphics chip (BGA)

This Macbook pro forum has been documenting same issue.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10524473#10524473

I've been lucky enough to have Apple replace my computer way out of warranty (3.5 years) Kept pestering them and sending links to these forums, CNET articles, etc. A customer relations person (not a product specialist) finally decided I deserved a replacement.

Hope you all have the same experience.