Q: New iMac 27inch screen flickering/tearing/shutoff

Very curious....mine had a bad case of the flickers as I mentioned a couple of days ago, including full blackouts (but no reboots). This was both before and after applying the update. The last two days though, not a single flicker so far and I've been using it a fair bit.

Cliff,

What HD do you have ?

Suba,
One Terabyte.

Now I finally agreed to sending my iMac back and get it replaced with a new one. This opportunity would otherwise have expired on January 2nd. Apple promised that the new ones being produced now will be flawless... Let's see.

The good thing though is that I can keep my machine until the new one will have arrived. This makes it easy to transfer my data. Also I asked them if they could make up their minds to give me some sort of compensation and the Apple Sales person said she will ask her superiors to give me some voucher or so for the Apple Store. That sounds good. But they seem to be not as generous here in Germany as they obviously are in the U.S., as far as I can judge from some of the posts here.

Anyway, if everything turns out to be okay after the swap I will have nothing to complain about. But who knows.

Hey Greg

Don't take any chances, if you haven't already, call them and get a case number. If the problem is caused, as many including Apple suspect, by weak solders or connections, or some other manufacturing defect, then it wont go away indefinitely. Either have the machine replaced or repaired once the exact cause is discovered.

I've noticed that many people are suffering with this problem. Me to. I received my Imac on december 23, W8950. Yesterday these problems occured. I contacted apple about it. They said to do a extended hardware test, which gave zero errors. Today I was working with my computer for several hours. First I thought it had something to do with iPhoto. Because yesterday my problems started as well with the flickering screen within this program. Today nothing happened, until I tried to access an adult site!

I just placed my order for an i7 iMac at Apple Store Online. I hope I get a week 01 or 02 and it's going to be flawless.

A friend of mine has a C2D (don't know the week) with no problems so far.

I'll keep you posted.

If any problem occures, a single dead pixel or whatever, it's going back to Cupertino (or Asia, or wherever).

I am having this issue again. It started happening a week or so after receiving the iMac, then the software update came out that was supposed to fix it. It did... for a few days. Now it's happening again. Does that mean it's hardware-related? I think it happens more often when the iMac is warmer. It does get extremely hot to the touch.

Having same issue - Received my mac from MacMall and now that flickering is happening apple refuses to replace it and since they don't know how to fix it they are not fixing it either and MacMall is asking that I mail it to them and wait for one to be sent to me when it's off of backorder. I just got the product 5 days ago and transferred everything from my old mac and gave the old mac away. Since this is my work computer I can't afford to send it out and wait for a replacement. Should I wait and let the return period expire and just deal with apple warranty directly later? It ***** after paying close to $3000 that you get a product that does not work accordingly and the manufacturer and retailer both do very little to help you out.

Just adding my voice to the chorus. I have the same problem as described. It started about three weeks after I had my new iMac (27" i7).

And the latest update obviously didn't fix it.

By george I think I may be on to something! OK everyone...weve been dealing with this for a while.....I think I stumbled on something that may explain the flickering tearing. While installing Windows 7, I saw the screen tear and the start menu bar was 3/4 up the screen, you had to mouse up to go down so to speak....This anomaly happened immediately after the bootcamp drivers for the intel chipset were installed in windows. SO - I'm thinking it is a driver issue with relation to the video card and the intel chipset. Whaddaya think ladies and gentlemen?

I think we have a broken graphics card in the new iMacs and while you were installing the driver it somehow triggered the effect that many are seeing.

I think this is not a driver issue, otherwise Apple would not have released a firmware updater for the card. Usually when something like this happens to fix an issue, vendors just try to work around a hardware problem.

FYI - - I have a 27" and have experienced the same problems as most other 27 owners and have not installed Bootcamp or Windows of any kind. I did the firmware upgrade, which like everyone else, hoped would fix the flicker/black blip screen problem, but saw it once yesterday and am keeping a wary eye on it - will call Apple and also open a case # just in case. Smart thinking to have it all on record with Apple. drum

I'm 99% certain that this is a heat issue. I lost my last iMac due to overheating video, hence why I bought the 27". During the troubleshooting process I installed a widget that allowed me to see the temperature of the video section. My screen would shut off when it hit the 117+ degree range. My 27" started to do flicker and blink out just yesterday. The temperature on the 27" was 120 degrees.

I think it's been stated time and time again in this thread that heat isn't the problem. Now, if you're video card is hitting 117˚C, then you've got bigger problems than just the flickering. However, 117˚F for a video card is nothing. The video cards in my PCs idle at higher temperatures than that and routinely get into the mid-to-high 70˚C-range (~160˚F) when under load.

Put simply...a 117˚F video card isn't the problem.