What is the life expectancy of an imac?

You should be OK with 98GB free. You would probably be OK with even less. As I said, I don't think the free space recommendation of 15-20% is linear. This recommendation was before the era of such huge drives. The system needs free space to write temporary files. The amount it needs is not going increase with the amount of data -- usually your Home folder items like movies, music etc. -- on the drive.

Mine lasted five years only.

The ventilation outlets were clogged and the motherboard burned itself to death.

The repair man told me I should have disaasembled, vaccummed and reassembled the imac every two years (something you cannot do on your own).

Of course no one at Apple is telling you so.

The repair man told me I should have disaasembled, vaccummed and reassembled the imac every two years (something you cannot do on your own).

Of course no one at Apple is telling you so.

Because it's not true...

I don't like to disagree with some of our more experienced "senior" contributors here, but I fully agree with your local repair man on this.

For the record, Apple has no real procedures for really taking good care of your expensive Mac desktop or laptop.

I had two older PowerMacs that were still going after 8 and 10 years, respectively. I bet if I setup my old G4 PowerMac today, that it would still power up and work like it did, just like it did the day I powered it down and put it away!

What can reduced the longevity of ANY computer and newer aluminum designed iMacs is basically too much internal or more than reasonable or excessive exposure to high internal temperatures.

Heat is the enemy of any electronics and, especially, micro electronics.

Apple designed a thin enclosure that, in reality, acts more like a portable oven or toaster that is basically "slow roasting", over time, the iMac's inner components. The rear of the iMac has been stated in various Apple conversations to act as a component to "draw away" or convect heat out of the inside of an iMac.

While some of this is true, in theory, the reality is the whole iMac box structure is all aluminum. Aluminum is a serious heat conductor/absorber, but has some abilty to conduct its heat out from the material, as well.

Unfortunately, the iMac's internal components generate more heat than the aluminum enclosure can conduct away and to the outside of the iMac.

There were never enough internal fans nor these fans spinning fast enough to keep an iMac, relatively, cool on the inside.

If the inside of the iMac fills up with dust and/or dirt particles and lint, the internal heat factor goes up considerably.

Once a year, I use a vacuum to vacuum ALL of my 2009 iMac's vents, slots, the various connection ports, the optical drive slot and the bottom air intakes and I remove the RAM module area metal cover and lightly vaccum inside of there. Basically trying to suck out as much loose dust, dirt and lint particles as possible.

I use the vaccum crevice attachment to very lightly move along my iMac so as not to both scratch or damage the outside finish and DO NOT USE AND BRUSH attachments to cause any type of electrostatic discharge on anything on my iMac.

Another thing I do to keep heat down is run a software fan control app to ramp up the iMac's internal fans to keep internal temps down.

The trick is to keep the fans running a little faster than what Apple has set, by default from the factory, but keep the fan speeds from being too fast so the fans act like internal vaccuums sucking into your iMac much more outside dust, dirt and lint particles at a much faster rate.

I, typically set my iMac's fans bewtween 1400-1500 RPMs and find that this is an acceptable increase.

I, also, use a small footprint, portable desktop fan that blows cool air around the hottest area of my iMac, typically the upper left rear of my iMac ( when facing the iMac's screen).

When really working my iMac doing illustration work, the temp of the CPU will rarely peak over 110° F and the hard drive temp is around 100° F and the GPU (which is one the hottest components in an iMac) I never let get hotter than 130° F.

Keeping your computer as cool as practically possible is what is going to keep it running well longer.

<Edited by Host>

You didn't disagree with what I said...

org post date Posted on May 30, 2011 2:41 PM

blast from the past 🙂

Posting from Mid 2007 iMac that is rarely shut down, 2005 eMac running 24/7 since new beside it. 🙂

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