overheating imac

Question

Level 1

8 points

overheating imac

I have an iMac apparently late 2011, iMac12,2 Intel Core i5, 2.7Ghz. It overheats so badly you can hardly touch the chassis, and then randomly shuts itself off in some way. My dealer tells me these models were faulty from the start with a motherboard that overheated. And there was apparently an official replacement programme now run out. Anyone know about this problem, and why we are stuck with a machine not-fit-for-purpose? Regards, John

iMac

Posted on May 28, 2018 5:35 PM

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Answer 1

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,696 points

May 29, 2018 7:49 AM in response to JohnLR

John,

Please understand we are end-users just like you volunteering to help others; none of us work for Apple. We can do nothing about whether Apple should have recalled/replaced/etc so going on about that accomplishes nothing here. However, there are some things we can walk you through that might help. Systemic oveheating in that model is not something I've seen brought up here before and I've been here a loooong time. Was the person who said this model had a defect an Apple employee or was this at a third-party reseller? Just curious.

OK, for things we can do together within the confines of the forums that might at least eliminate some things as suspects:

Air vents. That model inhales air through slots on the case's bottom edge and exhausts it through a long slot on the back panel about 1/2 inch from the top edge. Make sure all these slots are free of dust/lint. Also make sure nothing comes near either set of vents. Keep parts of the desk and the stuff that gets stacked on desks at least six inches from the vents. One of my kids left a stack of CD sleves under my 2010 iMac that blocked about half the vents. The overheating that results went away when I moved the sleeves.

Software: Overheating is caused as often by incompatible or unneeded software as by hardware faults. Anti-virus software, so-called "cleaning/tune-up" apps, torrent software, or some browser extensions can all do it. We can quickly assess if this is an issue if you post a snapshot of your configuration. Fortunately there is a safe and secure way to do that.

A respected and long-serving member of these communities has created a simple utility that will take that "snapshot" of your configuration without revealing any sensitive information about you and your computer. It only runs when you tell it to, not in the background, and therefore creates no performance penalties. It is Etrecheck, and is available here:

http://etrecheck.com/

Run it and, when its results display, select "Report" from the left-hand pane (scroll down), then click Etrecheck's "Share Report" icon followed by "Copy Report" from the resulting dropdown. Paste the entire report into a response to your own thread here. It will often allow us to quickly identify or eliminate software as the problem.

Hardware: You can run Apple Hardware Test (AHT) to see if a fan or fan sensor is not working. Please see:

How to use Apple Hardware Test on your Mac - Apple Support

That model is borderline as to whether AHT is built-in or requires the install disks. Please read all the options just in case. If AHT returns any cryptic error codes, post them here and usually we can narrow down what they mean.

Monitor temps: Several simple utilities can measure temps at critical areas. Search the mac App store with the string, "monitor temps."

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Answer 2

JohnLR Author

Level 1

8 points

May 28, 2018 6:33 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks for your very generous and polite response. Really helpful as this is my first time on the forums. From my perspective, the fact the machine is reasonably old makes no difference to what should be it's long term reliability. I am old fashioned enough to think all computer manufacturers should be making durable long-lasting machines, as we all know the planet is not going to last if we keep going with mass planned built-in obsolescence. FYI I thought I had given you the model number and the OS makes no difference to the built-in overheating issue.

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Answer 3

May 29, 2018 8:47 PM in response to Allan Jones

Hi Alan,

Katie here who is the staff of John's. Here is the report for my mac.

EtreCheck version: 4.3.1 (4D024)

Report generated: 2018-05-30 14:29:22

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 5:22

Performance: Below Average

Problem: Other problem

Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

Time Machine backup out-of-date - The last Time Machine backup is over 10 days old.

Adware - Adware detected.

Minor Issues:

These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems.

Apps crashing - There have been numerous app crashes.

Apps with heavy CPU usage - There have been numerous cases of apps with heavy CPU usage.

Clean up - There are orphan files that could be removed.

Unsigned files - There is unsigned software installed. They appear to be legitimate but should be reviewed.

Low performance - EtreCheck report took over 5 minutes to run. This is unusual.

32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps that may have problems in the future.

Hardware Information:

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)

iMac Model: iMac12,2

1 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-2500S) CPU: 4-core

8 GB RAM - Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

BANK 1/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

BANK 0/DIMM1 - 2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

BANK 1/DIMM1 - 2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

Video Information:

AMD Radeon HD 6770M - VRAM: 512 MB

iMac 1920 x 1080

Drives:

disk0 - ST31000528AS 1.00 TB (Mechanical)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 - K***e (Journaled HFS+) 999.21 GB

disk0s3 - Recovery HD [Recovery] 650 MB

disk1 - Western Digital My Book 1.00 TB

External USB 480 Mbit/s

disk1s1 - EFI [EFI] 210 MB

disk1s2 - B*******h (Journaled HFS+) 999.86 GB

disk2 - Other World Computing 1.00 TB

External FireWire

disk2s1 [Partition Map] 32 KB

disk2s3 - G******h (HFS+) 1.00 TB

Mounted Volumes:

disk0s2 - K***e 999.21 GB (683.11 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /

disk1s2 - B*******h 999.86 GB (355.96 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /Volumes/B*******h

disk2s3 - G******h 1.00 TB (189.21 GB free)

HFS+

Mount point: /Volumes/G******h

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet

One IPv4 address

Interface fw0: FireWire

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n

One IPv4 address

Interface en5: iPhone

Interface en4: Bluetooth PAN

Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

System Software:

macOS Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2555)

Time since boot: About 5 hours

System Load: 1.55 (1 min ago) 1.45 (5 min ago) 1.33 (15 min ago)

Security:

System	Status
Gatekeeper	Mac App Store and identified developers
System Integrity Protection	Enabled

Adware:

Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.spigot.ApplicationManager.plist

Reason: Adware name match

Executable: /Users/***/Library/Application Support/Spigot/ApplicationManager --protect

Unsigned Files:

Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.ARM.***.plist

Executable: /Applications/Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro/Adobe Acrobat Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Updater/Adobe Acrobat Updater Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Acrobat Updater Helper

Launchd: /Library/LaunchAgents/com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist

Executable: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Resources/Java Updater.app/Contents/MacOS/Java Updater -bgcheck