Mac Pro Smell

No matter what it is, Apple had better find out and fix it or they're liable to have a serious class-action lawsuit on their hands. Any odor that strong and that objectionable has got to be detrimental to health and lung functioning. What is it with dangerous Chinese products anyway?

Hopefully they'll figure it out and fix it before the new MacPros come out!

Just bought an 8core Mac pro and had the same smell. I googled MAC PRO SMELL and found this forum. I called apple care and told them I knew about the issue and I was one of the ones who got a smelly mac pro also. I also had a optical drive sound like it had a tick in it compared to the other drive. The smell was bad and was some type of chemical smell. I took of the side and it was clearly coming from the Ram area and NOT the power supply. It was pretty bad and gave me a headache for a few days.

They immediately set me up as a DOA and sent me a fed ex lable via e-mail within 24 hours to send the whole sytem back. I had to back up about 250 GB of video work but I had an extra HD not being used so it was no problem.

I also had been keeping in touch with my Apple store sales lady who was amazing to work with. She felt so bad that she is sending me an Ipod Nano next day air!

I will be getting my new machine soon and pray it will not be so smelly with 2 working optical drives. I also took note of the serial numbers so they don't send me back the same unit.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Hi there, I've had a Mac Pro for a few months now, sometimes needs to stay on during the weekend. On Monday mornings it gets very very stinky and the smell seems to affect your breathing. Obviously ome chemical is being evaporated and the health consequences of this can be very serious.

Has anyone tried to have a canary, yes the pet bird, in a cage near the Mac Pro. Experiments using Dupont's teflon coated pans left many dead canaries behind as the fumes where lethal for them. Dupont's was sued in 2005 by it's own employees!

I will be up for taking this further...

YES! I recently have had a bird die "mysteriously" which was caged near my MacPro which has had the terrible smell for months. The vet said it was likely he inhaled something toxic!!! I was afraid it might be the Mac but didn't know how to prove it and now reading this forum I'm convinced it is what killed my bird.

I've had the unit in for repairs 3 times already for the smell and for not powering up with no resolve. They suggested I get a bigger UPS for $500 and I did and now it still suddenly will not power up again. They've replaced the power supply and the logic board so far, neither of which took away the smell. This smell is a horrible odor, like a skunk smell. I'm taking it back in today and will post any updates.

If you get another stinky Mac, get another bird and then document the issue. I hope this is not going to be a big deal like sabotage or something. It's bad enough trying to work around basic software and hardware issues let alone toxins coming from your Mac Pro. Anyone know what the chemical used is? Maybe someone needs to do an investigation. Im sure Apple would never do anthing like this on purpose but working with people all over the world suppying parts and making these in different places makes for the potential of this problem.

Apple care knows about this! When I spoke with Apple care about some other things, I asked, What are your superiors telling to you do with smelly Mac problems?" She said they are being told to DOA them and ship a replacement. This seems to me that they want this problem over ASPA. I would assume it would be very dangerous for Apple to have this problem both financially and reputaition wise.


I will report back when my new one comes in tomorrow! 🙂

Got my new Mac Pro replacement. Came with Leopard. Both optical drives work & sound great. It's a new serial number so I did not get the same machine. Transfered Apple care to new machine also. And it's assembled in the USA. Some parts may be from elseware.

This one has a smell from the back powersuply like the last one but different smell and not so strong. Called Apple care and he said they all have a new smell at first and it should go away in a few days maybe 1 week. Said to call back if it doesnt resolve in a week. He noted my account.

I think this will be the case. It's not that bad and doesn't seem to give me a headache (yet). Everything else seems fine. I will update to Leopard 10.5.1 soon and set up everything.

Good luck to all other smelly Mac Pro users!

Hi all,
I bought a MacPro 4Core in September. It has always smelled a lot. I had the machine running with all CPUs full power for several weeks, hoping this odor came from the "new" odor. Then in mid-november it took it to service. They have changed the power supply unit, the heatsinks and the thermal paste. It smells as bad as before, and I cannot use this machine. What should we do? Hey, Apple come on ! This is a 6000 Euros machine, I don't want to have it in my office just for design and have to ask my boss to buy me the cheaspest PC. Please tell us how to fix the issue.

I would ask again, and take it up with Customer Service as well as AppleCare.

A good air purifier can remove a lot of airborne particles and smell and help, especially in the winter when windows are closed. I have a 700 sq ft unit for general area and a 2nd smaller unit for office (designed for rooms up to 200 sq ft).

Someone else said theirs had excessive amount of thermal compound.

Does it help to force the fans to maintain 1000 rpm or higher (smcFanControl 2.1)?

Now a couple days have gone by and the smell is 99% gone. I did the following:
Opened a window and ran the MO 24/7 for a few days. I also ran a program that loads all cores and a program that monitors temerature. All free and found in one of these posts. I think the one is called systemload. The controlls are very silly as it seem all you need to do is to start the program and slide a lever for 100% load. There is another button that looks like it is to start it but I have no idea. I also used another program to measure the system load.
I ran it like that full tilt for 5-10 hrs at a time. It apears to me that it burned off any chemicals. Now it just smells like a hot tv or hot computer. I conside this problem over! "

I don't need no stinkin Mac!" Hahaha!
(What movie is that from again?)

No it doesnot help to force the fans to maintain 1000 rpm or higher. It just makes the smell circulating more in the room. The thermal paste was changed one time already, and the smell is still here. Having the machine running with the 8 cores at 100% for weeks did not help.

Are all recent CTO MacPros smelling or have some people be lucky to have a normal one ?

Please see this thread. The fix has been successful for many, both on and off of this board.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6093368#6093368

Good Luck!

Hmm. I didn't notice any smell at all... but then again, I have my Mac Pro in a fairly large, well ventilated room.

Wow - it's not just me. My new 4 core puts out a kind of new car smell. But it's pretty subtle so I was not worried about it. Should I have the unit checked if it persists?