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How hot should an iMac DV (fanless) get?

Submitted by AG-Wolf on March 13, 2007 - 4:26pm. PowerPC Macs

Long story short, I've acquired a 400mhz Graphite iMac DV with DVDrom drive and 640 megs of ram... not a beast, but nothing to laugh at, at least. It's been cleaned up, resurrected from the carcass of a filthy iMac DV with horrible picture tube and 350mhz Blueberry iMac with dead video but a good CRT.

Now that it's up and running, I notice it gets pretty hot. I realise they're designed without a fan, so this is normal, but it's still hotter than I like. Gague Pro says the processor is running around 30c when taxed with a particular task, so it's not like it's really that bad; but I think the heat is what contributed to the cooked-on dirt and dust inside the case when it came into my posession... plus if it were running cooler, the analog board circuitry would still inherently last longer anyway.

Is there any way to cool these machines? Obviously I can get a large, low rpm fan and slap it onto the vents around the handle, but that's not very aesthetically pleasing.. Was there ever an attachment-fan sold that hooks onto the handle area or something, like the old add-on fan for the early macs:

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AG-Wolf's picture

[IMG]http://img265.imageshack

Submitted by AG-Wolf on March 13, 2007 - 4:27pm.

(bloody hell, I wish I could figure out how to link to images I've uploaded to AF itself... I don't understand the whole inline/node thing for the life of me)

» Main PC: Sempron 2Ghz 256k L2/768MB Ram/40,60,120Gb HD's/CDRW/DVD+-RW/WinXP SP2
» Main Mac: PowerMac 6500 inside Color Classic/G3 500Mhz 1MB L2/128Mb Ram/40Gb HD/OS 9.1/ATI Rage 128/OrangeLink USB-FireWire/CSII E-net/TV-FM Tuner

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Jon's picture

I've stuck a small low RPM 40

Submitted by Jon on March 13, 2007 - 6:22pm.

I've stuck a small low RPM 40MM fan down under the VGA port panel blowing up on an iMac before. I used one with a very quiet DBa rating, and ran it at 5v so it was quieter still. You don't need a lot of air flow, just something to force air movement before the iMc gets hot enoug to induce convection on it's own. I'll have to dig around my iMac pile and see about taking a picture. It had power from a molex HDD through-plug adapter, so as long as the iMac was on, it ran.

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

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Generally they run about 45-5

Submitted by drbob on March 14, 2007 - 4:14am.

Generally they run about 45-50°C

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Hawaii Cruiser's picture

My daughter's teacher told me

Submitted by Hawaii Cruiser on March 14, 2007 - 4:43am.

My daughter's teacher told me she was having problems with her iMac DV freezing up a lot of the time. It felt pretty warm. I came back the next day and installed Gauge Pro. She got the message when my eyes bugged out. 183 F (84 C)! Never seen any processor get that hot. She showed the school tech. They replaced it with a new IBM (!!) two days later. She thanked me. I had mixed feelings.

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Re: I've stuck a small low RPM 40

Submitted by hackintoshg4 on March 14, 2007 - 8:28am.
Jon wrote:
I've stuck a small low RPM 40MM fan down under the VGA port panel blowing up on an iMac before. I used one with a very quiet DBa rating, and ran it at 5v so it was quieter still. You don't need a lot of air flow, just something to force air movement before the iMc gets hot enoug to induce convection on it's own. I'll have to dig around my iMac pile and see about taking a picture. It had power from a molex HDD through-plug adapter, so as long as the iMac was on, it ran.
I've put fans near the VGA port as well. Good generally hidden spot that can pull cool air up into the machine. On one machine I did put a 120mm clear fan inside the machine by the handle, it worked pretty well and didn't look to bad as it was clear.

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