20" iMac G5 in low stock
Leads me to think that there are problems with the casing. I'm beginning to think that the iMac G5 is Apple's 21st Century Apple III.
For those that don't understand what this means I'll give you the synapse.
Young Steve Jobs decides on the external casing before the internal hardware is finished for the new Apple III. Engineers then have to make the internal conform to the externals. Excessive heat causes chips to expand band become unseated. The Apple III flops.
Fast forward 20 years.
Has Jobs decided on the iMac G5 case before the internals were finalized again? Reports of heat related shutdows and funny smells abound. My thoughts on the subject are if this is true then SJ hasn't grown in 20 years and it leads me to doubt his ability to truly get Apple to the next level. Harsh? Yes but true in many ways.
For those that don't understand what this means I'll give you the synapse.
Young Steve Jobs decides on the external casing before the internal hardware is finished for the new Apple III. Engineers then have to make the internal conform to the externals. Excessive heat causes chips to expand band become unseated. The Apple III flops.
Fast forward 20 years.
Has Jobs decided on the iMac G5 case before the internals were finalized again? Reports of heat related shutdows and funny smells abound. My thoughts on the subject are if this is true then SJ hasn't grown in 20 years and it leads me to doubt his ability to truly get Apple to the next level. Harsh? Yes but true in many ways.
Comments
Originally posted by hmurchison
Leads me to think that there are problems with the casing. I'm beginning to think that the iMac G5 is Apple's 21st Century Apple III.
For those that don't understand what this means I'll give you the synapse.
Young Steve Jobs decides on the external casing before the internal hardware is finished for the new Apple III. Engineers then have to make the internal conform to the externals. Excessive heat causes chips to expand band become unseated. The Apple III flops.
Fast forward 20 years.
Has Jobs decided on the iMac G5 case before the internals were finalized again? Reports of heat related shutdows and funny smells abound. My thoughts on the subject are if this is true then SJ hasn't grown in 20 years and it leads me to doubt his ability to truly get Apple to the next level. Harsh? Yes but true in many ways.
New iMac has lots of problems, i would say it could be the next apple 3 we will have to see. Putting the transformer in the display was......stupid. seems that Fx5200 has had all kinds of issues and so has the noisy fans,bad powersupplies, swelling capacitors etc, plus made in China. Apple will get it worked out and may have allready but a machine is a some of its parts and if they are getting shoddy Chineese workmanship........ Made in China has allways ment cheap crap for me. My Powermac Quicksilver was made in Kalifornia.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yup....the iMac G5 is a prime candidate for a lower TDP processor and a cool running HD is a must. They'll get the problems worked out with better components but I freakin' wish Jobs would err on the side of caution a bit more.
i thought the 20 incher was doing okay but the 17 incher was the main culprit because of cramming lots of stuff and heat into a smaller space.
overall though yeah some good points about iMac g5, and i think jobs just got sick of trying to deal with the stupid hot and slow g5 crap all these years
I think the problems, such as they are, are magnified by the echo effect of the Net. A few reports get repeated over and over, usually by the same people posting their rants in every thread. I certainly don't see as many complaints about the iMacs as there were about white spots on PowerBook displays, or chipping paint for that matter.
The capacitor issue isn't confined to the iMac or even to Apple. Many manufacturers got hold of runs of bad capacitors. There are whole Web sites devoted to the issue on the PC side.
Originally posted by BrunoBruin
Are iMacs in low stock?
I think the problems, such as they are, are magnified by the echo effect of the Net. A few reports get repeated over and over, usually by the same people posting their rants in every thread. I certainly don't see as many complaints about the iMacs as there were about white spots on PowerBook displays, or chipping paint for that matter.
The capacitor issue isn't confined to the iMac or even to Apple. Many manufacturers got hold of runs of bad capacitors. There are whole Web sites devoted to the issue on the PC side.
yeah. i think way overblown now. i am writing this on my cousin-in-law's iMac g5 17", and it is nothing short of stellar. and this is a revA with nVidia. the lcd screen is beatiful and really nice and wide 17", great viewing angle, brightness, contrast.
slight whirring and clicking (the usual for a 7200rpm drive) noise if i put my ear right up to the iMac, anyway, if you live near the equator, fan noise is nothing, because you either have air-conditioning or big ass ceiling fans making much more noise than the iMac g5.
edit:
definitely nothing compared to the MDD or quicksilver g4s
i agree that the midplane and replacement fan and high-pitch noise and all this stuff is a pain in the ass, but i think apple has done a great job for a big hot chip like the g5.
also, CPU speed settings drive the fans hard, so i can understand that annoyance....
20" should be better than the 17",
AND
with the move to intel, there's gonna be a great new era.
awesome machine. i'm gonna take it home with me... but my cousin will proll kill me
Originally posted by sunilraman
overall though yeah some good points about iMac g5, and i think jobs just got sick of trying to deal with the stupid hot and slow g5 crap all these years
Slow G5 crap? Perhaps the summer heat makes you feel worse than those poor G5s
Originally posted by PB
Slow G5 crap? Perhaps the summer heat makes you feel worse than those poor G5s
eh? yeah not sure why i called it slow
it must be he heat out hear near the equator
nah it's pretty responsive. 1gb, tiger 10.4.1+, rev B imac g5 2.0 with the fixed SATA 7200rpm bus thingy issue, sweet mate.
does get pretty hot though, i stand by that. maybe rev C imac g5 will be fully aluminiumised? better heat dissipation than plastic i imagine??
but more of a niggle... because otherwise iMac g5 20" is really nice ... whoa... 76 degrees celcius on CPU temp.
edit: temperature monitor shows some high level of ramping up and down of CPU temperature.
*sigh* i'm confused now
i think apple have done the best they can with a very HOT and tough to work with CPU. it is fast and great, but HOT.
Originally posted by Dave Marsh
We have a 20" G5 iMac and it's fine here in California. The Mac's fans in the new G5s are computer controlled and rev up and down depending on load and temperature. When they do rev up, it's a pleasant whirring sound, and in no way disruptive.
cool. i've used temperature monitor to look at CPU temps, and seeing the graphs, it does a pretty good job of ramping the CPU temp down pretty quick once it hits 70+deg celcius
the iMac g5 17" rev A fan revving can be annoying to some, i think 20" g5 iMac revB is very likely to have very low % of fan annoyance as you have mentioned.
Originally posted by DHagan4755
We have two Rev. A 1.6GHz iMac G5s at work... The innards are VERY toasty. The plate over the processor is barely touchable without immediate discomfort. It makes one wonder what the longevity of these computers is.
Well, this is a first generation machine. Can anyone tell how a second generation iMac compares to this one? Not that the generation will make magically a difference, just to know.
Those iMac G3s got pretty hot too on the top plastic venting grille.
And I don't remember them as machines with high failure rate.
Anyway, do we have any official/exact measure of the failure rate of the G5 iMac per generation? For example this survey is from last year, before the introduction of the G5 iMac, so the very high quality rating that Apple gets is not surprising.
So far I don't have any bulging capacitors and my iMac is from probably the first batch made as I picked it up on 20 Sep 2004.
The fans aren't loud, but one fan in particular makes an irritating whiny noise. It isn't loud but if the iMac is the only thing in the room making noise, the whine is headache-inducing. So the whole whisper quiet thing isn't true in my case.
Other than these issues, the iMac has performed fine for me. As long as I play music or have the TV on or something in the room making noise, the irritating fan noise is a non-issue for me. The incredibly high CPU temp and the computer putting itself to sleep was annoying though. I was right in the middle of getting email and stuff so it took a little work to get everything back in sync.
Originally posted by PBG4 Dude
I have a Rev A 20" iMac. During the last heat snap we got here I didn't turn on the AC and used the iMac. It put itself to sleep a few times as the CPU temp approached 90C.
Wow, this is toasty! I was thinking that the iMacs do shutdown themselves at around 85C. What was the room temperature? Did you notice more noise than usual (when the room temperature is lower)?
Originally posted by PB
Wow, this is toasty! I was thinking that the iMacs do shutdown themselves at around 85C. What was the room temperature? Did you notice more noise than usual (when the room temperature is lower)?
Oddly enough, I expected the fans to come on full blast by this point, but they did not. They were running faster than usual, but not nearly as fast as they do when booting into the open firmware, or any OS that doesn't actively control the fans. In other words I think the fans should've been running faster but were held back by OS X.
Originally posted by PBG4 Dude
In other words I think the fans should've been running faster but were held back by OS X.
Do you remember at what room temperature this happened?
Originally posted by PB
Do you remember at what room temperature this happened?
Not exactly but I guess the room would've been around 26 - 29C.
Originally posted by aplnub
I think most of us with great working 1st gen. G5 iMacs are afriad to comment without knocking on all the wood in the Northern Hemisphere.
heh
well, keep on rockin with your revA iMacs