G5 iMac making popping noise

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have had my G5 iMac (w/iSight) since mid-November, and basically since the day I got it, I have occasionally heard a "popping" sound coming from the upper left-hand side. It sounds sort of like a speaker popping, but I have ruled out speakers as the cause, since the noise persisted after I disconnected my external speakers and muted the internal ones. Not to mention, of course, that the noise is coming from a location nowhere near the speakers.



The noise is most frequent after starting up the machine, waking it up from sleep, or when merely waking up the display. When I turned it on after it had been off for only a few hours, it made the noise about 30 times in 30 minutes. It was very, very distracting.



However, the noise never goes away entirely. Even after being on for hours, I still hear the noise every 15-30 minutes, and even occasionally when the display is put to sleep. I have never heard it when the entire machine is asleep, however.



I should note that I have had absolutely no other problems with this machine, and other than being a massive distraction, the noise does not appear to cause any other problems. Also, running the hardware test on the machine turned up nothing.



The area the noise comes from corresponds to where the hard drive and power supply are located.... any guesses about what's going on?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    The popping noise could be coming from capacitors inside the power supply. All the occasions that cause an increase in the popping noise are also times when the power supply has an increase in current to supply to the computer.



    If it was my machine, I would get the power supply replaced. (Assuming that resetting PRAM and the SMU didn't make the noise go away)
  • Reply 2 of 2
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. H

    If it was my machine, I would get the power supply replaced. (Assuming that resetting PRAM and the SMU didn't make the noise go away)



    Yeah, and I tried both those things already and they did nothing, so that sounds reasonable.
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