I have an old imac DV400. It used to stall in hot weather (no fan, no noise, no processing!), now it crashes after 5 minutes use which I am almost certain is due to overheating. Anyone have similar symptoms and managed to solve it?
I had a heatsink clog up with dust before. Really put a damper on it’s cooling ability. Open it up and check for dust.
assuming your comfertable with opeing it up of course.
thanks, will try when I get home next week. Should have thought about dust
That is a fairly uncommon problem with that model. Also check how well the RAM chip(s) is seated. Perhaps the heat generated shortly after startup is causing the RAM to dislodge. Or, the RAM chip is just bad and needs replacement.
The original Macs had no fan, and were very hard to open unless you had special tools - you could hurt yourself badly if you did not know what you were doing in there. There was virtually no optional stuff you could add internally, including RAM. They were called “toaster Macs” because (a) they were like appliances in that they were what they were, no user modifiable parts inside, and (b) HOT! HOT!
There were three very workable approaches to cooling them.
- Add an internal fan. This was difficult for reasons stated above. Worked quite well, though.
- Add an extenal fan. Also worked well. Just blow air in a vent and it WILL come out another. There were various “backpack” designs that included surge protectors and such. However, just blowing air on or over the case did the trick via Venturi effect…
- Add a “top hat” made of paper to the top of the device. This increased the height of the column of warmed air and increased the “draw” surprisingly. A nice top hot dropped the temperature by 40 degrees f.
And of course gcarroll means iMacs. 