My friend Toby (check out his audio work, it’s great) recently bought a new iMac for his audio work (he and his wife are expecting a baby so he couldn’t splash out on a tower) . The problem is, it’s pretty processor intensive and it makes the fan whine, which isn’t great if you’re working with audio. But it was the online Apple support guy that really took the biscuit.

Here’s the transcript, check out the guy just giving up in the end:

Agent: Okay Tobias

tobias:

i undertsnad the relationship of cpu load vs fan spin speed and also accept the trade off when using a mac designed in a small enclosure - ie the fans are smaller and spin faster anyway to make the same cooling of a larger slower fan like in a G5 tower, but its the higher pitched whine that kicks in and changes pitch, above the fan sound…i can live with the fan sound…i am happy to use the mac for a week and really test it all out and see how much it does my head in (dont get me wrong, i am very excited by this new iMac….) Have others commented on the hight pictched whining sound on top of the fan noise?

tobias:

i dont want to sound perdantic or anal…just seeing if this is normal.

Agent:

Tobias, dont worry i understaand the situation, people have had issues with fan but in those cases the fan noise was always present,

Agent:

To be honest

Agent:

when processor intensive applications are run then the fans are going to rotate at high speeds and there might be a whine noise, i apologise for the inconvinence

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