I've owned a 2009 27" iMac since purchase shortly at launch and while I use my use my watercooled X79 build more than the Mac (and my wife uses her Z87 build more than it as well) we both agree that the iMac has been, in aggregate, the single most well built, long-lived and robust PC we've ever owned. 5+ years in, it continues to run without skipping a beat.
Question for Aluminum iMac owners: as these computers age, what preventative tips/tricks/techniques can be practiced to maximize life as much as possible? My concern is of course for non-servicable parts: power supply, motherboard/GPU, etc... the things that, when they go, may spell doom for the computer as a whole.
I've downloaded a fan speed controller and tend to run the fan speed rather high when doing anything that taxes the CPU/GPU, to keep things cool. I can see it makes as much as a 20C difference vs. the stock setting. I do try to blow out dust but TBH I've almost never seen dust accumulate at inlets or outlets as they do on other PCs I've owned. (Not sure why.) I recently upgraded the unit to 4x8GB=32GB and it's running rather smoothly with a lot less burden on the HDD, but I'm still nervous about that HD (a 1TB Seagate, I think, that had a replacement/recall at some point that I never took advantage of) that to date shows no problems but I'm not running any particular monitoring tools on the iMac as I run HDSentinal on the PCs and home server. (Should I be?)
Basically, I'm open to any routine or passive preventative maintenance to keep this PC "purring" as long as I can. It's not lost on me that such things are important to maximize the life of these rather expensive AIOs, and that past a certain age, a GPU or mainboard failure = effective total loss of a $3,000 computer.
Question for Aluminum iMac owners: as these computers age, what preventative tips/tricks/techniques can be practiced to maximize life as much as possible? My concern is of course for non-servicable parts: power supply, motherboard/GPU, etc... the things that, when they go, may spell doom for the computer as a whole.
I've downloaded a fan speed controller and tend to run the fan speed rather high when doing anything that taxes the CPU/GPU, to keep things cool. I can see it makes as much as a 20C difference vs. the stock setting. I do try to blow out dust but TBH I've almost never seen dust accumulate at inlets or outlets as they do on other PCs I've owned. (Not sure why.) I recently upgraded the unit to 4x8GB=32GB and it's running rather smoothly with a lot less burden on the HDD, but I'm still nervous about that HD (a 1TB Seagate, I think, that had a replacement/recall at some point that I never took advantage of) that to date shows no problems but I'm not running any particular monitoring tools on the iMac as I run HDSentinal on the PCs and home server. (Should I be?)
Basically, I'm open to any routine or passive preventative maintenance to keep this PC "purring" as long as I can. It's not lost on me that such things are important to maximize the life of these rather expensive AIOs, and that past a certain age, a GPU or mainboard failure = effective total loss of a $3,000 computer.