Knock, knock, knocking on Apple’s door…
Every now and then something comes along that doesn’t bother some people but drives you nuts. That’s the way it is with the fan noise from my Mirrored Door Drive PowerMac. Most of the time, the machine is fairly quiet, much better than the first models of the MDD that were released. But there is a certain mid-range of rpm’s where the fan in my machine starts knocking, sounding like the muffled walk of an old horse sauntering down the street or the sound of loose rails as a train rolls over. It is a subtle knock a knock a knock; and it steals my attention like a college girl flashing her breasts. No matter how much I try to ignore it, I can’t.
I talked to Apple Care about it the other day. In true Apple fashion, the first thing the tech did was to ask me if I had the optional Apple Care coverage even though the machine was still under warranty. I told him I wasn’t interested in that right now. I described the problem to him and mentioned it was making the noise right then, so he asked me to hold the phone down so he could hear it. I thought that was probably pretty useless; and it turned out to be just that, not only because of poor audio on the phone but also because the fan shifted rpm just enough to shift it out of the range where it makes the noise. The tech told me I was going to have to take the computer to a repair station and let them listen to the noise before he could do anything. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me. I would much have preferred to have paid for a new fan and been done with it. Buying a fan was never offered as an option. Sure he wasn’t willing to do anything about this problem, I thanked him and hung up.
That made me “one for two” with Apple Tech Support. I took the fan out and examined it but could find nothing obvious. In the hope the noise might be from the fan hitting the case, I put some sound absorbing material underneath the fan and behind it, but had to remove the material behind the fan because it made normal operation louder. At first I thought that bottom material might have done the trick; but after running for about ten minutes, the knock returned. I don’t mind the smooth wind-tunnel sound of the fans in my Quicksilver PowerMac as much as the knock in the MDD. Now, I’m in a quandary about what to do about it.
If this was a PC, I’d simply study the fans out there (and that is something I’ve done) and then replace the fan with a better one. But, in true Apple fashion, the Mac uses two pin connectors when PC fans use 3 or 4. I may try a 4 pin fan I believe would work, anyway. Other people have successfully replaced their fans (See G4noise.com and XLR8yourmac.), so I know you can get it to work.
Apple’s living up to the terms of their tech support, but they did nothing to make me feel better about their sometimes amazing lack of quality control (first MDD fans, OS 10.2.8 update). Nor did they really help my relationship with them. It’s kind of ridiculous not to send me a fan since it’s on the list of “customer installable parts” to avoid the downtime at a shop and the expense the shop would bill Apple for. I haven’t bought a PowerMac yet that didn’t have some kind of problem, even if it was minor. That’s one of the reasons why, unless I have just have money to burn, I won’t chunk down $3000 for a top of the line model again. If I know I’m going to have something to fix anyway, it makes sense to wait until the prices fall.
I talked to Apple Care about it the other day. In true Apple fashion, the first thing the tech did was to ask me if I had the optional Apple Care coverage even though the machine was still under warranty. I told him I wasn’t interested in that right now. I described the problem to him and mentioned it was making the noise right then, so he asked me to hold the phone down so he could hear it. I thought that was probably pretty useless; and it turned out to be just that, not only because of poor audio on the phone but also because the fan shifted rpm just enough to shift it out of the range where it makes the noise. The tech told me I was going to have to take the computer to a repair station and let them listen to the noise before he could do anything. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me. I would much have preferred to have paid for a new fan and been done with it. Buying a fan was never offered as an option. Sure he wasn’t willing to do anything about this problem, I thanked him and hung up.
That made me “one for two” with Apple Tech Support. I took the fan out and examined it but could find nothing obvious. In the hope the noise might be from the fan hitting the case, I put some sound absorbing material underneath the fan and behind it, but had to remove the material behind the fan because it made normal operation louder. At first I thought that bottom material might have done the trick; but after running for about ten minutes, the knock returned. I don’t mind the smooth wind-tunnel sound of the fans in my Quicksilver PowerMac as much as the knock in the MDD. Now, I’m in a quandary about what to do about it.
If this was a PC, I’d simply study the fans out there (and that is something I’ve done) and then replace the fan with a better one. But, in true Apple fashion, the Mac uses two pin connectors when PC fans use 3 or 4. I may try a 4 pin fan I believe would work, anyway. Other people have successfully replaced their fans (See G4noise.com and XLR8yourmac.), so I know you can get it to work.
Apple’s living up to the terms of their tech support, but they did nothing to make me feel better about their sometimes amazing lack of quality control (first MDD fans, OS 10.2.8 update). Nor did they really help my relationship with them. It’s kind of ridiculous not to send me a fan since it’s on the list of “customer installable parts” to avoid the downtime at a shop and the expense the shop would bill Apple for. I haven’t bought a PowerMac yet that didn’t have some kind of problem, even if it was minor. That’s one of the reasons why, unless I have just have money to burn, I won’t chunk down $3000 for a top of the line model again. If I know I’m going to have something to fix anyway, it makes sense to wait until the prices fall.
posted by Andy Foster at
8:43 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home