2011 i7 iMac optical drive fan speed

Can aynone confirm whether the deafult speed for the optical diive fan on 2011 i7 iMacs is 1150 RPM, i.e. 150 RPM faster than the 1000 RPM for 2009 / 2010 iMacs?

It is normal for the fans to run, they're there to cool down your machine by >>passing air over parts that heat up, they should be extremely quiet so you >>cannot hear them unless you have extremely sensitive hearing. 3500 RPM is >>extremely fast though so it indicates something else might be going on.
I am noticing the optical fan running quite high. And this is with normal usage. Web surfing, file manager lookups, nothing much else. However, I notice the optical fan speed climbing and getting louder. It will get up to approx. 5000rpms. This i can confirm because I am running hardware monitor and this is what is is showing.
So my question is this. Are the iMacs supposed to be relatively quiet for normal processing? When I say quiet, quiet so that you cannot hear the fans? I can understand a graphics intensive/watching movie causing them to get louder but other than that should they not be relatively noiseless?
Maybe some of you techies out there can reply with telling me what an iMac should be running at. (wrt fan speeds/temps). I would like to know how far off the norm my iMac is.
Thanks again and I look forward to your replies.
....Bruce
Message was edited by: BGmail

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Ambient                            16 degrees

Hello
at first check that you have no disk left in the drive.
According to Apple Support, reset SMC if the drive or the fan behavior seems not normal.
How to --> http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
If the drive produce an unusual series of noises after startup or system wake up from sleep, you may reset the optical drive as described below.
Insert a CD or DVD almost all the way into the drive. (until the drive want to start pulling in the disk)
On this point remove the disc.
Insert the disc fully into the optical disc drive.
Ceers - Lupunus

Hi I notice my IMAC Optical Drive fan has been staying on lately.

Yes, it is true.
At Idle with no apps other than safari my optical drive fan's RPMS are higher than usual. Is that normal?
My other fans are at their normal idle position, and yes I have Automatic selected in my Energy Savings settings.
I think it's becasue its been warmer lately in my room becasue of the summer.
BUt wouldn't all the fans increase their speed?
THanks

Hi poops-
The optical drive is at the top and heat rises and you did mention that it has been warm.
What happens if you shut it down and leave it to cool down for 30 minutes or so and then power back up?
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I just want to share my experience with my rather new Imac
I bought this Imac last April and I had the fans roaring after 2 weeks of light usage. I followed instructions like resetting the SMC, unplugging the imac and restarted.
However, I started installing other software like Paragon NTFS, VLC, Firefox and also Istat nano. This happened on a more regular basis and istat nano was showing up fairly normal temperatures - an average of 50° C and I had the CPU fan at 3800 and the Optical drive fan at 4200 rpms. According to apple support, at this temperature fans should be running at factory level or a bit more. Even when I stop all activity, the fans keep up and does not stop even after a couple of hours of inactivity on the imac. Apple support recommended that I reinstall macos on a new partition and run tests and during the tests, the only software I installed was istat nano and still got the fans going with the same result - required a shutdown to bring fans at normal levels and yet average temperatures were around 50 - 55 °C.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13895
Welcome to Apple Support Communities!
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Message was edited by: Bilbo Bowman

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Message was edited by: myhighway

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2011 i7 iMac optical drive fan speed

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