Chosen Solution
Hey there. I have rotated my iMac to portrait with the media slots at the top. Does anyone think I will have thermal issues with it? Thanks
While using it this way for a few minutes or so won’t hurt your system overtime it will degrade the parts as they won’t get the needed cooling the system was expecting when in its proper position. I too like to see things in portrait often. I would just get a nice external display which is designed to rotate into portrait mode, thats what I did! Here’s one! HP LA2205WG LCD Monitor
So, I did some testing. I used the “Hardware Monitor” app to compare temperature readings between the vertical (portrait) and horizontal (landscape) screen orientations / rotation. Then I run 3 consecutive tests with CineBench R20. Each cycle takes 10 minutes on my computer so each orientation was tested for about 30 minutes at full CPU load. Then I took a screengrab of the sensor overview window of the “Hardware Monitor”. I did the same for both orientations. I ran the horizontal first, then the vertical outing the imac to sleep for a couple of minutes to change the orientation. Note that the ambient air temperature is higher on the vertical orientation. I also include a screen grab of the Intel Power Gadget as it was right as the 3rd test cycle was ending at the vertical orientation. I believe this app is showing a more accurate reading for CPU temp. Note that while the hardware monitor app is old and discontinued, it and my iMac are of the same era.
You shouldn’t have any issues. The iMac pulls air from the back and pushes it out the back. The air isn’t drawn in or pushed out the sides, so the portrait orientation shouldn’t impact anything.
