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iMac Intel 27" EMC 2309 (Late 2009, Core 2 Duo 3.06 or 3.33 GHz) ID iMac10,1, EMC 2374 (Late 2009, Core i5 2.66 GHz or Core i7 2.8 GHz) ID iMac11,1

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Does your Activity Monitor CPU usage add up to 100%?

I have returned three 27" i7 iMacs because Activity Monitor's %Idle: keeps changing from 48% to 98%, while the %User: and %System: often add up to less than 3%.

Most of the time, the total usage shown adds up to less than 55 %.

Where is the other 45% of the CPU that I paid for? It might be running in the background. These computers have been running way hotter than the iMacs I checked in the Apple Store.

Apple Care doesn't have a clue. They just declare the computer DOA and tell me to ship it back.

Any ideas?

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See what you have running in the background by hitting Force Quit, Command - Option - Escape. Your percent idle should be around 90% +.

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Every Computer that uses a processor has a process that keeps the CPU in idle, In Windows, this is known as the "System Idle Process" what tool are you using to monitor this? it might be accounting for the Idle Process, and when the CPU usage is 3%, the Idle Process will account for the Other 97% and keep the CPU from dropping the other processes, If your computer is counting the idle process with the other process and dropping it's own processes from the count, you might mess up the count. One program for measuring all processes is CheckUp, made by App4Mac, and it's free.

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