iBook G4's fan finally revs up

[huntsman]

Well, after nearly two months of virtual silence, the fan in my 12" iBook G4 finally made its presence known. Despite using the system for several hours each day, with room temperatures up to a very warm 30 degrees C, the fan had never increased to a speed that could be heard more than a metre a way in a very quiet room (indeed, you'd need to put your ear close to the keyboard to properly hear the soft air rushing sound).

But after about an hour of running the Folding@Home client for the first time, with a room temperature of 27 C, the fan suddenly revved up, much to my surprise. It could probably be described as about half as loud as the optical drive at full spin.

After about ten minutes, it still hadn't slowed, so I shut down Folding@Home. Within two minutes, it was back to virtual silence. The sudden relief this provided was a much needed reminder of the value of a quiet system design.

[aldo]

Yes, the outside room temperature makes very little difference to it inside. However, the hard drive and CPU get very hot with extended use which folding@home and such other clients do.

I would run it on my iBook but I doubt the fan is designed to run all the time so I just run it on my PCs (at least they use linux ;))

[slipper]

huh, theres a fan in my ibook? i just stuck it to my ear and couldnt hear any fan running.....???

[OutThere]

Crank up an FPS at full graphics for about a half an hour and you can definitley hear the fan crank. Its a good thing though, my proc regularily gets up to 168º F (75.5º C), which I consider pretty hot. :D

[Macette]

we had a couple of 40 degree (celcius.. that's about 100 farenheit) days in melbourne last week, and really got to know about my G5 fans, i can tell you. and everyone i know with old iMacs just had to turn them off. they kept shutting down.

[crazzyeddie]

You guys are so lucky, my 1ghz Titanium has the fan on while its just sitting there, and the fans are loud as a hell.