Around here, there are two apps for controlling your fans. One is smcFanControl, which is what most people use. It's a simple app that adjusts the base speed to your fans. You can set presets that you can pick off a menu to set your fans to a particular speed (so you can have different settings for different speeds). If you aren't too familiar with computer cooling, you'll probably like this one. It's straightforward, and doesn't mess with anything or spawn background processes. But you need to tell it to adjust speeds.
The other one is FanControl 1.2, or just FanControl. This one gets a bad rap, mostly from people who didn't remove it properly and couldn't get their machines to work right afterward (since the daemon left by FanControl was never removed. It's not hard to get rid of, you just grab it out of /Library and trashcan it, but they never did this). This app is a little more confusing, and it DOES generate a background process. If you are willing to figure it out, it is WAY more powerful, however. If you are like me, and you came from Windows and LOVED tying down cables to drop your graphics card temp 2 degrees, and setting all your custom fans in SpeedFan, you're gonna love this one.
smcFanControl really needs no guide on how to use it. It's fairly straightfoward. FanControl is too if you are used to these things. If you come from Windows and have set up apps like RivaTuner and Speedfan, you can probably figure it out just by looking at the UI, but if you'd like to learn, I made this for you.
WARNING: This guide assumes you have a working knowledge of Mac OS X and a basic idea of what computer cooling is all about. I am not responsible for whatever damage to your machine comes from whatever idiot fan ramp you come up with, although honestly on my machine it doesn't appear to let you set one as laid back as the default, so your fans are going nowhere but up (unless you can get your CPU under 30C)
Before we get started, you will need some things first. Namely, a hardware monitor. Setting fan ramps without actually being able to see temps and fan speeds is both dangerous and kind of useless. I recommend the iStat series from iSlayer. I prefer the menubar version, since it provides the most info, but suit yourself. Anyway, on to FanControl
When you first download the app, you will run it's installer from the dmg. Once you do, it will start working immediately, and make this in your System Prefs:
![Picture3.png]()
Open it and.....
![Picture4.png]()
We see 3 sliders. The first one is base speed. This is the speed your fans will run at when under the Lower Threshold temp. I have mine set to the Apple default at 2000rpm, because I really can't hear my fans at that setting anyway, and see no reason to set them lower.
The second is the Lower Threshold. This temperature is the level your fans will begin to increase over the base threshold. Set this to the temp you start feeling nervous at.
The third one is the Upper Threshold. This is the point your fans reach full power. As your temp floats between these two points, your fans will gradually increase in speed, depending on the point between the two thresholds you are at.
As you can see, I have mine set to start ramping up at 52C, since that is the temp I usually don't reach while idling on the 9400. The idea here is to make the fans speed up only when the machine is under load, or using the 9600. The max is set to 75, since that is the point I start getting uncomfortable with having my hardware that hot (hey, set it to whatever makes YOU paranoid. It's your fans).
If you are going to set the base speed lower, you may want to set a much lower "Lower Threshold" as well, since this will allow your system to run the fans around 2000rpm normally, but slow down more if it is a cold room.
Ideally, you want the temp and fan speed to stabilize, so your fans do not annoyingly "pump" all the time. If your Lower Threshold is too high, the increase in the fan speed will suddenly drop the temp, leading to a biziarre bouncing of the fan speed. Too narrow of a gap between the Upper and Lower Thresholds can also cause the fan speed to be unable to find a "sweet spot" and stabilize with the heat output of the machine.
One more thing: This app does not change speeds very fast, and gives no option to adjust the polling interval (rate at which it checks temps) or the amount it adjust the fan by. So fast temp swings caused by starting or exiting a CPU heavy process will mean the fan takes a bit to adjust to the new envirnoment. It will go, just let it do its thing.
If setting all this up sounds like fun to you, grab this app and go for it. Understand, however, that there is a fair bit of trial and error involved with this thing. If you don't want to do that, try smcFanControl instead.
smcFanControl
FanControl
The other one is FanControl 1.2, or just FanControl. This one gets a bad rap, mostly from people who didn't remove it properly and couldn't get their machines to work right afterward (since the daemon left by FanControl was never removed. It's not hard to get rid of, you just grab it out of /Library and trashcan it, but they never did this). This app is a little more confusing, and it DOES generate a background process. If you are willing to figure it out, it is WAY more powerful, however. If you are like me, and you came from Windows and LOVED tying down cables to drop your graphics card temp 2 degrees, and setting all your custom fans in SpeedFan, you're gonna love this one.
smcFanControl really needs no guide on how to use it. It's fairly straightfoward. FanControl is too if you are used to these things. If you come from Windows and have set up apps like RivaTuner and Speedfan, you can probably figure it out just by looking at the UI, but if you'd like to learn, I made this for you.
WARNING: This guide assumes you have a working knowledge of Mac OS X and a basic idea of what computer cooling is all about. I am not responsible for whatever damage to your machine comes from whatever idiot fan ramp you come up with, although honestly on my machine it doesn't appear to let you set one as laid back as the default, so your fans are going nowhere but up (unless you can get your CPU under 30C)
Before we get started, you will need some things first. Namely, a hardware monitor. Setting fan ramps without actually being able to see temps and fan speeds is both dangerous and kind of useless. I recommend the iStat series from iSlayer. I prefer the menubar version, since it provides the most info, but suit yourself. Anyway, on to FanControl
When you first download the app, you will run it's installer from the dmg. Once you do, it will start working immediately, and make this in your System Prefs:
Open it and.....
We see 3 sliders. The first one is base speed. This is the speed your fans will run at when under the Lower Threshold temp. I have mine set to the Apple default at 2000rpm, because I really can't hear my fans at that setting anyway, and see no reason to set them lower.
The second is the Lower Threshold. This temperature is the level your fans will begin to increase over the base threshold. Set this to the temp you start feeling nervous at.
The third one is the Upper Threshold. This is the point your fans reach full power. As your temp floats between these two points, your fans will gradually increase in speed, depending on the point between the two thresholds you are at.
As you can see, I have mine set to start ramping up at 52C, since that is the temp I usually don't reach while idling on the 9400. The idea here is to make the fans speed up only when the machine is under load, or using the 9600. The max is set to 75, since that is the point I start getting uncomfortable with having my hardware that hot (hey, set it to whatever makes YOU paranoid. It's your fans).
If you are going to set the base speed lower, you may want to set a much lower "Lower Threshold" as well, since this will allow your system to run the fans around 2000rpm normally, but slow down more if it is a cold room.
Ideally, you want the temp and fan speed to stabilize, so your fans do not annoyingly "pump" all the time. If your Lower Threshold is too high, the increase in the fan speed will suddenly drop the temp, leading to a biziarre bouncing of the fan speed. Too narrow of a gap between the Upper and Lower Thresholds can also cause the fan speed to be unable to find a "sweet spot" and stabilize with the heat output of the machine.
One more thing: This app does not change speeds very fast, and gives no option to adjust the polling interval (rate at which it checks temps) or the amount it adjust the fan by. So fast temp swings caused by starting or exiting a CPU heavy process will mean the fan takes a bit to adjust to the new envirnoment. It will go, just let it do its thing.
If setting all this up sounds like fun to you, grab this app and go for it. Understand, however, that there is a fair bit of trial and error involved with this thing. If you don't want to do that, try smcFanControl instead.
smcFanControl
FanControl