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Quick question for the NEW Aluminium Macbook owners on Fan noise

J

JW8725

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Do you find the fan comes on constantly?

When it does is it overtly noisy and off putting?

Is the hard drive (non SSD) noisy?

Do you find the noise of the laptop itself loud?

If its relatively silent, how silent are we talking? Almost dead silent?

Thanks for the help🙂
 
JW8725 said:
Do you find the fan comes on constantly?

When it does is it overtly noisy and off putting?

Is the hard drive (non SSD) noisy?

Do you find the noise of the laptop itself loud?

If its relatively silent, how silent are we talking? Almost dead silent?

Thanks for the help🙂
Click to expand...

1. Yes, when I'm doing intensive applications and processes.

2. *Very* quiet fans

3. No noise from my MacBook so far... very quiet system

4. Almost Dead Silent...

These are my experiences with my MacBook. Others may vay
 
wait, it makes noises?

oh, yeah, my speakers were turned off...yeah, the thing is freaking noisy when you turn those on with some music...😡 😛

it's quiet as a mouse.😀
 
I don't hear a damn thing from this computer. Its as quiet, if not more than my G4 iBook was in light/medium use...but thankfully doesn't get as hot.
 
If you look at the iFixit breakdown of the Macbook you can see there's only 1 exhaust fan at the back of the laptop. According to iStatPro, mine runs at 2000rpm or less so it's next to inaudible. I haven't had it get loud at all yet but in general, it's completely silent and I've been very happy with it.

Temps have been decent as well.
 
Does anyone else have a "jumpy" fan rpm speed? If i leave istat open on my dashboard and watch the fan rpms, i'll notice it'll go from 1987, to 2010, to 1998, to 2003, to 1990, to 20012, etc....anyone else noticing that or is my defective in some way?
 
Lopes said:
Does anyone else have a "jumpy" fan rpm speed? If i leave istat open on my dashboard and watch the fan rpms, i'll notice it'll go from 1987, to 2010, to 1998, to 2003, to 1990, to 20012, etc....anyone else noticing that or is my defective in some way?
Click to expand...

I've never seen this happen to me. I've even tried to get it to jump up and heat up to where my PB would sit. I've ran a couple of flash videos while watching YouTube, running Safari with about 8 open pages, MS Word, iChat, Mail, iPhoto, AND I was transferring music from an external usb plugged into my airport over wifi to iTunes and asking it to pull the album art. Nothing happened as you explained.
 
Lopes said:
Does anyone else have a "jumpy" fan rpm speed? If i leave istat open on my dashboard and watch the fan rpms, i'll notice it'll go from 1987, to 2010, to 1998, to 2003, to 1990, to 20012, etc....anyone else noticing that or is my defective in some way?
Click to expand...

That's perfectly normal all fans do that. There is always a slight change in RPM when the sensor takes the reading.
 
I haven't noticed the fan at all on my new Macbook. I had to use SMC to speed up the fan just to hear what it would sound like if it went above the constant 2000 rpm.

For me the noisiest thing is the hard drive. It starts spinning the instant the computer turns on and it never stops. You can hear it in a quiet room and it is always there buzzing beneath my hand. I spent the last eight months using an Air with an SSD though, so I guess I'm just getting used to using a laptop with a regular hard drive again.
 
Wait it has a fan? Just kidding. It's absolutely silent. The only time I've ever heard it is when I put a DVD in. Even then, it's nothing that'll keep you up at night.
 
MacBook08 said:
Wait it has a fan? Just kidding. It's absolutely silent. The only time I've ever heard it is when I put a DVD in. Even then, it's nothing that'll keep you up at night.
Click to expand...

Is it really absolutely silent? If so, then I must have a defective hard drive. I can hear a barely audible whir coming from the hard drive.
 
southerndoc said:
Is it really absolutely silent? If so, then I must have a defective hard drive. I can hear a barely audible whir coming from the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Well, if I put my ear real close to the trackpad I can hear the hard drive and feel its vibration, but just barely. However, it's usually not quiet enough where I am to notice. So, yeah, your HDD's probably not defective.

Does anyone know what a SSD sounds like? Not that I could ever afford one. Just curious.
 
MacBook08 said:
Well, if I put my ear real close to the trackpad I can hear the hard drive and feel its vibration, but just barely. However, it's usually not quiet enough where I am to notice. So, yeah, your HDD's probably not defective.

Does anyone know what a SSD sounds like? Not that I could ever afford one. Just curious.
Click to expand...

I think they're completely silent.
 
MacBook08 said:
Well, if I put my ear real close to the trackpad I can hear the hard drive and feel its vibration, but just barely. However, it's usually not quiet enough where I am to notice. So, yeah, your HDD's probably not defective.

Does anyone know what a SSD sounds like? Not that I could ever afford one. Just curious.
Click to expand...

SSD has no moving parts, which means 0 sound.
 
My fan on the 2.0ghz model stays at a pretty much constant 2k rpm. It only ever jumps when I play Call of Duty 4 and even then its only to 3k. I have yet to hear it at 4 thousand or 5 for that matter. And I have Call of Duty as high of settings as you can get it for the MacBook. Still cool and silent as a mouse!
 
Just thought I would chime in...

The MB fans are almost inaudible. In fact, I was using uTorrent for Mac (Beta), and there was an issue where the CPU would jump to 100%. Even with the CPU holding steady at 100%, the fans were still really quiet (highest rpm was about 4000-5000). Since I noticed the problem, I've stopped using uTorrent (back to Transmission) and now I can't hear a thing.

I'm 110% satisfied with the MB 😀
 
Only time I've noticed the fans on my Macbook is after playing Civilization 4 for awhile (and even then it's not too bad).
 
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