I have the cooler(and Silent) Air !!

[edcrusher]

so I have been playing and investigating about the heat and noisy Airs out there... so these are the fruits, I am new to this as you now.

Noisy Air, so whats up:

Apple updated the SMC driver to avoid core shutdowns so this will kick Fans to full for a long time so the processor keeps fresh making the Air noisy.

The problem: air still too hot and now is noisy

Solution: Coolbook (I know you already knew this). remaining problem, several macs still noisy.

Solution: SMCfancontrol. wait! this only limits the lower speed of the fan... yes and no.

So, smcfancontrol has a command line utility called smc which allows you to set top and low fan speed. (standard:min 1800, max 6200 RPM)

@

cd /Applications/smcFanControl.app/Contents/Resources/

max speed:

./smc -k F0Mx -w $(python -c 'print hex(6000 << 2)[2:]')

min speed:

smc -k F0Mn -w $(python -c 'print hex(1900 << 2)[2:]')


So I set my fan speed max 6000 RPM and low 1900 which makes the air very silent, i didnt change the standard values to avoid frying the processor, battery life ? +40 min or so not sure really.

so now a have a fresh and silent Macbook Air thanks to this forum and the coolbook thread + smcfancontrol trick at this blog

so now I am running 47 - 55 C with very variable fan speed instead of blasting 6200 RPM all the time. Silent and Cool

 

[ayeying]

I don't get it... you just reduced the stock fan speed from a true 2500RPM (smcFanControl reads it wrong btw, it's not 1800 minimum speed, it's really 2500RPM minimum speed... not sure why smc has it at 1800) to 1900RPM and the max from 6200RPM to 6000RPM... how is it "silent" at 6000RPM?

Wouldn't the fans just rev up as it wants to? How is it being more "active"?

 

[Abyssgh0st]

What Rev MBA do you have?

 

[edcrusher]

I am @ 1.8 rev A.

the fans rev up and down as required by SMC in the limits I set,

I am constantly getting ~2000-3000 RPM and 6000 when playing quake live and flatout 2 when I quit the games the revs go back to 2k-3k.

 

[macw0lke]

Thank you so much for posting this. I'm not sure why but my MBA often runs with full fans despite low CPU usage. Will try replacing the thermal paste next, but in the meantime I can live with 6,000 rpm.
I was going nuts and your post really helped me out. Thanks again.

 

[Maks]

Thank you so much for posting this. I'm not sure why but my MBA often runs with full fans despite low CPU usage. Will try replacing the thermal paste next, but in the meantime I can live with 6,000 rpm.
I was going nuts and your post really helped me out. Thanks again.

I'm on a Rev. A as well and have only had the fans go that high with little CPU usage I think 2 or 3 times. Doing a shutdown and rebooting seems to fix it for me.