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2018 MBAr fan runs CONSTANTLY

ReallyBigFeet

ReallyBigFeet

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 15, 2010
2,956
133
Had the machine for just under a week. Should be through the whole indexing burn-in period now.

But the fan on this thing runs constantly. From five minutes after waking until almost 2 minutes after I put it to sleep by closing the lid. Day in/Day out. Just blares.

Seems abnormally high fan use to me.
 
ReallyBigFeet said:
Had the machine for just under a week. Should be through the whole indexing burn-in period now.

But the fan on this thing runs constantly. From five minutes after waking until almost 2 minutes after I put it to sleep by closing the lid. Day in/Day out. Just blares.

Seems abnormally high fan use to me.
Click to expand...

It does seem high. What applications do you run? What does the activity monitor say?
 
ReallyBigFeet said:
Had the machine for just under a week. Should be through the whole indexing burn-in period now.

But the fan on this thing runs constantly. From five minutes after waking until almost 2 minutes after I put it to sleep by closing the lid. Day in/Day out. Just blares.

Seems abnormally high fan use to me.
Click to expand...

I also have the 18 rMBA.

What does your normal workflow look like? I found my fan only does this when using heavy file IO (e.g., syncing Google drive). After keeping an eye on the SSD temp, I think it is directly related.
 
Office 365 apps + Safari. That's pretty much my daily open apps.

I just noted OneDrive was running. I shut it down, fan stopped. It's clearly the culprit, 105% of my CPU was being taxed by that one app. Time to go beat up my IT guys for forcing us off of Dropbox it sounds like.
 
ReallyBigFeet said:
Office 365 apps + Safari. That's pretty much my daily open apps.

I just noted OneDrive was running. I shut it down, fan stopped. It's clearly the culprit, 105% of my CPU was being taxed by that one app. Time to go beat up my IT guys for forcing us off of Dropbox it sounds like.
Click to expand...
Would you mind running a blackmagic SSD test? My fan is barely affected by the CPU, but greatly by the SSD. The fan is technically a chassis fan and not a CPU fan, so maybe it makes sense?
 
Incisus said:
Would you mind running a blackmagic SSD test? My fan is barely affected by the CPU, but greatly by the SSD. The fan is technically a chassis fan and not a CPU fan, so maybe it makes sense?
Click to expand...

Happy to do so. What results do you want to see?
 
No discernible change in temp or fan noise. In fact no fan at all while it’s running....until I re launch OneDrive. Then it fires up.
 
I had the same problem with Office 2016's PowerPoint occasionally. I don't have that problem with One Drive.

Mind you, I have no fan, so I never hear it. I just noticed the MacBook getting warm.
 
ReallyBigFeet said:
Office 365 apps + Safari. That's pretty much my daily open apps.

I just noted OneDrive was running. I shut it down, fan stopped. It's clearly the culprit, 105% of my CPU was being taxed by that one app. Time to go beat up my IT guys for forcing us off of Dropbox it sounds like.
Click to expand...

My fan went into overdrive yesterday syncing a large number of files with DropBox via the DB app. Same deal - shut it down and the machine cooled off, though surprisingly slowly. I was also showing CPU rates > 100%.
 
Something is wrong. Mine hasn’t kicked in at all yet. Between downloading and installing all of my apps, compiling and running Xcode, using iPhone simulator... it gets a noticeably warm sometimes, but still no fan. I have the 16GB RAM, fwiw.
 
DDustiNN said:
Something is wrong. Mine hasn’t kicked in at all yet. Between downloading and installing all of my apps, compiling and running Xcode, using iPhone simulator... it gets a noticeably warm sometimes, but still no fan. I have the 16GB RAM, fwiw.
Click to expand...

16gb hear too. I've downloaded and installed quite few apps with no issues. The DB sync seemed to cause quite a big issue for the machine.
 
DDustiNN said:
Something is wrong. Mine hasn’t kicked in at all yet. Between downloading and installing all of my apps, compiling and running Xcode, using iPhone simulator... it gets a noticeably warm sometimes, but still no fan. I have the 16GB RAM, fwiw.
Click to expand...

Same here. My 16GB MBA gets quite hot, but I never hear the fan. Hoping there's nothing wrong with my machine.
 
Rob9874 said:
Same here. My 16GB MBA gets quite hot, but I never hear the fan. Hoping there's nothing wrong with my machine.
Click to expand...
My fan finally kicked in when I was installing Windows 10 on VMWare. Quite a bit, actually. But now that it’s all set up, when I actually use it, the CPU kicks up and it can get a little warm but no fan anymore.
 
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I have been running a little utility called Macs Fan Control, not to control the fan but just to observe. The fan runs a lot at its minimum speed, 2700 rpm, which is almost inaudible. I'm surprised at how much of the time it's running, though.
 
newellj said:
I have been running a little utility called Macs Fan Control, not to control the fan but just to observe. The fan runs a lot at its minimum speed, 2700 rpm, which is almost inaudible. I'm surprised at how much of the time it's running, though.
Click to expand...

I guess that might just worsen the battery life.
 
Falcon80 said:
What are some of the tasks you are doing?
Click to expand...

Media consumption like streaming videos on YouTube, Netflix, music in Apple Music, browsing the web in Safari, typing text in Pages, editing photos (in the Photos app though), writing and checking e-mails, printing stuff via AirPrint...
 
rmoliv said:
Weird. I've had mine for about two weeks now and I haven't heard the fan yet. It also doesn't get hot at all unlike my previous 2018 MBP.
Click to expand...

I almost NEVER hear it. At 2700 rpm, which is what it's running right now, it's silent, at least if there's *any* noise in the background. But as someone observed, it's using some power.
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chabig said:
OneDrive on the Mac is known to be bad.

https://onedrive.uservoice.com/foru...ns/32803531-cpu-usage-too-high-in-high-sierra
Click to expand...

The one time mine went crazy was syncing a group of document files on DropBox.
 
Something's not right - have you kept an eye on Activity Monitor to see what's going on with the CPU?

The fans went on with mine when Dropbox was synching initially but its been totally silent since.
 
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