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CPU question

I

ishopukisfake

macrumors regular
Original poster
This is a general question about CPU's if anyone has the info I would be interested.

I notice that doing quite few things eats up alot of CPU, and it is when the CPU begins to go over about 50% active on my laptop the distracting fans start to kick in.

The fans are off putting and I would like to know if there are any configurations or laptops which somehow enable a large amount of CPU, so that you can do many things without having the fan noise kick in often.
 
The fans are not related to the percentage of CPU being used. You can run at 95% CPU utilization without the fans speeding up, and you can run at 25% and have them spinning away. The fans are triggered by heat, not by CPU activity alone.
 
ishopukisfake said:
Interesting, and what causes the heat then?
Click to expand...
CPU activity, as well as heat generated by other components, such as the GPU, along with the ambient temperature in the area where the computer is. The GPU typically creates more heat than the CPU. Download and install iStat Pro to monitor temps of various components, as well as fan speed.
 
Yes I have istat pro, the fans always kick in I notice when the CPU goes above 50% -

Do you know much about CPU's and if there are different types and capacities which produce less heat and enable full activity without producing as much heat and requiring the fans?
 
ishopukisfake said:
Yes I have istat pro, the fans always kick in I notice when the CPU goes above 50% -

Do you know much about CPU's and if there are different types and capacities which produce less heat and enable full activity without producing as much heat and requiring the fans?
Click to expand...

Hello:
Assuming you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro, The CPUs used in these products (Intel Core 2 Duo) is a very hot chip, compared to the pentium CPUs. The only machines that I have ever heard a fan on is Apple portables, and older Macs, but the main thing is that the CPU is in a very small space, and it gets hot, no matter what you do. Try buying a chill pad for when your MB/MBP is stationary. I recommend this model: Here.

Good luck to you!
 
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By all means, stay away from fan control apps. If you mess up, you could possibly fry a chip or two. Use external sources to lower heat.
 
miiles said:
Be careful though, you don't want to limit your fan to a certain amount of RPM, don't want your computer to not be able to turn up the fans when it needs to.
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Smcfancontrol only modifies the minimum fan speed, If the temperature calls for the fans to speed up, they will speed up to the amount needed to keep the computer at a reasonable temperature. I have my uMB set with smcfancontrol to run at 3000rpms all the time to keep the computer cool and when I use something like handbrake, where it takes almost 100% CPU, the fans speed up to around 4500rpm automatically to try to cool the CPU down. The OP is looking for reduced fan noise, so smcfancontrol probably wouldn't be a good solution because it is used to increase fan speeds, which creates more noise. I personally don't mind the noise that the fans create because it is very quiet compared to some pc notebooks that are extremely loud and sound like a jet engine when the fans turn on.
 
britishcolumbia said:
Hello:
Assuming you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro, The CPUs used in these products (Intel Core 2 Duo) is a very hot chip, compared to the pentium CPUs. The only machines that I have ever heard a fan on is Apple portables, and older Macs, but the main thing is that the CPU is in a very small space, and it gets hot, no matter what you do. Try buying a chill pad for when your MB/MBP is stationary. I recommend this model: Here.

Good luck to you!
Click to expand...

Thanks, this is the kind of info I was looking for - This is happening often on MBA but I used to have a standard black macbook and the fans would kick in on that alot to very distracting if you are listening to music or a convo or video. Recently bought a samsung n310 notebook and the fan noise doesn't seem as bad on that so you may be right. I used to have a toshiba but the fans would kick in there too.

GGJstudios said:
CPU activity, as well as heat generated by other components, such as the GPU, along with the ambient temperature in the area where the computer is. The GPU typically creates more heat than the CPU. Download and install iStat Pro to monitor temps of various components, as well as fan speed.
Click to expand...

Hello GGJstudios by chance I was searching for an ad blocker for mac and found a macrumors page from google which you had recommend a few options.

You offered 3 options, I downloaded all three and now it's great no ads on any pages. However there seems to have been included some software that makes the application you are not working on transparent, a nice effect but as I have a large screen space I would rather see multiple apps working. I noticed a control panel related to this when the program loaded and I closed this and can't access it again to alter the transparencies or turn them off.
Do you know the name of the program that is doing this and how I can access the control panel again, I can't locate it, thanks.
 
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ishopukisfake said:
Do you know the name of the program that is doing this and how I can access the control panel again, I can't locate it, thanks.
Click to expand...

I don't know which post or which program you're referring to, but one option is to uninstall each program and reinstall it, so you can access the control panel. I can't recommend much more, without specifics.
 
I live in Scotland so in terms of ambient heat I cant do any better accept for moving to iceland. It seems to be a problem with macs I think - overheating.

I suppose what I was really asking is, are there any computers or configurations which are designed so that the fans very rarely if ever kick in.

It would be nice to use them without the continual threat of loud noises arising. Hopefully engineers will come up with a different way to address this issue in the future, having actual physical fans inside computers seems a bit old fashioned, maybe better component materials making up the processes or some kind of solution removing the need of fans altogether soon hopefully .

GGJstudios said:
I don't know which post or which program you're referring to, but one option is to uninstall each program and reinstall it, so you can access the control panel. I can't recommend much more, without specifics.
Click to expand...

It's the program which enables the application your not working on to turn transparent and see through, not sure which program that is.

I just installed the two ad-blockers you recommended and click to flash and then some app panels have gone see through - yes I suppose the last resort is deleting and reinstalling them

Found the post
"
For Safari, I use SafariBlock (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19202), Safari AdBlock (http://safariadblock.sourceforge.net/) and ClickToFlash (http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master) (download here (http://s3.amazonaws.com/clicktoflash/ClickToFlash-1.3.zip))
 
ishopukisfake said:
It's the program which enables the application your not working on to turn transparent and see through, not sure which program that is.
Click to expand...

I don't have that function in my copies of those apps. I'm not running the most current versions of all of them, though. For example, I've read that SafariBlock v2.2 has an annoying welcome screen that doesn't appear in v2.1, so I've elected not to upgrade it. I'm running SafariBlock v2.1, Safari AdBlock v0.3.2, and ClickToFlash. My guess is the culprit may be one of the first two.
 
ishopukisfake said:
I live in Scotland so in terms of ambient heat I cant do any better accept for moving to iceland. It seems to be a problem with macs I think - overheating.

I suppose what I was really asking is, are there any computers or configurations which are designed so that the fans very rarely if ever kick in.

It would be nice to use them without the continual threat of loud noises arising. Hopefully engineers will come up with a different way to address this issue in the future, having actual physical fans inside computers seems a bit old fashioned, maybe better component materials making up the processes or some kind of solution removing the need of fans altogether soon hopefully .
Click to expand...

Heat is not a problem only with Macintosh portable computers, other notebook manufacturers have also "problems" with heat in their machines, as notebooks are small machines with sometimes very hot CPUs.
Those CPUs are hot because some CPUs used are not meant for mobile use, as they need more power (measured in Watt) than the usual mobile CPUs, like the Macintosh portable computers use.
The more power one has to use, the more heat is generated and if the space is tight and enclosed, and the enclosure made of plastic (not metal), the hotter the CPU and machine gets, so the fans have to kick in.

And I have to say, I heard more PC fans spinning then Mac fans spinning, as Apple is keen to use the most power-efficient CPUs it can get their hands on.
Also the metal enclosure dissipates heat better.

You have to wait a while before CPUs will get so advanced, that they won't radiate heat like they do now and can be build fanless and have high frequencies as you wanna have now. Or you could go with an Atom CPU, but the clock speed is from 5 years or so.
 
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