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Do you use a Fan Control Program?

BiikeMike

BiikeMike

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2005
1,019
1
I did a search, but only found mention of it in passing.

What are the cons of running one of these programs? I downloaded SMC FanControl and it seems to be working pretty well. I've been playing with the settings, and its currently on 1750 as a minimum, and its just a small hum, but my case is cooler to the touch.

What are you experiances?
 
My base speed is 3200, but it usually runs at more than that. I can't even hear it most of the time unless I'm sitting in absolute silence, which does not happen often.
 
I use it when it gets hotter than I would like, and at that time I set it to 3000 RPM's but usually my MBP CD does a good job of keeping itself cool.
 
I dont think the less heat conductive-ness of the MB means a damn thing. The plastic is going to heat up, just not as fast. What it is is the extra ghz of the MBP and the x1600.
 
i don't use a fan control program either. i find that the C2D MBP has better heat management than the CD MB/MBP.
 
The actual base speeds for the C2D chips I found were higher. Instead of the minimum (as shown by smcFanControl) on my CD MB is 1500rpm, my friends new C2D MB is at 1800rpm. me thinks Apple did soem slight tweaking. Even a small increase like that can shave off a couple of degrees.

I use smcFanControl, usually between 2500 - 3250. Nice and cool! :)
 
smcfancontrol. It's okay. Frankly, i find it very annoying to have to tweak this. There are other programs which let you set temp threshholds to "Automatically" adjust fan speeds at higher rates than Apple's set, but I, personally, think it should be system-level. There should be a fan- prefs, so people who value quietude can set the threshold high, and people like me who prefer colditude can set it much lower.

I think quietude and colditute are technical terms in "the biz," btw.
 
i dl smcfancontrol but when i try to launch it it says you are running smcfancontrol on a unsupported machine.....I have a macbook. what do i have to do to get it running?
 
I use Fan Control.

http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html

screenshot.gif
 
I used to use Fan Control but I've switched back to smcFancontrol again since I got an email reminder thanking me for my contribution and letting me know 2.0 was out. I like the quick-switch profiles.

Under low-level load the C2D MBP is better but compared to my proper laptops it still needs a fan control program to stay usable in warm climates when actually using more than a sliver of the actual power the machine is supposed to have.
 
Most of the time i run it at the max (SMCFancontrol), the temp keeps cool at around 40C when loaded. To my understand, the worst that could happen for running the fan at the highest speed all the time is to have a broken fan. However the worst that could happen when it's overheating is to have a broken machine ;)
 
Sesshi said:
I used to use Fan Control but I've switched back to smcFancontrol again since I got an email reminder thanking me for my contribution and letting me know 2.0 was out. I like the quick-switch profiles.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the heads-up; I had missed that smcFanControl had been updated. I'm going to run it instead of Fan Control for awhile and see how it goes. :)
 
I just downloaded smcfancontrol and works great. I noticed a great difference when using google earth, went from 61 to 51 and you can hardly hear the fan @ 3600rpm. I would recomend it for anyone with a c2d macbook.
 
cy88 said:
Most of the time i run it at the max (SMCFancontrol), the temp keeps cool at around 40C when loaded. To my understand, the worst that could happen for running the fan at the highest speed all the time is to have a broken fan. However the worst that could happen when it's overheating is to have a broken machine ;)
Click to expand...

Just so you know, if that fans goes your CPU could burn up in seconds.

Overheating causes instability and decreases the life of the chip, however like I said having no fan is more dangerous.
 
suneohair said:
Just so you know, if that fans goes your CPU could burn up in seconds.

Overheating causes instability and decreases the life of the chip, however like I said having no fan is more dangerous.
Click to expand...

Not true, if your fan goes, your CPU will gradually overheat, causing a crash. This will happen long before your CPU will burn itself up.

Your CPU will only burn up in seconds if you remove the heatsink all together (which is improbable in this situation).
 
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