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Bilalo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 17, 2012
402
2
Oxford, England
Whats the best fan controller for mac and do you recommend I dont use one so I dont experience the beachball and so on? I saw one called Fan Control but it has low ratings so any suggestions? I want to use it to control the loud noise that comes out sometimes or to know why its happening etc...
 

elgrecomac

macrumors 65816
Jan 15, 2008
1,163
162
San Diego

r0k

macrumors 68040
Mar 3, 2008
3,611
75
Detroit
Whats the best fan controller for mac and do you recommend I dont use one so I dont experience the beachball and so on? I saw one called Fan Control but it has low ratings so any suggestions? I want to use it to control the loud noise that comes out sometimes or to know why its happening etc...

I would not recommend this. I had smcfancontrol on my netbook back when I used the thing. My iPad eliminated any use case for a netbook back in early 2010. I googled around and found a fan control app for OSX but decided against using it. A better approach is to figure out what process is keeping your CPU going and stop it. For instance, I used to donate my CPU cycles folding proteins until I found out it kept my Macbook's fan running on tilt 24 hours a day. Other culprits are part of the OS, such as Spotlight indexing after a software update. Again I recommend you avoid using fan control software on a Mac because unlike certain other OS's I won't mention here, but happen to rhyme with Linux and Windows, OSX is pretty good at figuring out when to run the fans all by itself without any intervention on your part, other than (optionally) killing greedy process that are keeping your CPU running hot.
 

dean1012

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2008
130
1
I used to use smcFanControl but for some reason it was not working at all with my 2013 MBA.

I ended up trying the trial for iStat Menus and I bought it. For me, it did two things I desperately needed:

1) It provided system stats right in menu bar (a replacement for the old istat pro dashboard widget)

and

2) Fan control actually worked.

If you aren't interested in #1, you can disable everything except fan control. It wasn't that expensive and it is well worth the money.

To r0k, sometimes fan control is needed. For example, when I'm working on programming or playing a game (both of which cause temps to rise > 80 degrees), i'll run the fan at medium (~4400 RPM). If it still doesn't help, i'll run it at full speed (~6400 RPM).

I've done this for years for various macs and I've never had an issue. I do recognize the fans could conceivably die faster but I'll take that risk.
 
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