Fan doesn't spin up on late-2013 13" rMBP in Geekbench

[yjchua95]

Good day,

Recently, I got a maxed-out 13" rMBP (2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD).

When running Geekbench 3, I'm surprised that the fan didn't spin up at all. On my 15" cMBP, the fans would spin up to full power less than halfway into the test.

Is it normal for a 13" rMBP's fan to not spin up when doing CPU-intensive tasks like Geekbench?

 

[204353]

Seems normal to me. Your Retina model is newer, meaning more heat efficient CPU, and it's a dual-core (vs. your old 15", which I presume had a quad-core CPU).

The 13" Retina model also has 2 fans and an improved cooling design.

 

[yjchua95]

Seems normal to me. Your Retina model is newer, meaning more heat efficient CPU, and it's a dual-core (vs. your old 15", which I presume had a quad-core CPU).

The 13" Retina model also has 2 fans and an improved cooling design.

Yeah, my quad-core 15" rMBP's (also late-2013) fans spun up halfway into Geekbench.

2 fans? I only see a single fan in SMCfancontrol?

 

[theromz]

Yeah, my quad-core 15" rMBP's (also late-2013) fans spun up halfway into Geekbench.

2 fans? I only see a single fan in SMCfancontrol?

The origin retina 13" had 2 smaller fans but has now moved to 1 bigger fan. The reason you don't hear the fans is A) There built in such a way that it is difficult to hear unless it is really loud, which is a big win B) Apple prioritise nose over heat, e.g. when I'm gaming on my 13" rmbp it can easily hit 80-90c and still have the fans relatively quite, I tend to just use my fan control and max it out and everything drops to 70-80c.

Personally don't care if my fans are loud during gaming as I have my headphones on, but I can understand not wanting the machine too be too loud, as it sounds like fighter jet taking off.

 

[yjchua95]

The origin retina 13" had 2 smaller fans but has now moved to 1 bigger fan. The reason you don't hear the fans is A) There built in such a way that it is difficult to hear unless it is really loud, which is a big win B) Apple prioritise nose over heat, e.g. when I'm gaming on my 13" rmbp it can easily hit 80-90c and still have the fans relatively quite, I tend to just use my fan control and max it out and everything drops to 70-80c.

Personally don't care if my fans are loud during gaming as I have my headphones on, but I can understand not wanting the machine too be too loud, as it sounds like fighter jet taking off.

Ahh, thanks for the clarification!

I'm actually worried if my fans didn't spin up, because I recently transitioned from a 15" rMBP to a 13" rMBP, and I'm used to hearing the fans spin up all the time

I can't carry the 15" every day because my chiropractor says that I've to stop carrying heavy laptops

 

[theromz]

Ahh that sucks, tbh if your worried about fans/heat (I am) then get an app like fancontrol and set up some defaults. I generally have my fans sitting at 2k rpm when connected to a charger, and with all my dev stuff open (VMs, IDEs. multi web browsers) it sits at 40c. Haswell is really great and you never get too hot. Obvious exceptions are Flash which can ramp it up to 90c.

 

[Barney63]

Ahh that sucks, tbh if your worried about fans/heat (I am) then get an app like fancontrol and set up some defaults. I generally have my fans sitting at 2k rpm when connected to a charger, and with all my dev stuff open (VMs, IDEs. multi web browsers) it sits at 40c. Haswell is really great and you never get too hot. Obvious exceptions are Flash which can ramp it up to 90c.

Is the MacBooks own control not good enough?
By saying that I have yet to hear mine, the highest temperature I have seen on it is 52C, I don't push it at all.

Barney

 

[theromz]

Is the MacBooks own control not good enough?
By saying that I have yet to hear mine, the highest temperature I have seen on it is 52C, I don't push it at all.

Barney

Its fine, I don't like how it doesn't ramp it up as high as it can for gaming, I tend to game for hours at a time and having it sitting at 90c is slightly worrying for me. If you don't push its perfectly fine. I am also a little anal about my temps.

Apple just prioritises noise > heat which is perfectly understandable, I was just point out that if it worries you there are a lot of apps that give you extreme control.

 

[yjchua95]

Ahh that sucks, tbh if your worried about fans/heat (I am) then get an app like fancontrol and set up some defaults. I generally have my fans sitting at 2k rpm when connected to a charger, and with all my dev stuff open (VMs, IDEs. multi web browsers) it sits at 40c. Haswell is really great and you never get too hot. Obvious exceptions are Flash which can ramp it up to 90c.

I guess I'll leave SMCfancontrol set to around 3K rpm when I'm running VMs

Flash is pretty buggy, I have the ClicktoFlash plugin installed in Safari, and I only use the HTML5 player in YouTube.

 

[theromz]

I guess I'll leave SMCfancontrol set to around 3K rpm when I'm running VMs

Flash is pretty buggy, I have the ClicktoFlash plugin installed in Safari, and I only use the HTML5 player in YouTube.

Yeah I do same exact thing, just leave it at 3k when I'm in the office with my VMs and Photoshop running, it sits at 50-60c most of the time.

I use clicktoplay for all plugins in chrome to avoid flash running when I don't want it, but there are still times where you can't avoid it sadly.

 

[204353]

The origin retina 13" had 2 smaller fans but has now moved to 1 bigger fan.

Yeah, my quad-core 15" rMBP's (also late-2013) fans spun up halfway into Geekbench.

2 fans? I only see a single fan in SMCfancontrol?

Ah yes, sorry, I forgot that the new 13" has gone back to 1 fan again. One larger fan tends to spin more slowly on average, resulting in less noise. Seems like a logical move.