Fan noise on MBP 2011

[Peter Franks]

Is there anything whatsoever I can do to watch YouTube in peace? Trying Chrome/Firefox/Safari and even on the less than HD videos the fan noise drives me mad. Many instances where it drowns the speech out.

Is this just something that is native to the older MBP, and the new ones are all wonderful and fine and never bring the fan on, or do any of the new owners experience it? I know what causes it in the Activity Monitors but nothing you can do without or get rid of, flash, html5 or otherwise.

Is this something that possibly happens more with age also? As I don't ever remember it happening so much with YouTube as it does now. Yes I'm on an 6 year old laptop with an old OS, but just curious to know if I'd experience this on a brand new MBP 13" basic model.

Thanks all

 

[cruisin]

Maybe the fan is dirty and therefore it has issues with cooling. So anything that is energy intensive makes the fan spin fast as it struggles to move the heat out. The thermal grease under the fan can also occasionally dry out, making cooling worse.

Sometimes a reinstall can clean things up on the software side, but it is very involved and not guaranteed to improve things. You can try making a new user and seeing if things improve as a test. Or if you have a spare external drive you can install OSX on it, allowing you to test a fresh install without touching your files.

You can also try to remove flash, and try with html5 instead. It is supposed to be more efficient. Chrome uses its own copy of flash internally, so test html5 in Safari or Firefox.

My 2013 MacBook Pro has no issues with high fan speed with YouTube videos, even the 4K ones. So something newer will not have any issues.

 

[Peter Franks]

Thanks, Chrome has always brought the fan on but not to the extent it does now. So it's not an old OS problem I wouldn't think. Pretty sure it only uses the html5 on YouTube anyway and not flash? Thanks again

 

[DeltaMac]

I agree with cruisin in post #2.
Your 5 year-old laptop, if in daily use for much of that time, can accumulate enough dust inside to cause cooling problems.
Easy to check the inside by removing the bottom cover, and taking a close look. You may be able to see enough dust to clean out effectively with a soft brush.
The fan is not difficult to remove for a more thorough clean.
The thermal grease is not under the fan, but will be the assembly joint between the CPU and its heatsink.
That thermal grease can be cleaned off, and a fresh coating applied. That will require some disassembly, but can be worth the effort in the end.
Another work-around is to use your MBPro with one of the many laptop cooling pads that sold in office supply shops, or Amazon, etc. You can have multiple fans, or no fan at all, just an adjustable mesh surface - or as many as six fans. and every variety in between.
I hope that you are not watching youtube videos with your laptop laying on your soft bed. The best idea to keep in mind, if you do nothing else about cooling, is to watch your videos while your laptop is on a hard, smooth surface, so you get the best airflow possible around and underneath your laptop.

 

[Peter Franks]

Thank you, 6 years now, so yes, you're correct in that it probably will have a fair bit of build up. I'm not the most technical person to do things like that, but maybe the soft brush would be my limit.
In all honesty, the soft bed thing, how did you guess?! Occasionally, but it does it on glass tables too, it's not fussed. When should the fans really come on, when it gets hot, I get. Chrome helper is also a culprit, no idea what it is, but that is always CPU hogging. But a YouTube video that is HD shouldn't really kick a fan in after a minute or two on all browsers, when nothing else is running. So the dust thing may be something

 

[vrBrew]

The fans are not loud by default. I agree with post 2 and 4. You need to blow out the fans and other parts.

 

[Peter Franks]

thanks