Fans Driving Me Nuts on 2011 MBP

[JasonR]

Ok..I know these machines run a little hotter. But the fans are literally driving me nuts. My Macbook Air fans were hot when hooked up to my 27" ACD too.

I don't know what to do...sell it..and get an older Macbook Pro that never had these problems??

Wtf Apple...I almost feel like going to a Winblows machine if my machine is going to be this loud sometime. My 2009 iMac 27" (which I sold to buy the MBP and ACD) was whisper quiet compared to this damn thing.

Suggestions?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It probably is due to higher GPU usage for driving 2560 x 1440 pixel.
I guess you already measured temps via iStat? Did you already look at Activity Monitor and sorted by CPU?

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

 

[JasonR]

Here's a shot of iStatPro.

Activity Monitor

Only thing I have open is safari. A few tabs (was looking at animated gifs). 26%...wtf? I'm beginning to think something is wrong.

Some more screenshots.

Edited to add: Flashblock on Safari is enabled.

 

[GGJstudios]

Ok..I know these machines run a little hotter. But the fans are literally driving me nuts.

If you have increased CPU/GPU temps, launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top). Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

(not indexing)

(indexing) (pulsing dot)​

When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.

Your fans are always on when your Mac is on, spinning at a minimum of 2000 rpm (for MBPs) or 1800 rpm (for MBAs, MBs and minis). iMacs have 3 fans with minimum speeds in the 800-1200 range. They will spin faster as needed to keep temps at a safe level. If your your fans are spinning up without increased heat, try resetting the SMC. (PRAM/NVRAM has nothing to do with these issues, so resetting it will not help.)

 

[JasonR]

Thanks for the tips. I fully realize the fans are always running.

When my fans ramp up again I'll change to all processes.

Also..I'm assuming I'm also hearing the hard drive spin all the time (my Air was silent, and I'm assuming it's because of the SSD)...?

 

[thundersteele]

Also..I'm assuming I'm also hearing the hard drive spin all the time (my Air was silent, and I'm assuming it's because of the SSD)...?

Yes. The HDD can be noisy. I always wonder what is going on when I power up my old MBP without SSD.

 

[JasonR]

Activity Monitor just after installing Adobe Photoshop CS6 and installing/downloading Garageband.

Second screen shot is syncing my iPad with iTunes. WTF...the MBP is slightly laggy and fans are going nuts. This never happened on my 2009 iMac

 

[GGJstudios]

Activity Monitor just after installing Adobe Photoshop CS6 and installing/downloading Garageband.

Second screen shot is syncing my iPad with iTunes. WTF...the MBP is slightly laggy and fans are going nuts. This never happened on my 2009 iMac

First shot suggests Spotlight may be indexing, as evidenced by the mdworker and mds processes, as I suggested earlier.

Second shot shows the iTunes process consuming high resources during the sync process. Both cases are normal, given the workload.

Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom when you take these screen shots. It helps to see your memory usage when troubleshooting.

 

[thekev]

Activity Monitor just after installing Adobe Photoshop CS6 and installing/downloading Garageband.

Second screen shot is syncing my iPad with iTunes. WTF...the MBP is slightly laggy and fans are going nuts. This never happened on my 2009 iMac

Imacs tend to have much less fan activity than macbook pros. This is one of those things I think Apple should address rather than ignore, not because it'll break the machine, but because everyone hates fan noise and hot machines.

 

[shardey]

iMac's also are vertical and dissipate heat more naturally from the design. Fans at 4000~ are going to be a bit louder than necessary, but you are also using a dedicated GPU driving a high resolution monitor.

Edit: I don't think theres much Apple can do unless you want a weaker CPU, GPU or an uglier/bulkier design. The machines get hot, but they run within the thermal limits.

 

[Modernape]

I noticed a massive reduction in overall machine noise (which before I had assumed was fan noise), when I went from the stock drive to an SSD in mine.

 

[JasonR]

I noticed a massive reduction in overall machine noise (which before I had assumed was fan noise), when I went from the stock drive to an SSD in mine.

Do you have both a SSD and the stock HDD (ie in place of the SuperDrive)? What SSD did you buy?

 

[Modernape]

Do you have both a SSD and the stock HDD (ie in place of the SuperDrive)? What SSD did you buy?

Just the SSD - an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro

 

[syg]

I solved the problem on my MBP13 by using Activity Monitor and killing Quick Look Helper that was hogging 150% CPU. The temperature immediately went down from 90C to 60C, and the fans went down from 6200rpm to 2000rpm.

Here are some links with more information:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0
http://macosg.com/group/viewtopic.ph...=21254&start=0

Hope this helps!

 

[bozz2006]

I feel like you're over thinking this. It takes a lot of GPU horsepower to run that monitor. Whenever I connect to an external, my fans go up. That's normal.

 

[Ben P.]

Bring it to the Apple store and tell them you are not happy!