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Fans not ramping up even at 90+c.

C

conanthewarrior

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 5, 2014
53
3
Hi everyone, today I got a brilliant condition 2013 15" MBP as a upgrade to my old 2010 13" MBP.

It seems great, and is running logic and all my apps well, and much faster than my old model.

I have noticed though that the fans are very quiet, so I installed Istat menus. I ran Geekbench as I wanted to see the benchmarks of my actual model, and the fans didn't go above 2100RPM even when the processor was hitting 93C.

When I saw this, I put the fans on manual as I was a bit worried. I could hear them at full speed and the temp dropped.

I'm not sure if I am concerned over nothing though, as soon enough the temp dropped back down and I put it back to system controlled.

The temp using just safari is around 53C at the moment. I just wondered if the fans not kicking in without me doing it is normal, or if I should do anything because of this.

Thanks, Conan.
 
maflynn said:
Did you try resetting the SMC?
Click to expand...

I haven't, I have yet to actually restart it as I only got it this morning. I gathered as it was a clean install I wouldn't need to, but is it worth doing? I should see the fans working at those temps shouldn't I?

The fans are working, as when I used manual they ramped up.
 
Well I reset it, and ran Geekbench, temps were only around 62C, did hit 80 for a split second, but the left side fan was around 2200RPM, the rightsize around 2000RPM.

I do remember at one point hearing the fans ramp up earlier today, maybe the CPU isn't being that stressed so isn't ramping up at the moment?
 
Do you notice any performance degradation? If not, everything is fine. The MBP seems to be precisely engineered just to push its hardware to the limits but not any further, so its not surprising if the fans only start going when they really have to. The maximal safe operating temperature for that CPU is around 100 degrees, cooling it down prematurely doesn't make any difference.
 
leman said:
Do you notice any performance degradation? If not, everything is fine. The MBP seems to be precisely engineered just to push its hardware to the limits but not any further, so its not surprising if the fans only start going when they really have to. The maximal safe operating temperature for that CPU is around 100 degrees, cooling it down prematurely doesn't make any difference.
Click to expand...

No not at all, I have mainly been testing it out today, running a stress test in Logic that got up to 100 tracks/instruments with 4 effects on each track before system overload, pushing all cores to the max, and no issues.

I actually forgot about the fans while doing this, but the system was still fast. I guess they really do just like to run on the limit. 100 degrees is HOT, but if it is safe then Im not worried. Just was unsure.
 
The 2013 model you have should run quieter than the 2010 model, especially the 15" version. Just like my 2016 model runs quieter than the 2015 model. I wouldn't worry about it, unless your computer is throttling.
 
conanthewarrior said:
I haven't, I have yet to actually restart it as I only got it this morning. I gathered as it was a clean install I wouldn't need to, but is it worth doing? I should see the fans working at those temps shouldn't I?
Click to expand...

I would always do an erase (from Internet Recovery or another drive) and clean install on a new-to-me second hand computer.

The point of saying Internet Recovery or another drive, is that you can't completely erase the drive booted from its own Recovery Partition.

This is irrespective of any fan considerations, for which my first thought on a five year old computer would be to take the bottom off and blow out the fans. My second thought would be SMC reset.

I would not rush to a third party fan speed controller. IME they are not needed if the Mac is in good order.
 
Last edited:
conanthewarrior said:
Hi everyone, today I got a brilliant condition 2013 15" MBP as a upgrade to my old 2010 13" MBP.

It seems great, and is running logic and all my apps well, and much faster than my old model.

I have noticed though that the fans are very quiet, so I installed Istat menus. I ran Geekbench as I wanted to see the benchmarks of my actual model, and the fans didn't go above 2100RPM even when the processor was hitting 93C.

When I saw this, I put the fans on manual as I was a bit worried. I could hear them at full speed and the temp dropped.

I'm not sure if I am concerned over nothing though, as soon enough the temp dropped back down and I put it back to system controlled.

The temp using just safari is around 53C at the moment. I just wondered if the fans not kicking in without me doing it is normal, or if I should do anything because of this.

Thanks, Conan.
Click to expand...
This is normal, as long as it is under load. I own several Macbook Pros that all exhibit similar behavior (2009, mid-2012 non retina, and early 2013 retina). As someone else said, Apple lets them run to their limits before ramping up the fans. Personally, I would use MacsFanControl rather than iStat Menus to adjust fan speeds. MacsFanControl allows you to set custom fan curves instead of just setting them at a certain RPM and leaving them. Just be sure that the sensor is set correctly (don't make the fans ramp up based on the airport card temp sensor lol). If you don't feel comfortable messing with it, then don't. Ensure that the Macbook Pro is used in a cool and well-ventilated environment and enjoy it!
 
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Ok, thank you all for the advice.

At idle, the mac sits around 49C. Only gets warmer the more I am doing. I think I will keep Istat installed for now as I like being able to see the temps, but allow the system to control the fans itself.

@Mike Boreham , I took the bottom off. It honestly looks like this mac was bought and kept in its box and hardly used or something, its completely clean inside and out, with no marks on it. Like not even general wear marks, I really looked after my 2010 model and it still has a few scratches from normal use, but this hasn't even got light marks. Can't complain.

As it seems normal for them to not ramp up until high temps, I'l let the system do it as its supposed to and not worry :)
 
Hmm, the fans didn't even ramp up at 103C on one, others 100+ core after real heavy use, and I started getting overload messages, so switched the fans on myself and they went away.

Any ideas why they aren't starting even when this is happening? This is only 2 degrees away from 105C.
 
I have a late 2013 15-MBP. In general, very quiet, except when I do something like encoding. So a simple enough test: get handbrake and re-encode a movie. That should spin them up. If not, then worth investigating further.
I agree with the suggestion above as to wiping the disk and re-installing everything.
 
It was a clean install, I had to set everything up like new.

I noticed it happened when I was using Imovie, as it was processing a project ready for me to upload. This took a whilem and after I noticed the temp I run logic with a massive amount of tracks with the CPU maxed out for a while. No spinning up, staying at around 2000 and 2300RPM left and right. Only when I manually did it after some time did they work.
[doublepost=1526680026][/doublepost]Well I followed some advice here and uninstalled Istat menus and tried macs fan control, the temps are reading much lower with this app, maxing at around 85-90C.

Maybe they wasn't reaching 103C, running the exact same test I did to get the temps up 3 times that high with Istat menus.
 
conanthewarrior said:
It was a clean install, I had to set everything up like new.

I noticed it happened when I was using Imovie, as it was processing a project ready for me to upload. This took a whilem and after I noticed the temp I run logic with a massive amount of tracks with the CPU maxed out for a while. No spinning up, staying at around 2000 and 2300RPM left and right. Only when I manually did it after some time did they work.
[doublepost=1526680026][/doublepost]Well I followed some advice here and uninstalled Istat menus and tried macs fan control, the temps are reading much lower with this app, maxing at around 85-90C.

Maybe they wasn't reaching 103C, running the exact same test I did to get the temps up 3 times that high with Istat menus.
Click to expand...

maybe you had the fans set at a constant speed in iStat menus, causing it to not ramp up the fan speeds. It Note that macs fan control will also control your fans. If you want to test how the system default fan curves work, you should close out of macs fan control, install iStat menus again, and then ensure that the fan control option is set to "System Default". Then, run a heavy program on it and see how it responds. Usually Macs will start ramping up fan speeds in the high 90s (Celsius) and will be audibly loud by 103C and start to fall back into the high 90s. Should definitely not go over 105C.
 
Webster's Mac said:
maybe you had the fans set at a constant speed in iStat menus, causing it to not ramp up the fan speeds. It Note that macs fan control will also control your fans. If you want to test how the system default fan curves work, you should close out of macs fan control, install iStat menus again, and then ensure that the fan control option is set to "System Default". Then, run a heavy program on it and see how it responds. Usually Macs will start ramping up fan speeds in the high 90s (Celsius) and will be audibly loud by 103C and start to fall back into the high 90s. Should definitely not go over 105C.
Click to expand...

It definitely wasn't on manual, I turned them on and off multiple times using manual, tried it set to system controlled, automatic, the only way it worked was if I turned the fans up myself, switching from system controlled to manual.

I can hear them if I turn them up manually, so they are working, just don't seem to be coming on automatically, even now with Istat menus gone, I encoded another video and it reached really high temps, no fans come on again.

Quite strange.
 
Ok, some good news.

I had forgotten about the fans until today, and I was using battery power- I usually am plugged in. I converted one of my Music files in iMovie so I could upload to youtube, and noticed the sound of fans. It was system controlled, and seems to turn on somewhere around 90-95C. Not full blast, they was spinning at around 3500-4000RPM from what I could see.

This was enough to drop the temps down to the high 80's.

I double checked by then plugging in the Mac, to see if the fans stopped when I plugged in. They didn't, they continued to adjust themselves.

Not sure what was going on exactly, but they are now working fine.
 
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