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Is your Macbook Pro silent?
- Thread starter Joko
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I asked the exact same question when I get my new Penryn MBP. Mine also hovers around 2000rpm (in fact, never really seen it go higher). I don't hear it often, but sometimes if I'm in a dead silent room and I'm working on my mbp, all of the sudden I'll hear the fans and then fixate on the noise. Then I'll read something on MR and completely forget about the fans cause I'm reading something interesting
Though the ones that have flash memory will be quieter than the hard drive based ones...
My SR Gen 2 MBP is silent...unless playing games (with modded drivers). In those situations it does get loud.
It's certainly louder when idle than my silent 12" PB 1GHz G4. But, although I've not really done anything intensive yet, the big fan hasn't kicked in once (which would have happened by now on my 12").
I am in a silent room thought.
I am in a silent room thought.
I purchased my 2.4 MBP in November and was really impressed at how quiet it was. My apartment is very quiet, and besides the hard drive I couldn't detect any noise.
Within the past couple of days my MBP has developed a constant fan noise. In light of its previous silence, this noise is annoying. Fans are 2000rpm, I am not sure if this is an increase because I had no reason for iStat before.
At any rate, it's definitely louder than it was. It's as if the fans weren't running before, but now they are. I can hear it across the room, whereas before I would've sworn it was asleep if I couldn't see the screen on.
Tried resetting PRAM and SMC as per this thread. Any ideas?
Within the past couple of days my MBP has developed a constant fan noise. In light of its previous silence, this noise is annoying. Fans are 2000rpm, I am not sure if this is an increase because I had no reason for iStat before.
At any rate, it's definitely louder than it was. It's as if the fans weren't running before, but now they are. I can hear it across the room, whereas before I would've sworn it was asleep if I couldn't see the screen on.
Tried resetting PRAM and SMC as per this thread. Any ideas?
That wont help.
Are you listening to the fans in the same environment when they were "quiet"? Generally MBPs are indeed quieter than their windows based counterparts. but being by yourself in a room is a lot different than being in a library. Ambient noise is just different.
2000 rpm is the minimum speed of the fans. You cant get any lower than that (well it does fluctuate +/- 10 rpm).
MacBook Pros really are NOT "silent". People who describe them as "silent" either don't know the definition of the word, are in anything other than a "silent" or very quiet room, and/or are partially or wholly deaf.
I've listened to maybe 10 MacBook Pros over the weekend, as my band has been involved with a lot of promotion/recording, and most of the people we came into contact with had MacBook Pros! And, being the geek I am, I wanted to see if they all exhibited the same constant noise as my two MBPs. Anyway...all of them have the standard fan noise at the normal ~2000rpm, as well as disk access noise of course.
They may be fairly quiet, when compared to other machines, but I'm sat at the side of mine right now - it's 3am, in a near-silent house, and road, and I can most definitely hear my fan going, at 1998rpm. I can tell the machine is on, and when I turn it off, the constant fan noise will go, and I will then be able to tell it is OFF. They're all like this. Therefore, they are not silent! Quiet maybe, but not silent.
I was disappointed when I got my MacBook Pro, when I found I had been naive by taking people's comments of "silent" literally. Everyone should realise that this is a computer, with lots of moving parts, and it has to make some sound!
Anyway - I also listened to a new Sony Vaio over the weekend (I forget the model, but it was very similar spec to my MBP), and that was almost deadly quiet. So, it seems MBPs aren't even "silent" when compared to similar PC laptops...
I've listened to maybe 10 MacBook Pros over the weekend, as my band has been involved with a lot of promotion/recording, and most of the people we came into contact with had MacBook Pros! And, being the geek I am, I wanted to see if they all exhibited the same constant noise as my two MBPs. Anyway...all of them have the standard fan noise at the normal ~2000rpm, as well as disk access noise of course.
They may be fairly quiet, when compared to other machines, but I'm sat at the side of mine right now - it's 3am, in a near-silent house, and road, and I can most definitely hear my fan going, at 1998rpm. I can tell the machine is on, and when I turn it off, the constant fan noise will go, and I will then be able to tell it is OFF. They're all like this. Therefore, they are not silent! Quiet maybe, but not silent.
I was disappointed when I got my MacBook Pro, when I found I had been naive by taking people's comments of "silent" literally. Everyone should realise that this is a computer, with lots of moving parts, and it has to make some sound!
Anyway - I also listened to a new Sony Vaio over the weekend (I forget the model, but it was very similar spec to my MBP), and that was almost deadly quiet. So, it seems MBPs aren't even "silent" when compared to similar PC laptops...
Can only barely hear the hd when I'm doing a backup or a massive read. But with 4gb of ram and the fact I am always using the same files, the hd is hardly ever spinning. So this is the quietest laptop I've ever owned.
It's the same environment. I'm beginning to think it's just psychological. Earlier I had a process out of control, sucking up a lot of CPU usage, and I caught it because I wasn't doing anything and the fans were going 4000+ rpm. Since fixing the process my fans are fine, but maybe that quiet fan noise is just more noticeable to me this evening. Seems pretty clear they must've been running at 2000 rpm before, so probably tomorrow I will forget I even wrote these posts...
You can't really call a MBP silent. It may be quiet but it's not silent. In a quiet house at night, a MBA with SSD is silent when the fan is spinning at minimum. By comparison a new 2.6GHz MBP with 7200rpm drive is a noise factory with fans and disk noise.
But in a normal work environment it's "silent" in that the noise can't be heard over the normal ambient noise.
But in a normal work environment it's "silent" in that the noise can't be heard over the normal ambient noise.
I returned my MBP because of screen issues and got a new one. This new one is not as quiet as the old one - the hitachi hard drive is both noisier and warmer than the one in the previous machine, which was a fujitsu. For those who want/need the most quiet machine they can get, perhaps investigate whether it's the hard drive that's making noise and replace it with a quieter one?
You might want to use the app called fancontrol to lower the default fan rpms from 2000 to 1500 (though that won't change things under heavier load when the fan revs up) and then also consider finding a more silent hard drive. As I wrote above, the hitachi in my new machine is definitely louder than the fujitsu in the old one - I can hear access as well as spinning whereas with the old one I literally heard nothing.
I guess it makes a difference on which version of MBP you have. I have a gen 1 17", the fans spin at 998rpm at idle, and with the 5400rpm drive it truly is almost silent. With the newer models spinning the fans at ~2000rpm minimum, I can understand some saying they are not silent.
On mine though, it really is the hard drive that makes the most noise, just spinning it sounds like a low-rpm fan. the fujitsu I couldn't hear at all. When I lower the fan rpm to 1000, the sounds is maybe slightly less, but not really enough to make a difference.
How do you know that 2000 RPM is the normal "lowest setting"
How do you know that 2000 RPM is the lowest setting? I think this sounds high compared to my MB which seems to run around 1400 at idle. My MBP idles at 2000 when cold too, and I thought this must be a defect. I do not like the noise.
How do you know that 2000 RPM is the lowest setting? I think this sounds high compared to my MB which seems to run around 1400 at idle. My MBP idles at 2000 when cold too, and I thought this must be a defect. I do not like the noise.
My 2.4 Penryn is very quiet indeed. Too quiet in fact. I'd rather it ramped up the fan speed sooner than it did cos it does get very hot when running full load and still the fans stay slow!
I've got smcFanControl installed, and in all but the quietest surroundings have upped the basic idle speed to 2500RPM.
I've got smcFanControl installed, and in all but the quietest surroundings have upped the basic idle speed to 2500RPM.
Can you tell me your fan speeds when you first open up the computer?
You can read the speeds by installing the dashboard widget iStatPro if you haven't already.
Thanks,
Rich