Yesterday I did a little experiment: I tried to overheat my Mbp (15.4" mid 2009, working flawlessly so far) using CpuTest with 2 instances to maximize cpu's load. Cpu's temperature reached about 95' C in 10 minutes and stabilize, but I did notice that fan never spins up, stuck at about 2000 rpm. Is this a normal behavior ? At what temperature should I expect fans to increase rpm speed ?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Macbook Pro: fan never spins up ?
- Thread starter Max(IT)
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You can install FanControl for Mac OS X and set up your own parameters when the fans should start spinning.
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/
I have noticed it takes quite a while until the fans speed up on my MBP 13" too. I simply installed Fan Control (as stated in an earlier post) and now I don't fear for the temperature of my MBP anymore.
I've set my base speed to 2000 RPM, lower threshold = 60.0 degrees C and upper threshold to 80 degrees C.
Now the CPU temperature barely goes above 70-75 degrees when converting stuff in Handbrake. And all is well.
I've set my base speed to 2000 RPM, lower threshold = 60.0 degrees C and upper threshold to 80 degrees C.
Now the CPU temperature barely goes above 70-75 degrees when converting stuff in Handbrake. And all is well.
so, with this setting, your MBP's fan starts to accelerate passing 60° C to reach full speed at 80° C, is that correct ?
I have had weird fan issues on my late 2006 MBP C2D for the past 2 years. Not debilitating, but annoying. They'd spin up to 6000 RPM for no reason and stay there for 5+ minutes, it happened all the time. Almost always when I tried to watch any Flash video. The fan control software didn't seem to help.
I suggest you try resetting the SMC, which controls all kinds of low-level stuff, like your battery and your fans. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964 -- I did this but it didn't help my situation, certainly worth a try though.
I finally took my Mac to the Apple Store, they tested it, and found a bad SMC chip. They gave me a logic board replacement (and a few other things, like an I/O board replacement, what the hell is that??). Nice bonus since I have only 1 month left on my AppleCare.
If you have continued problems, let Apple look at it.
I suggest you try resetting the SMC, which controls all kinds of low-level stuff, like your battery and your fans. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964 -- I did this but it didn't help my situation, certainly worth a try though.
I finally took my Mac to the Apple Store, they tested it, and found a bad SMC chip. They gave me a logic board replacement (and a few other things, like an I/O board replacement, what the hell is that??). Nice bonus since I have only 1 month left on my AppleCare.
If you have continued problems, let Apple look at it.
Actually I have no problem at all.
The lower threshold is simply set by Apple a little bit too low in my opinion.
I tried Fan Control as suggested above and it is simply marvelous: now under full load (on both cores) the cpu temperature is below 80° C and fan stay at about 3400 rpm (not so loud).
Watching YouTube HD the temperature is at about 63° C (cpu load at 44%) and fan at 2200 rpm (almost silent): perfect !
You can install FanControl for Mac OS X and set up your own parameters when the fans should start spinning.
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/
thank you very much for the suggestion.
Setting my base speed to 2000 rpm, lower thr at 60° C and upper thr at 90° C, I am very happy with my notebook behavior.
You can install FanControl for Mac OS X and set up your own parameters when the fans should start spinning.
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/
Thanks for that..... I keep meaning to download it, but keep getting sidetracked. The other day, my MBP's CPU temp went up to 103°C when I was converting a video using Handbrake.
Now they just need to fix the typo in the very first line on the page:
with FanControl correctly set you could have CPU temp at least 20° C lower than that.
Amazing !
Yup!
...Well, yeah. Or no... first of all, the computer would be terribly loud (fans blowing at full speed all the time) and I don't think there's enough cooling inside a MBP to get it that low all the time.
In my case it's just like that: fan speed up only when needed (at temperature above 70°C) and approaching 3200-3400 rpm the cpu's temperature stabilize, so the Macbook doesn't need the fan at full speed.
I.e. watching an hd flash video, the fan remaing at about 2400 rpm (almost silent) while cpu temperature stay in the range 55-65° C
Just another question: do you suggest use of smcFanControl over FanControl ? It seems to be newer and updated ... I don't know ...