MacBook Pro fans won't stop, even after smc reset

[Bangha]

Hi everyone,

I come to you with a fan issue on my mid-2009 15 inch MBP. As stated in the title the fans are usually going crazy, even when just surfing the web on a couple of tabs without doing anything strenuous. An smc reset fixes the issue anywhere from an hour to a couple of days before it sounds like it's trying to take-off.

That aside the computer works like a charm I upgraded it to 8GB of ram and a SSD drive a few years ago and have replaced the battery twice. I do lots of heavy audio editing and recording on it no issues whatsoever except for the incessant fan noise.

Any suggestions as to what I could do to stop the problem?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[mdnz]

Open up your Macbook and see if the fans are dirty. If they're relatively clean keep an eye on your Activity Monitor and see if there are processes taking up much CPU time.

 

[Bangha]

Open up your Macbook and see if the fans are dirty. If they're relatively clean keep an eye on your Activity Monitor and see if there are processes taking up much CPU time.

Thanks @mdnz. The fans are pretty much clean, just a bit of dust here and there. What would you recommend to get rid of even the smallest particles?

 

[mdnz]

Thanks @mdnz. The fans are pretty much clean, just a bit of dust here and there. What would you recommend to get rid of even the smallest particles?

Check out this guy's solution: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/85125/Cleaning+the+fans+without+removing+them

 

[NoBoMac]

Had something similar recently on my 2008, but unfortunately, no solution. And unfortunately, the GPU died, killing the Mac.

Things were going ok, but suddenly, fans went nuts and temperature monitor spiked, nothing going on other than a tab or two in Safari (and usual programs idle in the Dock).

In hindsight, two issues might have been related (ie. GPU was in death throes), as fans were clean when I reopened the unit to retrieve the SSD.

 

[Bangha]

Had something similar recently on my 2008, but unfortunately, no solution. And unfortunately, the GPU died, killing the Mac.

Things were going ok, but suddenly, fans went nuts and temperature monitor spiked, nothing going on other than a tab or two in Safari (and usual programs idle in the Dock).

In hindsight, two issues might have been related (ie. GPU was in death throes), as fans were clean when I reopened the unit to retrieve the SSD.

Interesting NoBoMac. I have an extra GPU in my machine and just disabled it, + I installed Macs Fan Control. The fans have been behaving without issues so far. MFC is set to Auto too, I'm not messing with it. Temperatures have dropped considerably and the fans are quiet. I''l reanable the Nvida card later to see if this kicks off the fan racket again.

 

[cruisin]

One of the thermal sensors might be dying, and fans tend to default to full speed if they can't get a temperature reading. So when you switch GPUs the fan looses its mind. Specks of dust are fine, as long as it is generally clean.

Or the Nvidia might have thermal paste problems (like drying out) so it cannot transfer the heat away. MFC should tell you the sensor temperatures so check if any are high when the fan is loud, especially the GPU.