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Nik

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 3, 2007
696
1,511
France
I work with my Retina MacBook Pro (512GB SSD//16GB Ram//nVidia 750m) with an external display and the fans spin up very often even at only 10-20% CPU usage.

Is this normal? I thought the cooling system would be more efficient than this.
 
Monitor temps. You could try a SMC reset for what it's worth. Mine doesn't do this until I push the machine to its limits. The first time I heard the fans was while trying The Sims. Other than that, I've never heard them.
 
I made an SMC reset. No change. :(
Does anybody else have this issue? As soon as the CPU is being used the fans spin up really fast (within 15 seconds)
 
While playing Portal fans won't spin but while playing some low end flash game I got from App Store they spun to 6k instantly, might be the program you are using?
 
Disabling Turbo Boost helped! :)
-> http://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/

BUT - as you might have guessed - it is slower.
Handbrake Encode WITHOUT TurboBoost: 200fps on average
Handbrake Encode WITH TurboBoost: 280fps on average

Without TurboBoost, the fans do not spin up, the CPU is at 65°C.
With TurboBoost, the fans do spin up quickly, the CPU is at 85+°C

Would be great to be able to limit the TurboBoost to 3.0 GHz instead of 3.5 GHz, i think that would be a great tradeoff!
 
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BUT - as you might have guessed - it is slower.
Handbrake Encode WITHOUT TurboBoost: 200fps on average
Handbrake Encode WITH TurboBoost: 280fps on average
What encodes do you achieve such speeds with? SD video (ie DVD)??
Because I observed 21fps converting FullHD BDrip both with Turbo enabled and disabled. So basically, I didn't notice any speed difference.
 
What encodes do you achieve such speeds with? SD video (ie DVD)??
Because I observed 21fps converting FullHD BDrip both with Turbo enabled and disabled. So basically, I didn't notice any speed difference.

It was a SD Video to iPod conversion.
 
When I'm uploading RAW files in Aperture, my late 2013 15" 2.3Ghz, 16GB, 750m, 512GB machine's fans ramp up very quickly! Is this normal? It gets warm (not scorching) within a few minutes and as soon as the import has completed, it goes back to normal (warmish) temperatures.
My late 2012 21.5" 3.1Ghz, 16GB, 650m, 1TB FD machine doesn't display these characteristics on the same import at all!

It seems to be a issue with my rMBP only!
Any thoughts ladies and gentlemen?
 
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