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MBA 11' fan idle vs. MBP

M

Maccie2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi!

I'm reading here that most of your MBA 11' have completely inaudible fans, but my fan is audible in a silent room. It's not very noticeable, but you can hear the MBA fan crackle softly when MBA's waking up from sleep. Also at idle (2000rpm) there is a soft hi-pitched whirring/humming sound, that I don't hear on my MBP 15'.
I'm wondering if I have a badly balanced/faulty fan, or if this is normal?

Maybe I'm obsessing, but I often use my MBA in a dead silent room so any sound is noticeable.. 🙂

Could some 11' MBA users here confirm if the MBA fan are slightly more noisier at idle than MBP fans?

Thanks! 🙂
 
I can't get a completely silent room. Always some level of distant road noise of otherwise.
In my case, I could never hear the fan in the 11" MBA. My MBP on the other hand, spins up to hair dryer setting.
 
Thanks for the replys. I think my fan is a bit more noisy than usual, but I think I'll wait and see for now.. Thanks again. 🙂
 
Just registered to reply to your thread 🙂

I'm having the same "issue" with my now 2 and a half week old MBA 11"

The same crackling sound when waking from sleep and humming/whirring fan when idling.

But it wasn't like that till the day before yesterday. So my guess is, that the fans bearing or grease or whatever (cause I thought it uses magnetic force to stay in place) is faulty...

I don't have much time, so it's difficult for me to head for a store and let them have a look on it. But I definitely will have them take a look on it as soon as I can manage to do so...

The MBA is right beside my iMac and I can hear the fan from the MBA and the HDD spinning from the iMac...

I tried to fix it by raising the rpm of the MBAs fan with smc fan control for a couple of minutes, but it didn't help.

Greetings from Germany 🙂
 
I tried to get hold of a screwdriver so I could open up the MBA to see what's going on, but Apple uses unique 5-point torx screws, which are not commercially available. Please tell us how it goes..I don't think I'm gonna bother messing around with it myself..too much hassle.
 
Maccie2 said:
I tried to get hold of a screwdriver so I could open up the MBA to see what's going on, but Apple uses unique 5-point torx screws, which are not commercially available. Please tell us how it goes..I don't think I'm gonna bother messing around with it myself..too much hassle.
Click to expand...

I won't disagree about the hassle, but they're certainly commericially available, for example:

http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/DURATOOL-BS-11T-/22-9795

Not sure what size the Air uses, so it's possible you'd have to search around for something smaller, but googling for 5-point Torx brings up plenty of results.
 
A quick heads up to the "mysterious crackling sound" story:

I went to an apple reseller today, which has no fixing service, and took a look at the other 11.6" MBAs which were standing around on those shiny tables.

ALL of them make that sound when waking from sleep, so I'm now rather satisfied and I think that this sound is normal.

The employees bugged me the whole time, why I was holding my ear so close to the 11.6" MBAs xD
 
Thanks, I kinda felt like a nerd asking about such an inconsequential thing in the first place. 🙂 Good to know. I was wondering if my MBA fan was unbalanced, thus giving off more noise than necessary. Thanks!
 
I have not heard my fan do any kind of crackle, but it does have a high pitched whir to it that I can hear in a quiet room while at 2000 rpm.
I have an 11.6 base model.
 
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