MP 3,1 Mac Fan Control

[honeycombz]

Hey, trying to get a bit more knowledgeable about what is going on with my fans and heat, etc. Since I've made a lot of updates to my machine started thinking/worrying about it. I installed Mac Fan Control and have attached a photo of it’s default... not really sure what temps anything should be or what is too hot. Could use a bit of fans/heat 101 here.

 

[ActionableMango]

First thing you should do is switch to Celsius. These parts are rated by their manufacturers in C, every discussion about component part heat is in C, and all references you look up (for example TDP) will be in C.

It doesn't matter if you are accustomed to temperature in F, because there is no purpose in relating computer component temperatures with the weather, or a fever, or baking a pie.

 

[honeycombz]

Celsius it is. Where would I go from there. Is there a resource floating around that references temperature ranges for the different components or the optimal settings for specific machines?

 

[ActionableMango]

Celsius it is. Where would I go from there. Is there a resource floating around that references temperature ranges for the different components or the optimal settings for specific machines?

I cannot think of a one-stop resource that lists normal temperature ranges for all of those components. However, if you do a forum search for temperature you will find many other people have posted their screen shots, so you can look at those and see what is normal.

Your fan speeds look great. I don't see anything to be worried about. You could post a new screen shot with figures in C.

 

[honeycombz]

 

[h9826790]

I am not familiar with the 3,1, but all temperature looks good to me EXCEPT the PSU temperature. That looks way too high. May be some other 3,1 user can confirm if it's normal.

 

[honeycombz]

Yes, maybe others can confirm. Would be nice to know what the best settings should be.

 

[ActionableMango]

It wouldn't hurt to blow out the accumulated dust in the power supply to see if that improves anything.

 

[orph]

are they temps at idle or under load ?
looks fine apart from maybe PSU but not shore :E i try to keep mine under 50c but im on a 5.1.

 

[honeycombz]

Fairly idle, not entirely. How could I manipulate macs fan control to see about cooling the power supply? I'll go to the store today to pickup some compressed air for the dust.

 

[ActionableMango]

How could I manipulate macs fan control to see about cooling the power supply?

I'm going off of memory here, but I think you click Custom in the PS row on the left, select the source temperature sensor (which would be one of the power supply temp sensors), then lower the min and max temperatures. This will cause the fan speed to ramp up earlier (at lower temperatures) which should cool the power supply more, but will also make the computer louder.

Every situation is different so for the exact settings you'll need to experiment with them to balance temp and fan speed.

With my 4,1 upgrade to 12-cores I occasionally had some incredibly high fan speeds even with the CPUs at perfectly normal temps, so I had to use MacsFanControl just to restore some semblance of reasonableness.

 

[sailmac]

Attached shot of my 3,1 at idle. I agree with others your PSU values are on the higher side of what I’ve seen posted elsewhere.

Besides cleaning out the interior, perhaps check to make certain your your MP is not plugged into a source that is itself out of normal range. It might just be dust bunnies, but it might be that the power supply is struggling to cope with a poor condition on the line.

BTW, anticipating the question, I have 8x4GB 667MHz Samsung RAM that have flat heat spreaders but not the big black winged spreaders that came with the original 800MHz memory. Module B2 tends to run hot (currently 69°C at idle per iStat widget) and shoots up pretty quickly under load. So I have the CPU_MEM and Exhaust fans sensing FBDIMM Riser A Slot 2 with a custom fan speed curve I derived after a little experimentation. Some people will look at this as being unnecessarily conservative and wasting energy by running the fans higher on idle than Apple engineers intended (not to mention increasing the rate at which I breed dust bunnies inside the machine, lol) but I feel better about keeping that RAM stick running cooler. Even under load it never hits the max temp I have configured.

Hope that helps!

 

[honeycombz]

What temperature range should I be looking to get the power supply at? Under 50? I cranked the constant value for PS to 800 just to see and it didn’t seem to impact the temp at all. Also, does the RAM you are referencing run cooler? Where did you buy it? Also, if I have an app that runs full screen and I want to monitor the temp is there a way I can get the fan control window to stay on the top?

 

[h9826790]

Below 50C is a reasonable target. The too PSU is heavily clog up by dust, crank up the fan a bit won't help anything. The moving air simply can reach the components.

His ambient temperature is quite a bit lower than yours. You can't expect to reach his temperature in the same fan setting even with the same hardware (e.g. DIMMs).

 

[sailmac]

Under 50 would be good, but under 60 will still be a great improvement from where you are now.

I found the RAM on eBay, and it's nothing special. Under load and not wearing big heat spreaders this RAM gets warmer than the Apple stock and OWC RAM that used to be in it, but I've compensated with fan control. If you're content with your existing RAM then no need to try something different.

Also, if cleaning out dust bunnies lowers your PSU temps then your RAM temps are likely to come down, too. If your machine is that dirty at the PSUs then it's likely dirty everywhere else inside.

Hint: when you open up the case and blow it out, do it outside or someplace you don't mind getting dirty. If it has been a long time since it was de-bunnied you might be shocked at how much crud has accumulated inside. Somewhere on this forum is a post explaining how to really thoroughly clean inside a cMP. Blowing out fans, heat sinks, grills, nooks and crannies...

As for a temp monitor sitting on top of full screen app, sorry I haven't played with something like that. In MFC > Preferences > Diagnostics there is an option to Enable logging. I haven't tried it, and I don't know what info is captured nor in what format, but you could easily try it out and see if it gives real-time temp data that you could look at later and correlate with your full screen app's behavior. My hunch is that the log file will be readable by Console app.

 

[honeycombz]

Ok. I wll start with dust. Hoping I can access enough with compressed air straw to avoid removing the optical as I have all sorts of things in tgat bay I would have to disconnect.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Hint: when you open up the case and blow it out, do it outside or someplace you don't mind getting dirty.....

It should be clean enough to eat from!

 

[h9826790]

Ok. I wll start with dust. Hoping I can access enough with compressed air straw to avoid removing the optical as I have all sorts of things in tgat bay I would have to disconnect.

Sounds like you have extra PSU / SSDs sits inside the empty optical bay which effectively block the airflow to the PSU (or keep releasing warm air to the PSU intake). And eventually contribute to the high PSU temperature.

 

[honeycombz]

Yes, I have an SSD in the top optical and an optical in the bottom. I haven’t taken everything out yet to do a full cleaning but did open up the side and did some superficial cleaning and was able to get some air through some openings around the PSU and get a dust cloud shooting out the back which was promising. I also have an external sitting on top of the case directly above the PSU which I have elevated a bit so there is air flow between the top of the case and the bottom of the external. Just to see I have set PSU Fan to 850rpm constant for a bit and the Supply 1 is 63 and Supply 2 is 57 give or take a few degrees. I'm attaching a pic which shows the SSD in the optical bay. Also OS6 it looks like you are running an additional fan? Or is that blue thing OEM.

 

[h9826790]

Just an SSD won't block the airflow. Anyway, it's more effective to apply compress air from the back, and let the dust coming out from the front.

 

[ActionableMango]

Anyway, it's more effective to apply compress air from the back, and let the dust coming out from the front.

Yes, that is my experience too. However, I generally just do it both ways to be thorough.

 

[honeycombz]

Thanks for the tip. I was trying to do the opposite!

 

[honeycombz]

So, I blasted out more dust from the back to front but I don’t know if I'm really going to be getting below 50. Supply 1 is 66 and Supply 2 is 59 give or take a few degrees. That is with fan running at constant value of 850 which I don’t want to leave as a constant in case the fan were to overheat and need more obviously. Any other tips? Maybe I've just got too much juice running through this thing. 4 HDDs, 2 SSDs, 1 Optical, GTX 680, Apricorn Velocity Solo, 14GB RAM.

 

[sailmac]

I don’t want to leave as a constant in case the fan were to overheat

I don't think you need to be concerned about the fan overheating by running at constant 850 RPM. The fan is designed to run at over 2000 RPM without overheating. Higher RPM means it will produce more noise and will wear out sometime sooner, but 850RPM is not egregious.

I'm curious to see how blowing out the case has affected your temps across all components, not just PSUs. Care to post a new snapshot of MFC while the machine is idle?

 

[honeycombz]

I just meant that if the PSU temp got so high it wanted MORE than the constant value, then that would be bad which is why some sensor based range would be better but I don’t know enough about that yet and don’t want to make things worse for myself.