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My fan broke =[ / Passive Cooling - UPDATE

ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 5, 2007
4,547
13
Yay Area, CA
I turned on the system from sleep today, and suddenly I hear a weird sound, like the fan was trying to rev but unable to. I open up iStat and I see 0RPM for the fan :(

I scheduled an appt for the Apple Store tomorrow morning, but I'm kinda worried that they won't be able to fix it by tomorrow. Does anyone know if there's a good chance or not of it being fixed by tomorrow? I need this system for a presentation tuesday evening...
 
I'm sorry to say that I highly doubt that it will be done in one day. Perhaps you'll be lucky since it is the latest rev, but count on more in the 3-5 day range :(
 
I know, I'm trying to prepare for the worst. The real big issue is the presentation I did is in Keynote... and my friend's extra laptops I can borrow run on Windows so I have to do the hassle of converting it and hope it doesn't break any animations and such...

At least with the fan breaking they can fix the problem where whenever I move the system, the fan makes a buzzing noise...

I guess the good news is that I have a cloned copy of the entire internal drive on my external 250GB just earlier today... therefore I can always work off that drive on the iMac and still have access to my files

I'm really hoping that it'll be repaired in the same amount of time as my Unibody MacBook, in which they replaced the screen by 4pm the same day (dropped it off around 10am)
 
ayeying said:
I know, I'm trying to prepare for the worst. The real big issue is the presentation I did is in Keynote... and my friend's extra laptops I can borrow run on Windows so I have to do the hassle of converting it and hope it doesn't break any animations and such...

At least with the fan breaking they can fix the problem where whenever I move the system, the fan makes a buzzing noise...

I guess the good news is that I have a cloned copy of the entire internal drive on my external 250GB just earlier today... therefore I can always work off that drive on the iMac and still have access to my files

I'm really hoping that it'll be repaired in the same amount of time as my Unibody MacBook, in which they replaced the screen by 4pm the same day (dropped it off around 10am)
Click to expand...

where your in california, it should be done the same day.
 
fan broke

Hi,

First, sorry for my english.

One day my MBA makes the same noise, i opened and there's a lot of dirty in the fan, the istat says 0 rpm. I clean it, and now works fine.

If you don't want to open you can try to blow where the hot air normally get out.
 
joaquinsfy said:
Hi,

First, sorry for my english.

One day my MBA makes the same noise, i opened and there's a lot of dirty in the fan, the istat says 0 rpm. I clean it, and now works fine.

If you don't want to open you can try to blow where the hot air normally get out.
Click to expand...

I opened it up already. The fan is literally not moving. My appointment is in 1.5 hours, we'll see what Apple says.

Amazingly though, I can easily run the system without the fan and use its passive cooling ability. So far, my temps haven't rose over 85 deg C even running a virtual machine. It looks like the air has a pretty good passive cooling ability despite its noisy fan.
 
Okay, just came back from the Apple Store. The genius took a look at the system, apparently, he didn't even bother doing a hardware test, just did a disk verify for some reason....

anyways, in the end, he ordered a new logic board and fan assembly and should arrive by wednesday. Afterwards, he said there's a good chance the system (if brought in, in the morning) I should be able to get it back the same day before closing.

Meanwhile, he said I'm able to use the system, just monitor the temperatures and make sure it doesn't hit 100 deg C. At that point, I should shut down the system and let it cool down, yadada.

Furthermore, I asked the genius about the battery. According to him, regardless if i have a 1 year warranty or 3 year (applecare), as long as my battery health drops under 80% before 750 cycles, I can go in and get it replaced. He did mention that I have a high battery cycle for a system purchased only 3 months ago. I'm at 251 cycles to this date
 
Ayeying! The maestro =)

Hope you get it fixed soon. In the meantime, you might want to do what I do sometimes and surf with the laptop sitting in the freezer (box freezer). Nothing beats trying to cream the processor knowing it's being pummeled with sub-zero :D
 
ayeying said:
Okay, just came back from the Apple Store. The genius took a look at the system, apparently, he didn't even bother doing a hardware test, just did a disk verify for some reason....

anyways, in the end, he ordered a new logic board and fan assembly and should arrive by wednesday. Afterwards, he said there's a good chance the system (if brought in, in the morning) I should be able to get it back the same day before closing.

Meanwhile, he said I'm able to use the system, just monitor the temperatures and make sure it doesn't hit 100 deg C. At that point, I should shut down the system and let it cool down, yadada.

Furthermore, I asked the genius about the battery. According to him, regardless if i have a 1 year warranty or 3 year (applecare), as long as my battery health drops under 80% before 750 cycles, I can go in and get it replaced. He did mention that I have a high battery cycle for a system purchased only 3 months ago. I'm at 251 cycles to this date
Click to expand...

i am interested in the run times without the fan running,
could be interesting :p.

your battery cycle is like mine....charged 4-6 times a day....haha

2 months for me 194 cycles :p

my hypermac battery comes tommorw....hopefully it will reduce the usage :p
 
i bought mine 2 weeks ago and I'm already with 18 cycles and 96% of the capacity :eek:
 

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MacModMachine said:
i am interested in the run times without the fan running,
could be interesting :p.

your battery cycle is like mine....charged 4-6 times a day....haha

2 months for me 194 cycles :p

my hypermac battery comes tommorw....hopefully it will reduce the usage :p
Click to expand...

So far, after coming back home, I've been running the system for about 2 hours now. Its holding at upper 70 and lower 80 deg C temperatures without the fan running. I'm currently only running a Vista Virtual Machine and nothing else on the OSX side. The Vista VM is installing Service Pack updates and other updates, so its pushing the CPU at 50% (allocated 1 core to vm)

I am using the system on a glass desk. The bottom casing is getting hot, however, it feels the same as with a running fan :confused:
 
ayeying said:
So far, after coming back home, I've been running the system for about 2 hours now. Its holding at upper 70 and lower 80 deg C temperatures without the fan running. I'm currently only running a Vista Virtual Machine and nothing else on the OSX side. The Vista VM is installing Service Pack updates and other updates, so its pushing the CPU at 50% (allocated 1 core to vm)

I am using the system on a glass desk. The bottom casing is getting hot, however, it feels the same as with a running fan :confused:
Click to expand...

very interesting, seems like even with the fan it hits the same thermal maximum temp or 70-85c.

might as well not have the fan, im sure if you max out the cpu it will climb a bit.
 
MacModMachine said:
very interesting, seems like even with the fan it hits the same thermal maximum temp or 70-85c.

might as well not have the fan, im sure if you max out the cpu it will climb a bit.
Click to expand...

That, I'm extremely positive. It seems that with this configuration, I can't manage a 100% cpu (both cores) for a long period of time, but for say normal web surfing, music, even my virtual machines, it can handle the heat for a long period of time if not stressed.

At least I have a "silent" (except the clicking of the fan trying to rev but won't go anywhere) macbook air lol
 
if ayeying's no-fan experience proves successful to any degree, well i think we have our answer to the mac noise problem folks.... :D
 
Jobsian said:
if ayeying's no-fan experience proves successful to any degree, well i think we have our answer to the mac noise problem folks.... :D
Click to expand...

So far, my results has been pretty good. But it is a constant monitoring of the temperatures, just in case ya know.
 
Sorry to hear about your fan; good to hear that it's running well with passive cooling; my problem is iStat says 130º and the computer is still running with 2500RPM fan speed. That worries me.
 
I say 130 deg F... C sounds a bit hot.

The fan is designed to run all the time, mine's just broken :( No gaming in Windows right now thats for sure lol
 
Okay, so after using it constantly as much as possible since the fan broke, I've noticed a few things:

1) The system, if you're using it very lightly like iChat, E-Mail, Web Surfing w/o Flash, iTunes ; then the system would work great, the temperatures are cooler than with a fan :confused:

2) If the system is taxed, kernel_task kicks in very quickly, much quicker than with a fan (obviously)

3) The system, if your heatsink is equipped with properly applied thermal paste, then the system shouldn't shut down at all, just have kernel_task kick in making everything useless.

4) Even with coolbook, the kernel_task also kicks in, so it looks like its not a overheating CPU problem but overheating GPU that causes kernel_task kicks in.
 
Just came back from dropping off the laptop... Apple said it'll take 5 days to replace the logic board and fan... :confused:

Seriously? I can take apart a car in 5 days and put it back together...
 
ayeying said:
Just came back from dropping off the laptop... Apple said it'll take 5 days to replace the logic board and fan... :confused:

Seriously? I can take apart a car in 5 days and put it back together...
Click to expand...

That's what I got on my hinge / display estimate too. Seems they have to send it away? I thought they were smart enough to do it there? Come on, they are geniuses for Pete's sake.:rolleyes:
 
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