New 13 inch Macbook Air Fan Noise

[Typswif2fingers]

Simply amazing..

The fan is working and it is making noise?! Really? Good god.. Terrible..

To alleviate that failure in the mechanism I would recommend either (or both) of the following and the fan will be silent:

1. Purchase an MBA and never use it.
2. Purchase an MBA and open the bottom and remove the fan.

Voilà.. no fan noise..

 

[Taank]

Simply amazing..

The fan is working and it is making noise?! Really? Good god.. Terrible..

To alleviate that failure in the mechanism I would recommend either (or both) of the following and the fan will be silent:

1. Purchase an MBA and never use it.
2. Purchase an MBA and open the bottom and remove the fan.

Voilà.. no fan noise..

Wow. Snarky.

People want their new expensive purchase to be as quiet as possible and are evaluating/discussing it from that aspect.

Very helpful post though. We all think you are very smart and clever now.

 

[Typswif2fingers]

Wow. Snarky.

People want their new expensive purchase to be as quiet as possible and are evaluating/discussing it from that aspect.

Very helpful post though. We all think you are very smart and clever now.

I did not write it to be smart...

If someone here is studying or is a mechanical engineer ask them about why airflow is introduced into the operating systems, elements or items of equipment.

By its very nature, airflow is noisier than no airflow... all things being equal.

 

[JSalig]

I believe it's called making an informed decision.

 

[entatlrg]

Simply amazing..

The fan is working and it is making noise?! Really? Good god.. Terrible..

To alleviate that failure in the mechanism I would recommend either (or both) of the following and the fan will be silent:

1. Purchase an MBA and never use it.
2. Purchase an MBA and open the bottom and remove the fan.

Voilà.. no fan noise..

If you dont like what you read in a thread then shut up and move along. No need to litter anyone's thread with this crap. Smart asses do better on windows forums I heard, you should go ....

 

[Typswif2fingers]

If you dont like what you read in a thread then shut up and move along. No need to litter anyone's thread with this crap. Smart asses do better on windows forums I heard, you should go ....

Ouch.. It hurts...

Seriously though. The point is that if you decide to use some of heavier applications your machine might get a little bit warm. If you do not wish for the fan to be heard... well... at this time there is no solution for that problem if the means of cooling are provided by airflow... Airflow systems tend to be noisy..

 

[Cynicalone]

The i7 is very quite.

I have iStat Menus installed so I can see it is working, it just seems so quite compared to the my old laptop.

 

[Taank]

I did not write it to be smart...

If someone here is studying or is a mechanical engineer ask them about why airflow is introduced into the operating systems, elements or items of equipment.

By its very nature, airflow is noisier than no airflow... all things being equal.

The airflow itself, mechanism delivering the airflow, and amount of airflow even needed, based on design, can all generate varying levels of audible noise. That variance is precisely what is being discussed in this thread.

I'm sure any helpful input you can contribute to the discussion, in that respect, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ozthegweat]

Seriously though. The point is that if you decide to use some of heavier applications your machine might get a little bit warm. If you do not wish for the fan to be heard... well... at this time there is no solution for that problem if the means of cooling are provided by airflow... Airflow systems tend to be noisy..

You miss the point. Nobody questions the necessity of a fan or criticizes the noise it produces during heavy load.
This thread is about an abnormally loud fan noise, which is clearly a defect. Why else do you think everyone else has an almost silent system?

 

[Jaro65]

Streaming Pandora, browsing the web using Chrome, and working on an Excel spreadsheet...my 13" i7 MBA is silent (2k rpm). I watched an HD video for a few minutes and the laptop was much quieter compared to my previous 2010 13" MBA. These are just qualitative observations, I know, but I do perceive a difference compared to my previous MBA.

 

[waynep5]

You miss the point. Nobody questions the necessity of a fan or criticizes the noise it produces during heavy load.
This thread is about an abnormally loud fan noise, which is clearly a defect. Why else do you think everyone else has an almost silent system?

Actually it's not the fan spinning, the heat, OR the fan noise in my case, it's the fact that the battery life will be dramatically affected.

With high temps and constantly spinning fan the system was reporting less than 3 hours of battery life. Not something I bought a MacBook Air for.

 

[Geotrash]

Update from my 17 today...

Not that anyone needs to be following my adventures, but here is an update from my i7 today. Opened the lid this morning, resumed the XP virtual machine, listening to Pandora and occasional browsing. The fan hasn't come on yet in more than 2 hours of use.

Just wanted to give the folks on this thread an additional data point to help you get a better feel from a real-world use scenario.

Best,
Dave

 

[daza1000]

i have the 13" baseline i have tested 1080p video watched for 10 mins while browsing and could not hear the fans for the slimness of this computer its top notch

 

[Wrongshui]

I bought the ultimate i7 at the store yesterday. Ran it for about 8 hours, the only time I noticed the fan at all, was when I was using flash (facebook game), and it briefly ramped up (not to the same 6000 like flash did, likely 3500ish) with netflix, using silverlight. I did not check the CPU while this was happening, will likely do tonight.

Otherwise, its been beyond smooth. I had VLC running a high def rip, 5 desktops, multiple firefox and safari windows, outlook downloading my huge exchange pst... and it was instantaneous to gesture switch between desktops, even with the video running in the background.

No lag at all. Though, I will test it out more over the next week, and if the fan ramps up besides using flash, I'll likely see where we're at i5 vs i7 wise, and return it for an i5, along with the stupid printer I bought... that rebate was tempting.

Btw, love this board, been a lurker for the past few months. Most everyone, except for the small man complexers are amazingly helpful.

 

[iphoneblack]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/9A5248d Safari/6533.18.5)

I think only 11" i7 having fan issues.
Good thing I ordered i5

 

[Apple Expert]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/9A5248d Safari/6533.18.5)

I think only 11" i7 having fan issues.
Good thing I ordered i5

My 13" does have the same issue. It appears to be random as not every i7 has these issues.

 

[MarkosXT]

Oh crap, I don't like what I'm reading here, I have a macbook air 13" with core i7 on the way but I guess I'll just exchange it for core i5.

 

[Apple Expert]

Oh crap, I don't like what I'm reading here, I have a macbook air 13" with core i7 on the way but I guess I'll just exchange it for core i5.

To each is own. You may get lucky. I was really hoping I got a quite i7. I knew of fan noise and heat prior, but was thinking it was fixed. Maybe it's just Intel's design in the i7 in general. Seems to be wide spread amoungst other computer manufactures. Looks like I'm heading to i5. All the reviews on them are much more positive.

 

[Typswif2fingers]

You miss the point. Nobody questions the necessity of a fan or criticizes the noise it produces during heavy load.
This thread is about an abnormally loud fan noise, which is clearly a defect. Why else do you think everyone else has an almost silent system?

Indeed, I must've missed the point.

Apologies...

Have to admit though, quite enjoy being a sarcastic bastard...

 

[MarkosXT]

You may get lucky.

I don't want to risk it, I live in South America with nearly constant 32C+ room temperatures. I don't like hot laptops, I thought the i7 and the i5 would have nearly the same temperatures since they both have the same TDP but i guess i was wrong.

 

[aristobrat]

I don't want to risk it, I live in South America with nearly constant 32C+ room temperatures. I don't like hot laptops, I thought the i7 and the i5 would have nearly the same temperatures since they both have the same TDP but i guess i was wrong.

I think it's too early to tell. There are way too many variables between what each person posting here is doing with their Air. Personally, I'm waiting until Anandtech (or similar) does an in-depth review.

Would this be your first Mac notebook? With the unibody aluminum design, I'd imagine it'd feel warm to the touch in a 32C+ room even if it were turned off.

 

[TheGenerous]

I just checked the previous MBA and has a similar fan noise, but to be honest is very quiet, definitely something's wrong if it's louder and better report your MBA

 

[thatisme]

Im using SMC Fan Control on the 13 2011 Air, and it is registering 199 degrees, 6500 RPM whilst running a Time Machine Backup for the first time. It is dead quite until it's under load, then the fan sounds like a jet engine for a bit

While it is registering a scalding temp, the case is fairly cool... much cooler than my 2008 MBP 15".

 

[kis]

I don't have my MBA yet but I'm definitely going with the i5. I made the mistake and got the i7 MBP and the fan is a major issue for me. It's quiet if I only browse the web (at least on websites that don't use a lot of flash), but doing anything just a tad more CPU-demanding causes the fan to spin up drastically. And that baby is LOUD, sounds like a vacuum cleaner :-(

I was hoping that the slightly slower i7 in the MBA wouldn't have that problem - but from what I'm reading here, it's the same thing all over again. i5 it is for me.

 

[theSeb]

I think it's too early to tell. There are way too many variables between what each person posting here is doing with their Air. Personally, I'm waiting until Anandtech (or similar) does an in-depth review.

Would this be your first Mac notebook? With the unibody aluminum design, I'd imagine it'd feel warm to the touch in a 32C+ room even if it were turned off.

I've yet to see anyone reporting heat and noise "issues" to actually back it up with a screenshot and explain what they are doing. It seems like the usual MR overreaction to me. Not even Apple can bend the laws of physics... yet