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New 13 inch Macbook Air Fan Noise

thatisme said:
I believe my situation with these processes running and eating up CPU %, the 199 temp is with Turboboost cranking. I've been on the computer now for about 3-1/2 hours after killing those processes, and I have only hit 125 degrees once, and this is with me working in Excel for that whole time... After 3-1/2 hours, I still have 75% battery, and show 5 hours remaining (moving target) and in that 3 hours the MBA has been cool to the touch and has had NO fan noise.
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I totally believe the new SB processor run cool during light use, in fact, some review shows that 11' MBP 13" runs cooler than 10' MBP 13" during light browsing or anything light on CPU.

However, I'll be using the laptop for audio works which at time can be running about 70~80% CPU constant due to real time processing plugins in DAW.

Of course the new SB will be much more efficient and I probably will be using about 50% instead of the 70~80% on the same setup. Decisions, decisions...
 
I have the 13" i7 256GB and it's my first Mac. It seems to behave like every other laptop I've had - when it gets busy it gets warmer and the fans spin up.

Mine has been silent until I was installing Xcode I could hear it really ramp up, but then it quickly quiesced once the install was complete.
 
thatisme said:
I have the i5 base 13", and have had issues with horrible heat and fan noise until I checked the Activity Monitor. There were 2 processes just terrorizing my processor...
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Great troubleshooting! Hopefully those guys don't act up any more!
 
I went to my nearest Apple Store (still about 50km away) today and bought the i5 MBA. They didn't have any i7 anyway, so not much choice.

In any case - the thing is absolutely dead silent - I went through the whole installation this morning, synced my dropbox etc. The fan never turned on.

The performance gain for the i7 is only about 25% max, so I fail to see the logic in paying 100$ more to get a noisier version. Unless of course you only need it for video editing - but then again: who'd buy a Macbook Air for heavy video editing.

Peter
 
Had the i5 13" since release... yet to hear the fans turn on, truly amazing
and still running on the original charge just opening and closing the lid.

Only weakness of the product is the display, wish they had a IPS option.
 
kis said:
I went to my nearest Apple Store (still about 50km away) today and bought the i5 MBA. They didn't have any i7 anyway, so not much choice.

In any case - the thing is absolutely dead silent - I went through the whole installation this morning, synced my dropbox etc. The fan never turned on.

The performance gain for the i7 is only about 25% max, so I fail to see the logic in paying 100$ more to get a noisier version. Unless of course you only need it for video editing - but then again: who'd buy a Macbook Air for heavy video editing.

Peter
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Try about 7-9% faster. Not a huge difference considering you get more heat.
 
Actually I'm more concerned about the heat and battery life. Frankly the fan running at full 6500rpm doesn't bother me a single bit. I've lived with PC laptop for years and they all make such noise all time. My wall fan at speed 1 is still louder than the MBA fan at full speed.
 
Those that are having problems with heat and fans with the 13 inch i7 can you post what processes are going on to give an idea of what might be causing it.

Is it still a problem after spotlight indexing and other such things that go on in the first uses of a new mac finish?
 
13" i5 my fans are coming on all the time. Been using it for over a day now and its pretty annoying. And no spotlight is done indexing. Im usually just using safari and iTunes.
 
drew0020 said:
13" i5 my fans are coming on all the time. Been using it for over a day now and its pretty annoying. And no spotlight is done indexing. Im usually just using safari and iTunes.
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so it may not just be a problem with the i7's then?
 
drew0020 said:
13" i5 my fans are coming on all the time. Been using it for over a day now and its pretty annoying. And no spotlight is done indexing. Im usually just using safari and iTunes.
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Are you using a program like iStat to check the fan and temp?
 
I love these contrasting views and yet nobody is mentioning one very important variable – location. How hot or cold is it where you are?

If I was in the Sahara, I would expect there to be quite significant fanning going on or if I was in the Arctic, the opposite would be true.
 
Apple Expert said:
Are you using a program like iStat to check the fan and temp?
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Im using iStat. Im located in NC and its hot, but very cool in my air conditioned house! Im responding to this right now (only using Safari) and my CPU temp is around 80 degrees and no fans yet...
 
drew0020 said:
13" i5 my fans are coming on all the time. Been using it for over a day now and its pretty annoying. And no spotlight is done indexing. Im usually just using safari and iTunes.
Click to expand...

when the fans ramp up, check the activity monitor for ROOT processes. This is where those 2 rogue processes were running on my computer.
 
johnc22 said:
I have the 13" i7 256GB and it's my first Mac. It seems to behave like every other laptop I've had - when it gets busy it gets warmer and the fans spin up.

Mine has been silent until I was installing Xcode I could hear it really ramp up, but then it quickly quiesced once the install was complete.
Click to expand...

What about when using Xcode????
 
rds said:
I love these contrasting views and yet nobody is mentioning one very important variable – location. How hot or cold is it where you are?

If I was in the Sahara, I would expect there to be quite significant fanning going on or if I was in the Arctic, the opposite would be true.
Click to expand...

It's about 24 degrees C in my room - and no fans to be heard here.
 
So I have had the MBA 13'' i5 since Thursday. I live in South Fl, but of course live in an air conditioned home. The fan has gone bazerk on me only once...

I was video chatting with ichat while using the "hearts steaming of head" effect. The thing started gobbling up 50%+ of my CPU usage.

At other times, I had iTunes, Safari, Mail, App Store and ichat open and it ran seamlessly... snappy and with no issues.

I will try playing some 720P vids of my external later and repost. So far, I think its the vids that cause the fans to kick in.
 
Ok so similar to the 2008 mbp that i have. with a temp around 55c when i use word an have few firefox tabs open.

Is the temp on the i7 13 similar?
 
macgrl said:
Ok so similar to the 2008 mbp that i have. with a temp around 55c when i use word an have few firefox tabs open.

Is the temp on the i7 13 similar?
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It should be about 10C-15C less than that with i7 13 with the same open..

Based on my machine anyway.

EDIT:


Although, I just checked, with word and 4 tabs open, two of which are you tube, it goes up to about 45C - 47C.

I also have excel open..
 
macgrl said:
Excellent thanks


Typswif2fingers you aren't having any heat or fan issues then? :)
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:)

Oh mate..

I have garnished about "20 arrows down" on this thread alone.
I better not say my opinion about, what I can only call as, scare mongering that occurs on this forum.

Although, I am fully expecting a couple more for this post...

:)

In all seriousness though, notwithstanding that the machine will get hot when you do things that are resource intensive, and that the fan will kick in to mitigate and provide airflow and cooling, I do not see either heat or fan working as being a bad thing.

MBA provides, in about a pound of a paper thin notebook, capacity for something that we needed desktops for just a couple of years ago.

If anyone expects that in 2011 they can play a you beaut new game on an MBA and not get heat generation and fan working, they are simply deluded. Maybe in 5 years... not today.

But, for "normal" tasks (such as word and number processing, web browsing and similar), MBA, so far, stays cool, i.e. at about 40-50% of the maximum heat load.

I am still utterly amazed with the machine...
 
So I decided to see just how hot I could get the Air. I downloaded VLC 64-Bit and Handbrake 64-Bit. Hooked up my Apple Superdrive and popped in Seven on DVD.

I choose the default iPad settings and started the encode. Look at these temps after about a minute.

Screen Shot 2011-07-24 at 12.09.07 PM.png

Definitely not quite while doing this. :D
 
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