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Overheating or just 'happy fan'?

Praetorian®

Praetorian®

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
185
3
Czech Republic
Hi,

is there any way I could find out whether my MacBook is overheating or not? It has been repaired recently and there is possibility they screwed something up.

I installed iStat Pro to discover what temperatures are inside and how fast are fans spinning. Here's what it says (when only Safari with MacRumors and Adium are running):

Temperatures:
Hard Drive 40°C
CPU 53°C
Airport Card 68°C (I'm connected over WiFi)
Enclosure Base 33°C
Heatsink A 53°C
Heatsink B 51°C
Mem Bank A1 50°C
Northbridge 51°C

Fans:
Exhaust 1801rpm (when playing flash game on Facebook, it spins about 6000rpm!!!)

My MacBook is early 2008 white revision (more details in my signature).

Can someone please tell me if it's ok or not? I think it is weird when fan is spinning like crazy when only flash game in Safari is running. I haven't been playing these games on Facebook before the reparing, so that's why I don't know if it is normal or not.

Thanks.
 
your temperatures are quite normal!

Flash, on the Mac, is actually quite CPU intensive. I'd be surprised if your fans didn't ramp up while playing a Flash game. no worries.
 
I've had new 15" MacBook Pro for review and someone said to me the fans in it can only run as fast as 5400rpm. That's one of the reasons why I've been worried.

I tried to run HD YouTube video and the fan was running 6200rpm. It sounded like Boeing rolling to runway.
 
yeah, Flash can be that intensive. check your CPU usage in Activity Monitor next time you're on YouTube.

and to the OP: that person was incorrect. 6,000 RPM is indeed the correct max speed for your fans :)

edit: I see you said 6,200 as the RPM. regardless, your fans cannot "over-rotate." they will never exceed their max safe RPM.
 
Meh, I don't know. Without any fan control, generally the fans will only start to spin up at around 70 C but even then it won't spin up to 6000RPM. Maybe it varies between flash applications.
 
Aha! just coming on here about this and theres an active thread

i have a 2.4 Early 2008 Whitebook, with an Upgraded 4GB Ram and a 320GB Hdd, so havign the same issues as the OP, intensive fans on Flash, certain games on FB, youtube, or a webpage thats flash intensive left in the background for too long, tonight even ive tried using a Flash based streaming service and it actually locked firefox up and i had to force quit it- twice. BUT ive found an anomaly, UK's Channel 4 has an On Demand Catch-up service on their website that is flash based, Except when i run a video on it, the fan barely goes past 2500 RPM, at first i thought it might use Silverlight, but when i checked it asked for the latest version of flash player, So what gives? is it that it's coded better? or have i just found an anomaly. The fans flaring up is a real ballache for me, as i cant remember it doing it when i first got my mac, and the only thing that ramps up my girlfriends unibody is the sims 3. (i know it has the 9400m in it)

so is it that the x3100 cant cope with flash? or is it as badly coded for the mac as i hear? and i actually thought that me upgrading to the 4GB of ram would do the trick, but to be honest i havent really felt a difference from the 2GB that came with it.
 
Legolai said:
Aha! just coming on here about this and theres an active thread

i have a 2.4 Early 2008 Whitebook, with an Upgraded 4GB Ram and a 320GB Hdd, so havign the same issues as the OP, intensive fans on Flash, certain games on FB, youtube, or a webpage thats flash intensive left in the background for too long, tonight even ive tried using a Flash based streaming service and it actually locked firefox up and i had to force quit it- twice. BUT ive found an anomaly, UK's Channel 4 has an On Demand Catch-up service on their website that is flash based, Except when i run a video on it, the fan barely goes past 2500 RPM, at first i thought it might use Silverlight, but when i checked it asked for the latest version of flash player, So what gives? is it that it's coded better? or have i just found an anomaly. The fans flaring up is a real ballache for me, as i cant remember it doing it when i first got my mac, and the only thing that ramps up my girlfriends unibody is the sims 3. (i know it has the 9400m in it)

so is it that the x3100 cant cope with flash? or is it as badly coded for the mac as i hear? and i actually thought that me upgrading to the 4GB of ram would do the trick, but to be honest i havent really felt a difference from the 2GB that came with it.
Click to expand...

Go to Activity Monitor and check/compare CPU usage for firefox-bin between each website, most likely the one that spins up your fan quicker is more cpu intensive. Why you may ask, I have no idea, maybe the video's in higher quality/etc.
 
smartalic34 said:
yeah, Flash can be that intensive. check your CPU usage in Activity Monitor next time you're on YouTube.

and to the OP: that person was incorrect. 6,000 RPM is indeed the correct max speed for your fans :)

edit: I see you said 6,200 as the RPM. regardless, your fans cannot "over-rotate." they will never exceed their max safe RPM.
Click to expand...

Sooooo.....I tried to check the CPU usage in Activity Monitor as you said. I watched this video in HD and there was 55-60% of CPU used by User and 15-17% by System. Oh yeah, and iStat Pro keeps telling me the fan is running 6200rpm.
 
Praetorian® said:
Sooooo.....I tried to check the CPU usage in Activity Monitor as you said. I watched this video in HD and there was 55-60% of CPU used by User and 15-17% by System. Oh yeah, and iStat Pro keeps telling me the fan is running 6200rpm.
Click to expand...

Tested that out. Temperature never goes past 68 C and fans don't rotate past 3500RPM and this is WITH the 9600M GT so temperatures are a bit higher than if I were to use the 9400M. Like the post above me stated, your fans can't over-spin. Be happy that your fans actually work even if I think spinning at 6000RPM is a little too much.
 
My question is: should I send my MacBook to repair center? There is no Apple Store with Genius Bar here in Czech Republic. Only Apple Authorised Service Provider. But it's about the same.
 
Praetorian® said:
My question is: should I send my MacBook to repair center? There is no Apple Store with Genius Bar here in Czech Republic. Only Apple Authorised Service Provider. But it's about the same.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't do this yet. Personally to me your results still seem pretty normal. Wait for someone with the same model that you have so you can make an actual comparison.
 
Kyeris said:
I wouldn't do this yet. Personally to me your results still seem pretty normal. Wait for someone with the same model that you have so you can make an actual comparison.
Click to expand...

It was my first intention. So...anyone having early 2008 MacBook (2,4GHz, 2GB RAM) who could post temperatures and fan speed or something? Thanks.
 
Praetorian® said:
It was my first intention. So...anyone having early 2008 MacBook (2,4GHz, 2GB RAM) who could post temperatures and fan speed or something? Thanks.
Click to expand...


Like i said i have an early 2008 Whitebook, 2.4GHz with 4GB of ram, and i got nearly the same results as you

Cpu: 50-70% user 15-20% system CPU temp maxed out at 98'C before the fans started becoming audible at 3500 rpm, then they ramped up to 6200 according to iStat
 
Legolai said:
Like i said i have an early 2008 Whitebook, 2.4GHz with 4GB of ram, and i got nearly the same results as you

Cpu: 50-70% user 15-20% system CPU temp maxed out at 98'C before the fans started becoming audible at 3500 rpm, then they ramped up to 6200 according to iStat
Click to expand...

98'C does seem a little high, you're sure about that?
 
Legolai said:
Like i said i have an early 2008 Whitebook, 2.4GHz with 4GB of ram, and i got nearly the same results as you

Cpu: 50-70% user 15-20% system CPU temp maxed out at 98'C before the fans started becoming audible at 3500 rpm, then they ramped up to 6200 according to iStat
Click to expand...

Have you experienced this problem.....lets say.....before installing 10.5.8? I don't know if it could be software issue...
 
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