uMB fan making buzzing noise

[-tWv-]

I was just downstairs in my basement using my macbook and I decided to come upstairs and when I got up here I noticed that my fan is making a weird buzzing noise. I can tell it is my fan because when I make the fans spin faster in smcfancontrol the noise gets louder. Could this be something that is in the fan or could this be a more serious problem? I can take the back case off and check but I just wanted to know if this could be a serious problem with the fan.
Is there any chance I could have bent something by carrying it wrong?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[guydude193]

I doubt you would've bent anything. But who knows? I guess the best thing to do would be to wait a day, maybe try a restart (?) and see if the problem persists. If it does... off to the Bar.

 

[-tWv-]

Im probably just gonna take the back case off and see if there is anything in there and clean it a little. I'll post a picture of what it looks like also. I'll be bac k soon...

 

[-tWv-]

Ugh.. this isn't good. When I use the fan control, and put it up to 3000 rpms it is definitely noticable, but when I ramp it up to 4000 it gets really loud. It's kind of a mixture of a buzzing/grinding sound. Nothing looks wrong when I opened it up. Do you think the genius bar will blame it on smcfancontrol and not repair it? When I go, should I tell them that I had used smcfancontrol?

And here are pictures of the inside. There is mild dust buildup on the fan, but nothing was wrong from what I could see. Sorry one is a little blurry.

 

[guydude193]

If I was you, I would uninstall SMC... if you can. I don't have it on my Mac. And definitely don't tell them you'd been using it.

 

[-tWv-]

If I was you, I would uninstall SMC... if you can. I don't have it on my Mac. And definitely don't tell them you'd been using it.

Ok, I uninstalled it. It's still backed up with TM . I'll try to get to the apple store as soon as I can when I get back.. Hopefully they can help me resolve the problem without having to wait for them to repair it. I would hate to not have my mac for an extended period of time.

 

[clyde2801]

Hit that puppy with some compressed air and see if that helps.

 

[testcard]

Fan bearing?

 

[-tWv-]

Fan bearing?

That's what I was thinking, it could be just loose or something. It didn't really look all that dirty when I opened it up. I'll just take it to the genius bar next week and see what they say. I'll post back with the results.

 

[-tWv-]

Alright so I just shutdown my macbook and left it alone for 24 hours and the fan works fine now. No buzzing noise at all. What a relief! Thanks for all the suggestions but it seems that something might have gotten in it and it made that noise for some reason. I don't know what happened but I'm glad it's not happening anymore.

 

[guydude193]

That's good. I hate it when something goes wrong with an Apple product. Not because they won't fix it.. but I won't be with it for however amount of time. It kills me a little every time it happens. (Once, but it was a living heck).
I'm glad everything turned out well!

 

[-tWv-]

I would hate to be without my Macbook for more than a couple days. I just really don't want anything to go wrong. I know they will probably fix it without any trouble and I will get it back eventually, it's just inability to use it which is very annoying. And since my only other computer is an old windows 7/ubuntu desktop without wireless capabilities (I'm buying a wireless adapter soon). It would be very annoying to not have my beautiful macbook.

 

[guydude193]

I would hate to be without my Macbook for more than a couple days. I just really don't want anything to go wrong. I know they will probably fix it without any trouble and I will get it back eventually, it's just inability to use it which is very annoying. And since my only other computer is an old windows 7/ubuntu desktop without wireless capabilities (I'm buying a wireless adapter soon). It would be very annoying to not have my beautiful macbook.

Happened to me. 7 days of pure torture. Imagine a Leopard user going back to XP for a full week...
Hell is the picture I'm imagining.

 

[-tWv-]

Happened to me. 7 days of pure torture. Imagine a Leopard user going back to XP for a full week...
Hell is the picture I'm imagining.

Ugh, thats just a bad image. Windows 7 I wouldn't mind all that much. The interface is decent and it is a fairly well done OS. Much better than Vista. Still snappy because I haven't installed much of anything yet. It's just that Win7 is running on 512mb of RAM (definitely needs an upgrade), when the minimum is supposed to be 1GB, and also that problem that I would have to shell out for a wireless adapter sooner than I would have wanted. Just thinking about being without my mac is a bad image. I hope that I never have to do that and If I ever have to, I hope I have another mac so I don't have to go back to the failure that is Windows even for a day.