MacBook Air Fan Running Constantly

In my opinion, this is normal. The MBA gets hot when:

1. It does lots of CPU
2. It does lots of graphics
3. It does lots of disk use
4. It does lots of network transfers (but only if items 1,2 or 3 are also involved)
5. It's charging the battery (according to posts in this topic)

So Screensaver ticks box 1 and 2, result: Heat.

Normal max fan speed is 6200. Do not used iced water to help, this will void your warranty and results in an expensive explosion.

Bill. Just my opinion.

Message was edited by: BillH1184

Hi Bill.

Ya.. it makes sense..

Thanks.

Cheers.

Tried almost all the suggested solutions, I come to a clear conclusion:

The fan speeds up when it's charging.

Nothing will help to reduce the fan speed but when I work on battery only, things are fine. Very quiet. 2500 rmp all the time. Now I need to change my habit of using a laptop: work on battery and only charge it when it's completely drained. Not sure if it will damage anything...

This is a second MBA (got a replacement due to fan noise).

Dear bohemia,

I am still learning about using the Air as well but I ran across this and thought it may pertain to your question:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

this is an excerpt from the page:

Standard Maintenance
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her MacBook Pro on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month. Need a reminder? Add an event to your desktop’s iCal.

Message was edited by: barkingmad

I am annoyed by the same problem: fan running constantly at 6200. I believe it is software-related, as it kicks in after moderate load; if I don't use the MBA or use it lightly, fan runs quietly at around 2500 rpm. Core temperature is now only 49 Celsius and yet the **** things stays at 6200.

Same problem here. Whenever I use my MBA, i use it on battery most of the time, and the FAN is almost always ON @ 6000rpm.

all i do is internet browsing and remote desktop connection to my office pc. plus some itunes music in the back ground.

Safari eats about 40% of CPU. I suspect this is what triggers the fan to go 6200. Then it's the 10.5.4 update. Any suggestion? Steve, are you with us?

If you quit Safari, does the fan slow down?

If anything is hitting the CPU, Disk, Graphics or Battery hard, you get heat.

Use Activity Monitor to check which of those (if any) are happening, and react accordingly.

An MBA which is left happily doing not much cools down, well mine does anyway.

Bill.

all i do is internet browsing and remote desktop connection to my office pc. plus some itunes music in the back ground.

So I would suggest that

A) Internet can use up CPU and network and cause heat
B) remote desktop uses CPU and Network and Graphics, and causes heat
C) iTunes uses CPU and causes heat

The combination of the three will be enough to spin the fan.

MBA is a mousey sort of computer, work it hard and it squeaks.

Trouble is, if I quit Safari, the fan stays at 6200. I believe Safari has something to do with that, or perhaps Spotlight indexing webpages. Very annoying. Again, the temperature of CPU seems OK, I believe it is just the fan amok.

I have this same problem, I notice the fan come on when the MBA links to timecapsule and time machine is running, I use for TC for backup so its essential, there are also some 3rd party widget that run in the background that seem to do it too. Activity monitor will tell you a little of what is using the CPU and causing the fans to want to cool the CPU.

Right now I have low CPU usage according to Activity Monitor but I am running time machine on a first run having reformatted the timecapsule disk.

I notice on activity monitor sync server and PreferenceSyncCL are hogging CPU (80.1) as my mac syncs with mobileMe. And so on.

My 'Air got so hot today one of the processors switched off. I was using Activity Monitor to show CPU history, and doing multiple things Skype, Backing up my iPhone, Mail, etc. The case got super hot, egg frying temp, and I saw that instead of two very busy CPUs, I suddenly had only 1, the other dropped to zero activity, and the utility TFMonitor suddenly reconfigured to only recognised a single CPU machine.

Quite amazing, it cooled down and came back in about 15 minutes.

Bill

I'm having the same problem with various MobileMe sync processes stealing much of the cpu causing the fans to roar, very annoying.

Hi Everyone,

Keeping the updates coming, I went to the Apple Store in Toronto (Yorkdale) to have the folks at the Genius Bar take a look at my seemingly haunted fan. I had complete video of the occurrences, as well as the log I had been using to keep track of the events.

He looked it over for a few minutes, didn't even bother with the videos (as it was spinning at the crazy high RPM I had been experiencing intermittently), and replaced the unit on the spot. He mentioned there was no way the fan should be running constantly beyond 6200 RPM.

This fan has so far been behaving much better now. Thanks for all the feedback!

cblay,

Finally !

You have been through a very frustrating time.
Hope you can now go to your favorite spot and enjoy your magic machine.

Love mine but staying away from video.

Let us know how yours works with video specifically the YouTube of death. I have yet to even bother with YouTube on the Air (just on my iMac).

How are purchased TV episodes from iTunes? Works well on mine, just to try it; high fan but no shutdown.

As Tavis Smiley says: "Keep The Faith"