MacBook Air Fan Running Constantly

You all might want to try this : http://www.coolbook.se

I've a (refurb) MBA with the complete set of updates available as of July 2008 (including 10.5.4 and the SMC update).

I had no problems with the fan...until I plugged into an external (1280x1024) monitor. With the external monitor plugged in, the fan speed goes up and never comes down...so when Time Machine or Spotlight indexing kick in, the fan goes up-up-up and never comes down.

The temp sensors all indicate a cool machine (55 C), the fan runs at 6200 RPM even though (via the smcFanControl) indicates it should be running at 2000 RPM.

The only way to get the fan speed down is to disconnect the external monitor, at which point all returns (albeit slowly) to a quiet fan speed.

(NB I also have an external USB-powered HDD but the presence/absence of this makes no difference.)

I just had it in for repair, the repair center (an authorized service center, not Apple itself) determined that all of the Airs they had in for servicing experienced the same symptoms, so they returned it to me without making any changes.

Their assessment was (in my words) "working as poorly designed".

Too bad the machine is ideal for me in all other regards...this smells very much like a firmware and/or driver/controller problem.

My workaround is going to be "not connect the external monitor" until the next software/firmware update and then I'll try again.

Grr. NOT a happy camper.

I am sorry to have to revive this thread.

Got mine (1.8/ 64GB SSD) two days ago and I just love this machine, the looks, the weight etc. then I noticed something and Googled for MacBook Airfan and got this thread.

Mine was manufactured in China last week of July (W8832XXXXXX) and it'd have to be doing nothing for the fan to spin at around 4,500 rpm. Any other time, no matter what I am doing, it's spinning at 6,200 rpm and temp is between 130 and 150 F depending on what I am doing with it.

It's on my wooden desk, vents are not obstructed, room temp is about 78F.

I installed VMWare Fusion and XP SP2 and if I push it a bit (multitask), iStat Menus show that the second core of the processor is inactive (= shut down?).

Google search returns an app (CoolBook) to undervolt the C2D but I am not about to play around with that.
Here is an article about it:
http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/05/11/putting-an-end-to-macbook-air-core-shutdown




*Apple, are you folks reading these boards. We need a resolution!!!*




Also, the first thing I did on it was to re-install Mac OS X and reclaim some storage space.

*Apple, please note:
by now we should be offered the choice to install or not install non-binary code and extra-languages during the installation process. It would save several GBs overall. On a 64GB SSD, that's precious space!*



I don't remember the updates Software Update installed when I fired it up afterwards but apparently Apple put out a SMC Update 1.0 for the fan problems:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookairsmcupdate10.html

Did this change anything for anyone?


This brings me to the second issue I and others on these boards have: it sells with a 64GB SSD but right before re-installing, Mac OS X installer said I had only 55GB and change of space... not the approximate formatted 60GB I was expecting!
There is another thread going about this and I also revived it so let's just focus on the fan on this thread.

My MBA does the same. Fans kick in at the slightest stress. Right now they run at 6200, after repairing disk permissions.
Open Activity Monitor and check what is stressing the CPU. Here is a combination of Safari and mdworker (this has to do with Spotlight): together they eat up at this moment more than 50% of maximum CPU load.
CoolBook does not help much here. Others report better results. I guess it depends.
I hope Apple will come up with a patch. It seems to be an endemic problem with some MBA's, software-related.

Glad the problem was solved for you. If you have iStat Menus installed, what would you say is the average fan speed during usage: 4500 rpm, 5000, 6000?

Also, could you please post the 5 characters first of your serial?

Reminder to please answer the questions above.

Thanks "Ged" my MacBook Air temp was running unusually high this morning and the fan was stuck at 6200+. Well my problem was the same. I had two printers and one was constantly in-use trying to print something on my network with out me turning on the printer!!

Thank you

I was starting to panic a bit when after installing the most recent iphoto update, i wasn't doing anything else except a little casual safari browsing when all of the sudden the fan speed started increasing and continued to increase until it reached the 6200 rpm limit. I should add that this was after the update finished and not while it was installing. I closed safari and made sure all other apps were closed (which they were). After 15 minutes the computer was still running constantly. I check spotlight to make sure the index update wasn't running and it wasn't. Finally I decided to restart the computer and to make glee the issue has fixed itself. The update didn't require a restart and I have no idea why the computer started heating up like crazy. Anyway, the problem seems to be solved. 🙂