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Level 1

1 points

Controlling the fan in MacbookPro 13”-any practical tips about it, please?

I need to find out are there any useful ways to control cooling of my MacBook, perhaps by setting the way the fan works because there is information that cooling fans of MacBooks are not doing very good job…

I’ve found that there are some programs that can do it such as Fan Control but it says that if I uninstall it I have to Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) and I am not sure if it’s a good idea to tweak with SMC - I’m not very techno proficient…

The question- how to improve the cooling by setting up the fan in a safe enough way- I don’t want to cause any accidental damages…
The MacBookPro 13” is built in 2010, has chip Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz, and OSX 10.6.4
It works ok, sometimes gets quite hot,80-95 degrees Celsius and I have Temperature Monitor program which shows what is the current temperature of CPU, core1 and core2.

Any practical advise about what I should do, by people who are familiar with this fan & cooling issue, please?

mac book, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 13, 2010 10:13 PM

19 replies

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Sep 20, 2010 6:07 PM in response to oliviaps

iStat is a little application to monitor various systems on your computer.
-> http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20364/istat-pro

oliviaps Author

Level 1

1 points

Oct 2, 2010 8:11 PM in response to Chris CA

Thanks guys for the tops.
I've got smcFan Control and set it to 2400 rpm -it works fine and keeps temp around 45 -50 degrees C.

And iStat is just excellent!
Ema

Nov 1, 2010 2:51 PM in response to oliviaps

Hey,

I really need some help. Just last night, MiniStat2 (a long since gone widget, but still works well IHMO) prompted me with a warning that my processor had overheated. Whoa! Scared me. On Halloween even. I was running Windows 7 in Parallels mind you, but this had never happened before in the last two years of using Parallels.

So today I installed smcFanControl, using the 2400RPM setting my processor is averaging 54-58C. Is that still a high temperature? I wasn't able to note the MiniStat warning temperature, but I will if it pops up again.

However, I then noticed the Battery Icon said "service battery". I promptly took the battery out. Appears fine, no buldging. Guess I need a new one. Display shows 100% on battery lights sitting on my desk.

Any help would be awesome.

Nov 9, 2010 8:39 AM in response to oliviaps

Although many people are saying in this forum that "Apple tested this and you don't want to mess with their settings". Their settings aren't keeping my computer cool enough to operate safely. Leaving it with "Apple's settings" while running a java program my computer allowed the internal temps to get up to 98 degree Celsius. That's 2 degrees away from boiling. I could feel the extreme heat through my keys on my keyboard. So I installed SMC fan control and when I run the Java apps I have and up the RPM's to 6500 and then it keeps it cool (55 - 65 degrees). I think this may be a serious problem I just have been putting off bringing my computer to the genius bar cause the apple store is probably the worst place to go in the mall in my city.

Controlling the fan in MacbookPro 13”-any practical tips about it, please?