macbook air fan noise

Have you tried one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-NC1000-S-Notebook-Cooler-Silver/dp/B000JSFT2C/ref=s r12?ie=UTF8&qid=1288503245&sr=8-2

I've been using one with my 12" Powerbook G4, and the fan hardly ever comes on anymore.

What were you doing? Anything CPU intensive or watching flash video? Those could get the fan speed up. If you are interested in checking temperature and the flash, you could use something like the istat pro widget.

I got my 11" Air on Thursday.... so far the only time I have heard the fan is when it was doing it's initial Time Machine backup (pretty CPU intensive)

Something have to have been running to kick the fans on to an audible level

Yes, the fan running is normal....it won't kick in when you are doing things like word processing, or viewing websites...

It will kick in if you are watching any videos, watching anything on your screen that requires flash or other video plug-ins, etc...

But it is perfectly normal to hear the fan in the new MBA from time to time.

I recommend downloading the iStat Pro widget to check fan speed and CPU temp.

If you keep a log, it will help if you go to see Apple "geniuses" at the store.

The fans are always running. The "normal" speed is 2000rpm. When I run heavy duty stuff, they ramp up to 6500rpm.

Open Applications->Utilities->Activity Monitor
Then click the System Memory Tab
Then click the %CPU tab to sort by highest CPU usage to see if anything is using an excess amount of memory.

Hello all,

Same issue Here I have bought my Macbook Air last week.
It was completly silent until this morning.
Now I hear the fan noise constantly, even at boot time. and it makes much noise. It comes from the back left of the device.
I think I will show it to my local reseller... am I the only one with tjhis isue ?

As said above, open Activity Monitor and see if there are running processes using a lot of CPU time. If there are, that is the problem. If not, it's possible you have defective hardware.

Thanks for the heads up Brian.
I was having the same issue with fan on more than I thought it should be and also battery life not that great.

I checked CPU% in Activity monitor and found Skype running at 180% !!
I have recently installed the Skype 5 Beta and I reckon it has some issues 🙂

As soon as I quite Skype CPU dropped significantly as did the fan speed etc

Hope this helps others

Cheers
Steve

Hi,

I just received my MBA 11.5" 1.4Ghz and 4Gb or RAM yesterday morning, and after few hours of working with it, I also noticed the little buzzing noise coming from the fan, at the left of the keyboard.

I haven't installed any software yet, it's still with what it comes. I only installed iStat Pro's Widget to check how fast was the fan spinning, and indeed it's at a constant 2000rpm.

What's bothering me is that if the fan is at 2000 rpm, it should be almost noiseless, but if the room is quiet, I can clearly hear the buzzing little noise.

I can't compare it to any other laptop right now, but I can say that my last Macbook black was quieter when the fans were spinning at the same speed than the MBA.

Any suggestion how to check if the fan of my MBA is not right?

Thanks!

Cheers

I suggest google for smcFanControl 2.2.2, free application that can give you information on the fan and a possibility to make some adjustments

sorry.. wrong place for the post... 😉

Message was edited by: ivassilis

Try an SMC (System Management Chip) reset. This the equivalent of the PMU in the power pc units.

With the unit plugged in and turned off, hold Option-control-shift and hit the power button once. The magsafe LED will turn green and then back to orange.

This will typically help with constant fan issues (if it isn't CPU intensive tasks)

I have the 11" and the fan sound is really low but it has a really annoying buzzing when holding the MBA closed to me ear on the left. But this annoying fan sound does not increase when the fan increase, just the normal "fan" sound. So it does not really bother me if i don't put my ear on the computer :P