Why does my MacBook laptop sound as if there is a "fan" running?

Your fan should also be running, and, depending on how sensitive your hearing is, you may hear it even when it is idling.

Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities. Make sure "All Processes" are being shown & sort by CPU. Do you see anything using a high amount of CPU?

~Lyssa

Did you have "All Processes" showing? Are you looking in the list of processes & do you have them sorted by CPU?


Get the iStat Pro widget here:
http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/

What does it report for fan speed and CPU temp?

~Lyssa

My MacBook has been having louder fan sounds also. Sometimes worse than other times. If it never sounded like this then it may be your fan is going bad. The bearing surface may be going and the fan balance can change with wear making it sound worse at times. Sometimes the fan is quiet and the next minute making noise is a clue to this. You can find instructions at ifixit.com on doing it yourself including where to buy a new fan. If your not inclined on doing it you can have a company such as one of these do it. My MacBook is over three years old and has never had fan noise like this.

PowerBook Medic

MacMedic

My wife and I are having a similar issue with her MacBook. It's a standard 13" MacBook with the Core 2 Duo at 2.4GHz and 2GB of RAM.

We purchased it in mid-August of this year. Being our first MacBook and given the location of the exhaust fan we assumed the loud exhaust was "normal". However, over time we've realized other MacBooks don't sound like this, and to be honest it's becoming quite annoying.

iStat shows CPU utilization @ 5 - 10% max, free memory between 1.1 - 1.3GB, and CPU temps @ appox. 36 - 39C. However, fan speed fluctuates between 6,800 - 6,900rpm, and it runs constantly from boot, never turning off until about 30 seconds after hibernate or shut down.

Any thoughts? Anything we can do ourselves to resolve or does this require a trip to the Apple Store?

Thanks in advance for any help.

David

PS - EFI and SMC versions are both the latest, greatest.

Highlight the process, the click the "Force Quit" button to kill the process.

~Lyssa

Fan = loud. . . I use my laptop on a portable stand. When the fan kicks in, I turn on a small, separate desk fan, aim it underneath. The computer calms down/the computer's fan silences. I found that you just can't lay this machine flat for any length of time without the heat rising.

Hello!
I bought mine october 2010 and i'M having the exact same problem you describe. Have you found any solution to it?
Thank you.

I have had my macbook since last August and I have never heard the fan run, not even once. And now it seems to be running all of the time. I have tried checking the Activity Monitor and all of the other suggestions but none of them seem to work? Does anybody know what I can do?