Fans are loud after installing SSD drive

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Level 1

8 points

Fans are loud after installing SSD drive

I just bought a brand new iMac i5 27" and took it apart to change the hard drive to a Crucial RealSSD C300 256 GB and noticed the the HDD fan goes up to 4k RPM because my SSD does not have a temp sensor. I saw someone shorted that sensor to fix that problem. But how do you short that sensor? Is there another way to trick the system to bypass the sensor?

iMac i5 27", Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 17, 2011 9:36 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,478 points

Oct 17, 2017 11:20 AM in response to Arie15

Arie15 wrote:

Thank you CollinDuPree! Excellent tip. And donated to the developer, 🙂

Note while this may be a nice short term solution it does come with risk. If the fans are set at too high a speed then this can prematurely wear out the fans. The "best" fix is the OWC temp sensor cable suggested above by mattwithcats in November 2016.

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Answer 2

Oct 17, 2017 1:24 PM in response to Arie15

I went the route of getting the OWC drive upgrade kit for

my late 2013 27" iMac and glad I did. Thermal sensor provides

the proper means of temp control in the iMac. Plus, the kit

was complete and with the install video made the whole process

pretty painless though much care does need to be taken.

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Answer 3

Jan 18, 2011 3:25 AM in response to govirtual

Hi and welcome to the Apple Discussions.

Congratulations on a new iMac. Where did you see discussion of shorting the temp sensor to fool the protection system? Was that on here? Before you do that, you may want to talk to the Apple Care folks, since your system is new it should be covered, and see what they recommend. Users are allowed to add memory and mass storage, but shorting sensors may result in your warranty being terminated. So, best advice would be to do some checking to see if there is an official recommendation. There should be information on what Apple does when they supply systems with SSDs. That is what you should do with your iMac, also.

Ralph

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Answer 4

govirtual Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 19, 2011 9:37 AM in response to Ralph Landry1

Yeah, I was not too fond of the idea of shorting out a thermal sensor. I also heard something about using the optical drive sensor for it, but I don't know exactly what that means. I'll give apple a call and see what they think.

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Answer 5

Jun 3, 2011 6:07 AM in response to govirtual

Hi, you can try HDDFanControl its a software solution designed specifically for this problem and means you don't have to short the cable or open your iMac again. It controls the drive using SMART temperature data, some SSD's don't provide temperature data, so you can set a static speed in that rare situation.

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Answer 6

dmdimon

Level 3

856 points

Aug 31, 2011 7:09 AM in response to govirtual

problem solved, read here:

http://blog.macsales.com/11638-owc-turnkey-program-for-2011-imacs-announced

You know that feeling of accomplishment when you’ve overcome a huge obstacle and you can’t wait to tell the entire world about it? Well, we’ve got it; we’ve overcome the whole “fan/drive sensor” problem found when installing a non-factory drive in the 2011 iMacs. That means we can now officially announce the OWC Turnkey Program for the 2011 iMacs.

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Answer 7

aquisse

Level 1

0 points

Dec 8, 2012 10:10 AM in response to BenSurtees

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your link. My 2TB SATA disk in my 2011 iMac failed (after just 17 months) so I had it replaced by an SSD drive. This caused the fan to spin at max speed as described by the original poster. Installing HDDFanControl fixed the problem. Seems to me like Apple make it as hard as possible for people to upgrade or fix their iMacs without going to an Apple Certified provider. Anyway, problem solved now so thanks.

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Answer 8

Nov 4, 2016 6:40 PM in response to aquisse

I'm years too late to the discussion, but... just had my hard drive dying on my 2010 iMac, replaced the drive with an SSD and my fan was getting louder and louder and louder. Tried out the free demo of HHD Fan Control. Totally fixed my problem. Thought the price was kinda high ($35) but after having this fan screaming at me, it only took me a couple minutes to go ahead and buy it. Silence. It is beautiful.

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