MacBookAir Fan noise while WATCHING VIDEO (youtube, avi etc)

My 13" Macbook Pro i5 goes up to 5500 rpm and the cpu temp goes up to 60 degrees just watching videos. My older core 2 duo macbook pro never did this 😟

I have a MBA11 and i was watching a baseball game on MLB.TV and after abot 15 minutes the fan kicked in. really loud noise. closed MLB.TV and the noise was still going on. closed the computer and still the same noise. It was only after y unplugged it that the noise stopped. Only other thing open was iChat and a google chrome windo with 3 tabs.

Strange right? i mean streaming video is so popular thi days you would think a modern mac should deal with it easily.

BTW this is my first Mac, before this i had an iPad and iPhone. hope this is not a serious issue.

Hi,

I have a new 13" Air and yes, when watching Flash websites (movies or games) the fan goes crazy.

In my case the solution is very simple and costs nothing.

I put my 2 high-school swimming medals under the rubber studs (the 2 at the screen side) and the fan stops.

If you do not have 2 identical swimming medals (3mm high - 2cm diameter) look for something else in your house :-)

Kind regards,

PS : it all depends on how well the surface, your Air is on, dissipates heat.

The fans are noisy, because the'yre trying to keep your MBA cool. You never mentioned how your computer is situated but, it is recommended to have the computer on a flat hard surface. Although you might not be a swimming champ as Leo, his advise is good. The main heat dissipation surface is the bottom panel, and elevating the rear edge allows more significantly laminar heat flow. Dang, I was channeling Mr. Wizard... "elevating the rear edge allows the computer to cool quicker."

As Mss. Wizard would say : "Give your Air some air" :-)

Even holding my 13" Air aloft doesn't stop the fan. I think there needs to be a better answer.

Hi There!

i got the same problem and solved it, hopefully...

open the activity monitor.

sort the colums for %CPU.

in my case i found an activity called "empdaemon" running at 80%-90% while playing a video at vimeo.

it belongs to the elmedia player, which i don't need, so i quit the process and uninstalled the elmedia software.

all quiet again 😉

i guess that solved the problem for me.

the cpu usage fpr the flash-plugin runs at 50%, which is normal i guess.

cheers

stoffl

I've had the new 2011 MBA for a week now and only last night when I first started streaming online content that I first noticed the fan noise - very loud indeed and the MBA was heating up fast.

Actually a new install of the latest Flash player worked for me. Whilst the flash plugin was running at 80% - after the update the figure dropped to less that 40% for online streaming, low 30% for YouTube and in teens for videos on iTunes. I suppose that is respectable.

I've only just run these figures and the heat temperature has certainly dropped - will run more lenghty tests tonight but seems to be ok.

I was almost tempted to exchange this MBA for the Macbook Pro but thankfully this seems to a solution.