Macbook Pro (Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.7), 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 6 GM 1333 MHz DDr3
Your description for both simulations is absolutely going to generate heat. My changing the HDD was to do nothing more than to squelch the noise at idle and for low HDD drive usage such as reading email, word processing, etc. where I should not be hearing the machine at all. Surfing the web and playing videos on YouTube taxes the systems resources. Watching YouTube videos require processing power. Safari alone uses a fair amount of RAM. If your system only has 4GB of RAM and you have several apps open and are watching videos, the swap file on your HDD is now going to be utilized to accommodate the deficiency in RAM. Between the higher processor usage and accessing the HDD, the system is now going to generate heat and therefore increase fan speed which is now going to be more audible. If you are only at 4GB of RAM, increase it to 8. That will cut way down on the system accessing the swap file on the HDD.
Running a fan at 5600 RPM is certainly going to be loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the room so there's no shocker there. I think that the only time any of my computers ever stepped up the fan(s) to that speed was when I was doing some system cleanup where I was backing up/moving files from the system to the NAS and securely emptying the trash at the same time. I talk to my grandchildren via iChat. That requires quite a bit of processing power and the fan(s) step up to meet the demand for that as well. But as soon as the demand to dissipate the heat is over, the fan(s) step themselves right back down. That's how Apple designed the system to operate and I have never seen it not do it correctly or inefficiently. Now, if you were talking about a Sony, HP, or Dell, that would be a different story. Fan speed and efficiency are not anywhere near as well designed as Apple's.
My questions to you are 1) why are you using SMC to control the fan speed? 2) why are you running the fan @ 3300 RPMs at idle??? That's just going to lend to premature burn out of the fan and use up battery power for no reason. A 13" MBP's single fan spins @ +-2000 RPM @ idle. Apple designed their systems to run the fan(s) at the RPMs needed to keep the components cool. Unless there are other factors preventing the system to stay within the SOT designed by Apple, I see no reason for you to override their well engineered system. None of my MBP's (past and present) nor any of the ones I service has had overheating issues. I also have read here that people use SMC to run the fans @ 1300 RPM so that they are quiet. That's not good either unless you are standing in an open field in Alaska in January.
I got into this forum when I bought this new MBP in November to see if anyone else had the same "fan noise" problem on the new MBP's that I was having. After phone tech support from Apple and two trips to the Genius Bar, Apple wanted to replace the fan. No. The computer was only a few days old so I just returned the machine and got another. Same noise. I returned that one as well. Same noise. If any of those had been my first MBP and I had not already known that they just don't make noise at idle, I would not have known better and would have been thrilled to have such a quiet machine. Especially after having personally owned a Sony, two Gateways, my wife's Dell from work, and my son's HP, all which make a ton of noise at all times. Plus I service all of those machines every day for a living. OK, so now the question is, "what gives?" Did Apple redesign the fan? Did they redesign the porting? I would hardly think so. There would be no reason to. The design of the physical system had not changed on the new MBP and the old one worked well, so what was the problem?
I just decided to open the case to investigate and could hear the noise. It appeared to be coming from the HDD. Just rolling up a few sheets of paper to form a tube, (I have a stethoscope for just that purpose but really, the rolled sheets of paper work better) I put it to my ear and moved it around the exposed running system searching for the source of noise. In 30 seconds I pinpointed the sound to be coming from the HDD. It just so happened I had another factory HDD taken from my previous MBP. That machine made absolutely no audible sound so I knew that drive was going to be quiet. I shut the system down and swapped drives. I booted it back up and the system was silent. It was as quiet as the old machine. Even with the bottom still off. I connected up the HDD that came with the new MBP via a USB/SATA interface cable and plugged it into my iMac. There it is! There's the whirring sound I had been experiencing with all three new MBP's was coming from the drives and not the fan.
So now that drive is in an enclosure as a back up drive. I was not going to listen to it while in my MBP. Apple spoiled me by producing quiet machines. Before I switched all of my personal machines to Macs, I had a monster Windows desktop in my loft. The machine was a powerhouse with two processors, two 10,000 RPM drives and had 8 fans. One on each the CPU's, (this was before water cooled systems were popular) one each on the GPU's, one in the power supply, two at the rear of the case, one in the front. The machine was always on and you could always hear the system running even when it was in sleep or even in hibernate mode. I did not need a machine anywhere near as powerful as that was but I built it because I could. When I switched to Macs, I bought an iMac for the loft. You can hear a pin drop in my house. Ahhhhhhh...the sound of silence.
Chat84, that could be because the heat being generated by the system is coming more from the GPU (graphics processor) and not necessarily the CPU. Activity Monitor does not track GPU usage. Watching videos taxes the GPU heavily and that processor will heat up very fast. That is why I mentioned above that when I had that ridiculous monster of a desktop PC that I built that I had GPU coolers on the GPU's. Actually, I didn't. Both cards came from ATI with the coolers already installed on them from the factory. That tells you that the manufacturer knows that those graphics chips are going to generate heat and have provided protection to keep the chips (and as a result, the rest of the system) cooled.
Also, the same thing applies to the RAM. Your system may not have enough physical RAM to run the processes and may be utilizing virtual memory on the SSD. If there is enough activity there, that will also generate some heat, albeit an SSD does not run anywhere near as hot as a spinning drive, it still does generate some. Any electrical activity always produces heat. The more activity, the more heat. The physical RAM modules themselves get hot. That's why on higher end systems or system that rely on extraordinarily heavy RAM usage such as gaming systems or video/audio editing systems, the RAM modules have heat sinks and dissipaters. Some even have coolers. A system that does not have enough physical RAM is going to cause the RAM it does have to heat up from being overworked. A system that has more than ample RAM will not generate nearly as much heat from the modules because they are not being overworked. Also, the HDD or SSD is not going to heat up as much because they are not going to be relied upon as much for access to the swap file. Add all of that to the heat from the all components being used, and you will have created enough heat to require the fans to spin faster.
Now, with all of that being said, I'm never said that that is or could be, your only problem. You could have a fan or port issue for all I know. I'm just saying that that was the problem that I discovered to be causing the noise in my system. Apple wanted to replace the fan without ever physically identifying the source. I took a few minutes and investigated it myself and for me, it solved the problem by swapping drives. My fan does spin up as needed and I can hear it. But when I open the lid and wake up the system, put in my password, open my emails, I now do all of that in total silence and I have not done a thing to the fan.
I bought a Macbook Pro four months back. For the last one week, immediately after starting up the MBP, the fans have been running at 6000 rpm every single time. This happens even when the CPU activity is less than 5% and temperature less than 35 - 40. The Apple tech guy ran a diagnostic and said a new logic board is needed. The $590 cost is covered by warranty.
I switched to Apple hoping for better quality but now I am begining to have a better opinion about Windows based laptops. The tech guy assuring me that flawed logic boards are not an uncommon problem with Apple laptops didn't add to my confidence level.
You wouldn't receive the support or quality of service on a windows computer. If you take it to the apple store they will have it repaired most likely overnight.
hi,
i am facing same problem. Did apple fixed it?
Apple repaired mine overnight and it is completely silent. Even when the fan is at 6000rpm it's silent.
Thanks for the interesting reply TJ106, I'll go to the apple store to see what they can do.
I had the same problem with the computer running hot and both fans running at 6000rpm (you can find this out by downloading iStat). I then ran activity monitor and found that a Kapersky Antivirus process termed kav was using 300% of the CPU. As soon as I shut this off, the heat resolved then the fans slowed down and the noise resolved. Doubt this will solve all the problems posted here but at least something to check.
This worked for me.
Resetting the SMC for Mac Pro, Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini, or Intel-based Xserve
Just to end this long post. All MBPs run hot, most of the time, therefore the fans kick in keeping it cool. In simple terms: MAC HOT=FANS ON.
(I solved the issue myself and here is how)
I have a MacBook Pro 13" mid 2009 Unibody. In any case I did a boat load of research since it was out of warranty and I could not afford to pay for repair.
Background: If your noticing that it is sounding different, chances are there's an issue. Not sure if it was my hard drive or fan I found that knowing life expectencies helps. Average life for my hard drive varied from 5 to 10y my fan under moderate to heavy use was about 3 years. Enviroment is important, remeber the fan is pulling air in surrounding your computer and blowing it through a heat sink. Also if you have pets, often pack and unpack and so on it will have an impact. Do you sleep your MAC power it on off all these impact fan life. Mac does have filtering in place but you will still have build up on the heat sink and fan over time. Hence why server rooms are airconditioned and kept at a temp of 68 to 72 F. Also imagine your fan at 1900 to 3000+ rpm x3yrs. well you get the idea. Good news is regardless of how bad or loud your fan gets, your MAC will shut down before it allows heat to damage your unit.
I encourage those with waranted items to MAC look at it first. However if your beyond that I suggest the following.
SOLUTION, I replaced my fan for a total cost of less than $25.00 (Yes I tried to clean it first but no luck) besides if your opening it you might as well change it. It took less than 20 minutes and my MAC is a cool and quiet as the day I bought it.
I hope this helps someone..
I bought my macbook pro 15 for 2 months ago. I am already tired of the fan blowing op. My old macbook pro never did that. Is there some problems specielly with the new macbook pro models? Anybody knows anything. Is apple going to deal with this issue?
My 2011 MBP fan was running all the time and it was driving me nuts. I scoured the web for solutions, smc resets, stalled printer queues, fan controllers, etc., Nothing worked. I found a buried post that talked about the video card and dynamic switching.
Pointed me to this link tha allows you to control the video card functionality <http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33905/gfxcardstatus/>.
Poof....I set the parameters to "Discrete Only", the fan, it stoped running (at least at 6000 rpm, cold). Hopefully this helps.
I bought my MBP 15'' Mid-2012 on 27th Oct, but now It has been making grinding noises like hum from the right hand even though no program running. I don't understand that it is the problem with fan or disk, and I am a bit disappointed with apple. Hence I decide to send my mac to apple store to replace a brand new one
Hello iRush1000 did you manage to fix your MBP fan problem? cheers!
2011 Macbook Pro Fan noise?
