MacBook Air Fan Noise With Lion

I had a really loud sony vaio before I got my MBA as well, so I understand your pain! Fortunately, I can say my MBA is extremally quiet and I haven't had any fan issues. But I did have a weird shutdown after connecting to my external monitor and I couldn't boot up. Resetting the SMC seemed to work.

Wondering if anyone who's posted previously could update since October's release of 10.7.2 for Lion?

I was one of the folks who upgraded my MacBook 2.4GHz/4GB RAM to Lion on the first day of release (10.7.0) and after two weeks of overheating/overactive fans (and subsequent battery life loss) I wiped the drive and reinstalled with Snow Leopard. Has been running great since then.

Now that there's been some time, I'm curious if 10.7.2 has fixed the problem... a search for fans/Lion/heat shows most of the activity on the boards subsiding back in October.

I've actually been running fine for a while now on my 1st generation MacBook Air. Whenever I do get a spike in temperature, it's isolated and typically due to Flash or rare out-of-control processes on specific web pages.

@computersWTF

I just ran into the issue once again today, fully updated. So...no, it hasn't been fixed yet (at least I'm still running into issues). Was 74C prior to reboot (with near 0 cpu utilization), after reboot 51C (again, with near 0 cpu utilization)

51°C is a perfectly normal operating temperature, though...so I wouldn't be concerned if that's typical for your machine.

@tdowling - Yeah, I'm not concerned about 51C, that's perfectly fine. 74C at near 0% load is a bit concerning though. A quick reboot solved the issue.

@TheDarkTrumpet: Yeah, I can see 74 being concerning if it sustains like that. Usually when that happens to me, the temperature calms down after just quitting out of some applications...but with all the differing experiences here, I guess I can't assume that to work for everyone else!

I found the solution: the problem is the process: mdworker. Use APP TAMER and autostop this process will fix the fan issue, it seems that macbook air cannot handle this funcionality of Lion. This fixed my problem in 100% way, is incredible. I am using a macbook air 1st generation by the way.

That's a good thought, meitoli, but it's unforunately not always the culprit. "mdworker" in involved in Spotlight indexing, and I know that at least on my own 1st-gen MBA, it wasn't a factor after the first day or so. Maybe it's interacting with something else on your computer?

Actually, my little Lion machine has gotten all better on its own. Don't know if it was due to something in the 10.7.1 or 10.7.2 updates, or just some good fortune, but whatever the overheating source was, it seems to have taken care of itself!

I have a brand new 2011 MBA 13 256GB and 4GB RAM. One video and my fan goes on full blast. It's so loud that it's hard to hear the audio over it. Pathetic. With the battery problems of Lion and this fan noise I'm thoroughly disappointed by Apple. I bought this MBA and a brand new MBP 15 and I'm afraid I'm going to have to return both of them. They're not ready for prime time.

htmanning: if you can, you should have someone at an Apple Store check it out first. It's normal for the fan to go on during video (especially HD), but I don't think it's supposed to be so loud that it drowns out the sound of the video.

My 2011 MB Air with i7 CPU, 256 GB SSD and 4 GB RAM initially ran a bit warm while Spotlight was busy indexing the data I had transferred to it. Once completed, no problems. Yes, there's moderate fan activity when viewing a video, but certainy not the level of fan noise that you described. I don't find the level of fan noise distracting.

Give your Air a bit of time to finish indexing and other setup tasks, and I thunk you will be delighted with it. Mine is an amazing little computer. The battery life has gotten good, as well.

My only gripe is that I would like 8 GB RAM rather than 4.

Resetting the SMC solved the problem for me:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Though this thread's been dormant awhile, I found it while googling and the SMC reset stuff was great — thanks all.

I can supply a great tip for everyone who's been forced to use a cooling pad or stupid USB fan stand thingy: check out thermapak.com, specifically the little heatshift pads.

With a $20 pad, I can use my first-gen MacBook Pro (the ones who got so hot they massively deformed and blew out their own batteries) for at least a couple hours without difficulty; it takes 5 hours of iTunes use to fully melt the crystals in the pad. They need good surface contact to cool properly, but the pad works great for me; they're cheap and they last forever. And if you buy something with fans, a) you have to listen to them, b) they use power, and c) they fail eventually anyway.

Anyway, I'm not a shill, just a guy who got a hand-me-down MacBook Pro whose design flaws made it so hot it was unusable without some help.

—Cheers

Hey,

I got myself a new macbook AIr just on March 12th 2013. I have Mountian Lion with Core I7 and 8GB Of ram installed. Even with No apps open, the fan starts to crank up!! Even without the power being connected. Trying to root casue this.

Any help would be highly appreciated. I have instted a MS Office on OSX, tried a few startup apps but looks like the fan noise starts as soon as the mac boots up and a few minutes even if I just open and close outlook (quit outlook)

Warm Regards

Mohan