Heat and Fan noise on new 2011 Air?

How many of you are using Dropbox?

I saw a couple of times that it was forcing 100% CPU usage (normally when Finder is viewing All My Files). Shutting it down seemed to resolve it.

I have a late 2010 Macbook Air w/ 2.13 Core 2 Duo , 4GB DDR3, and 256SSD that came from the factory... and the heat and fan noise generated whenever using my mac to watch any kind of online streaming (youtube, videos, or playing mpeg4 Videos) would have the fans kick in to 6500rpm within a minute or so (iStat was registering the CPU temperature at above 90C, where it would be idling at 65-68C when not watching any kind of videos).

I eventually caved in, and decided to order the necessary screw drivers / bits to open up my macbook air and have a look inside. Was reading alot about how poorly the cpu's thermal grease was applied, and how others were reporting success. I tried the pram and smc resetting, but noticed no difference before or after.

Before redoing the thermal grease on my CPU / GPU my Temperatures reporting with iStat showed the following...

(no web browsing i.e. no emails, nor reading online...): Idle Temp 52C

(Web, reading emails, online, but no flash or streaming): Browsing Temp 68C

(Watching online streaming or playing MPEG Videos): Streaming Temp 92 - 95C

After applying thermal grease on CPU and GPU: 38*C / 46*C / 72**C (streaming within a window sized screen) 82***C (Streaming Full Screen).

Respecting Fan Speed:

* = 2000rpm steady

** = 3000 - 3250 rpm mildly varying below 3000rpm (can't hear it)

*** = 3800 - 4200 rpm variable (need to listen for it to notice it, but late at night with earphones on, I do not disturb the person sleeping next to me).

Before, I could not stream any kind of video without the fans kicking in and whurring away at 6500rpm.

I was planning on replacing my macbook late 2010 air, but after this very successful mod, I love it all over again (more than my 15" macbook pro retina).

Cheers,

LormaD

I have a weird problem with my Mid 2011 1.8GHz 4GB 250GB SSD Macbook Air.

Almost every time a open my Macbook Air's lid and wake it up from the sleep the fan starts to make noise (4000 - 5300RPM) and CPU temp is aroung 48°C. Activity monitor shows no reason for this behavior. CPU is 96 - 100% idle.

My Macbook Air calms down only after I reboot it but that's annoying, I would like to use my Macbook Air right after woke up from the sleep without restarting.

Any ideas where's the problem?

May I suggest the following...

depending on your browser of choice, when opening up from sleep did you have any web browser pages open? Do you use any kind of flash blocker for Safari, Google, Firefox... I suggest you do so. I keep hearing how flash browser pages can affect load and in turn increases the need to cycle the fan.

It goes without saying that your laptop is up to date, but are your apps as well (not everything updates through iTunes/App store).

May I also suggest prior to putting your laptop to sleep, if you can go to "Force quit" and manually shutdown any backround apps, and see if the problem still occurs. If not, then you have isolated somewhat the problem to software based. If it does, then perhaps it is firmware or hardware related.

Cheers,

LormaD

Thanks for your suggestions.

I do have Chrome open when I close the lid. In Chrome I have AdBlock installed. I don't have any flash sites open on my browser when I put my Macbook to sleep.

My open apps are up to date. Chrome, Terminal and Adium.

I'm going to try to shut down every app before closing the lid to make sure it's not any app that's causing this problem.