MacBook Air i5 fan & Thunderbolt Display

I wish I knew why, but that seems to be the case for me: 50% of the time when it wakes up from sleep and I then plug into thunderbolt, I can watch in iStat the cpu temp steadily increasing into the 90s and the fans kick in. My guess is that it's the on board gpu, as the cpu is idling according to activity monitor.

The cpu can continue to run hot and fans running all day, unless I restart the the machine. Once I've restarted and all of my apps restart as well (still connected to thunderbolt), the cpu temp falls back down to 70 and fans slow down to 2k rpm which is barely noticable. I can then run that way all day with the thunderbolt display and no fan noise (without using a stand).

Exactly same behaviour for me, except (as I said) the fan starts spinning also if I watch a Flash video without using a stand.

So problems for me are:

- When I plug MBA to thunderbolt in sleep state, the MBA wakes up and fan starts spinning all day, also when apps are idle. In this case a reboot solve the issue.

- While watching a flash video on youtube or making a video call in skype, fan starts, even if the MBA have been powered on while connected to Thunderbolt Display. Never happens with VLC or quicktime, just with web videos.

In this case the only workaround for me is using a stand or something that avoid contact of MBA with my desk, also rebooting doesn't help at all.

I wonder if other people having one of these issue experienced the other one too, e.g.

@e28 do you have fan problems while watching youtube videos? In my case after some minutes CPU goes to 97C and fans about 6500rpm

I'm having exactly the same issues everyone else is having:

MBA + Thunderbolt = CRAZY fan noise

No apps running...just idle and it won't cool down. At the Apple Store now. The shaman in the back is doing some additional tests but I'm skeptical. I think the Apple engineers missed this one. And agree with the previous post: Apple needs to OWN this problem. We buy Apple products front-to-back because they're supposed to work together seamlessly. This combo DOESN'T.

APPLE ARE YOU LISTENING???

I was having similar issues. Turning my closed 13" MBA upside down seems to keep it cool enough. A low-tech fix, but it seems to work.

I have this same problem (loud fan noise when my MBS is connected to my TBD). I have called applecare twice about fan noise and been to the genius bar. The applecare staff did not suggest disconnecting my TBD to solve the problem. I figured that out myself. The genius bar guy dismissed the problem and told me I had too many apps open - he's wrong on this because I can have all my apps open and the fan is not audible. As soon as I plug in the display the fan starts up.

How do we get through to Apple on this? Do they monitor this board? It's clearly a design fault - the MBA is not powerful enough to run the TBA without the fun running at full speed. Let's hope someone comes up with a solution soon because I've got a big display on my desk that I hardly use.

Jo Hauser

I got so sick of monitoring temps and dealing with what's running when and all this heat BS that I got rid of the airbook. Got macbook pro, and all is good in the world again.

same problem here (MBA 11 I7)

Same here (MBA Mid 2012 i7 8g 512)

Would 90 degree celcius of CPU temp damage the CPU??

I've bought a MB Air 13 i5 latest model (3 or 4 weeks old). A week ago I purchased a Thunderbolt display to use as docking station but also to stream telly, Sky Go, Iplayer etc..

Streaming TV works well by the looks of it as long as I use the air stand alone!

Normal internet, Itunes doesnt create any fan noise whilst connected to the TB. So far so good.....

Connected to Thunderbolt in combination with streaming content means fan noise. This only happens watching video in combination with the Thunderbolt interface as on its own the Air seems to stream content ok without fan noise. I am 100% sure that the noise has something to do with the Thunderbolt interface.

I haven't got many apps open and noise stops as soon as I stop streaming live TV. I did look at discussions about Flash player and Silver light but stand alone the air can cope.

Same issue with me, just set up my new MacBook Air 13" (2012) and Thunderbolt Display and noise is driving me insane...

I have a mid 2012 11 inch MBA with an i7 and 8 GB RAM. While I don't have a thunderbolt display, I use a 19 in Samsung LCD monitor via DVI cable. In my case the computer while supporting dual screens runs at a normal idle temp of 45-50c, even while running Safari and iTunes it will stay under 60c. When I run my MBA closed only supporting the monitor I get temps as low as 40-50c. For those experiencing high heats (+80c) it may just be that running a thunderbolt requires that much output from the CPU which also means the fans. Or try closing your MBA and just supporting the thunderbolt instead of 2 screens to minimize the graphics requirements and overall CPU/GPU usage.

The only time my computer ever gets over 80c is when I'm running heavier games but even then it will manage to maintain around 85-90c max.

Air closed in clampshell mode and streaming video means fan noise so only driving one display

Right I think I'm getting closer to the exact issue.

The MacBook air June 2012 makes no noise in combination with the thunderbolt display except:

When I stream video on a full TB screen and then it depends on which player(UK). BBC Iplayer is bearable, ITV player horrendous, Sky Go varies. That's Flash and Silverlight I think, but if I keep the window on its original size then there's not much noise.

If apple could do something about fan noise in combination with full screen TB video streaming then great!

We're having same problems here - it seems to be dependent on the Macbook air model that is attached to a Thunderbolt display as some don't exhibit this issue. Another reason why Thunderbolt is a Thunder-dud. We actually decided to switch the Thunderbolt monitor out with an older style Apple monitor which solves the problem (I think we're also getting rid of our Thunderbolt based monitors on ebay).

Same thing here. Most screen savers (not just iphoto) seem to make the fan kick in. I switched to Spectrum and haven't heard the fan yet, but will keep testing.

This fan noise thing with the MacBook Air is really annoying!