MacBook Air i5 fan & Thunderbolt Display

I'm pretty confident that this had been much better for the last few months until some recent mac updates a couple weeks ago. Now the fan is back with a vengeance. At that point, I started getting pinged with all these emails again as others started searching for this thread.

I can do iPhoto, iTunes or internet without any fan noise. My set up is not only to use the air and tbd as computer but also as television in the kitchen. When streaming on full screen comes into play then the fan slowly ramps up to 6000+.

I am getting use to it now but I hope for an improvement in mountain lion?

Does anybody know if the situation improved with the new MBAs (mid 2012)? Intel 4000 is supposed to be up to 70% faster than 3000. Has anybody had a chance to experience the difference?

No, I have the 2012 and getting issue of fan noise...

Just upgraded to Mountain Lion and all other associated updates like the latest SMC firmware, Iphoto and Imovie that came through (Macbook Air June 2012)

Streaming TV on a full thunderbolt display still causes the fan to ramp up to 6000+. All other functions work fine in combination with Thunderbolt.

When I just keep the window that plays this TV channel on normal size then it's fine, but full screen streaming clearly required a lot of resources.

Also had the sound distortion by the way.......in OSX lion.

In mountain lion so far so good.

I will try Applecare for the fan issue but I wont raise my hope. Hopefully the sound distortions stays away.

I just upgraded to Mountain Lion. The fan noise is worse. I thought they might have fixed this problem. Annoying.

Hello people,

I purchased a 2012 macbook air 13 inch 2.0GHz 8Gb RAM 256 SSD. I also purchased the thunderbolt display.

My problem is as follows: When working simply on the MBA, no matter what tasks I do, the fans will reach 6500 RPM, and then they will drop down to normal once they cool the CPU.

When i use the TBD, no matter what i do, the fans will go high at 6500 RPM, and EVEN THOUGH i am closing all applications.....it WILL NOT DROP DOWN......it keeps constantly at 6500. Taking the power cable out for 1 second and connect it back will somehow "reset" the fans to 2000RPM.....but again it climbs up to 6500....

The thing is that it seems UNNESESSARY because my temperature is already low (53-57 degrees). And still.....it will go up to 6500 RPM.....impossible to withstand the noise......I admire apple for 8 years straight now because of their perfect hardware-software pairing,,,,,,where everything works fine......I am dissapointed.....we should get an answer from apple.....at least to know if its a bug to be fixed in the future or is just lost cause...

Hope that somebody will come with a solution.....

Hello again guys,

Surprisingly..... I found my self the answer for the above problem.... it may sound weird and totally difficult to believe yet its happening.

So....apple says that macbook air and pro "running temperatures" are from 10-35 degrees celcius.

I do not know where each one of you lives but I live in Greece. In the summer we do have very high temperatures.

I was working with my macbook air-thunderbolt display at 34-35 degrees inside the room. The "enclosure temperature sensors" where going up at 38-41 degrees. So the result was that the fan would keep going at 6500 RPM no slowing down at all EVEN THOUGH the CPU temp was 52 degrees.

I switched on the air-conditioning system in my room and managed to decrease the room temperature from 34-35 degrees down to 29 degrees.

THE RESULT: i play games, watch youtube, open multiple applications, and once these are closed the fans start dropping down gradually from 6500 to 3200. (which is silent)

It would be helpful to know where those people who have experienced similar problem live. I have a feeling that we will find out its HOT COUNTRIES-CITIES!! 🙂

Doctor_b...I live in the Seattle area which is a very cool to moderate climate. You had an interesting premise, but Seattle is never thought of as a "hot city". Thanks for sharing your experience though.

Guess Apple still isn't interested in figuring this one out ....sigh.

doctor_b: thanks for suggestion... but this is not my case.

Even in winter, in a cold room, fan noise bothers me.

Of course in summer is getting worse... but I don't want it at all while watching a low res video on youtube, that's it.

Air conditioning my house as a datacenter to keep a laptop quiet is not a solution, this doesn't make sense.

As update to this issue, I can confirm that upgrading to Mountain Lion changes nothing: same problem.

Still wondering why Apple ignores this issue: 55 replies confirming it shows this is not a problem of "hot countries", this is a overheating problem not addressed while adding Thunderbolt interface to MBA.

BTW, you said:

>i play games, watch youtube, open multiple applications, and once these are closed the fans start dropping down gradually from 6500 to 3200.

I can understand fans spinning while you're gaming, but do you think it's normal having 6500RPM while watching youtube?

Ok, so I've upgraded to 10.8 and did an SMC update and it's gotten much much better!! The temperatures can go up to 70C, but the fan is at about 2000rpm. When running a slideshow screensaver that does panning on the GPU the temperature is about 73C and the fan is at 3200rpm, which is still pretty silent. Before the update the temperatures would go to 85C with fan running at 6000rpm with the same screensaver.

I have a 13" mid 2011 with Sandy Bridge i7 (1.8Ghz).

I have followed a few threads again recently as I had basically given up on the issue. Last night I watched a film (streaming as that is my only problem) but this time opened the lid. Instead of 6500 rpm the fans did 4800 so not like a hurricane this time. I have focused on heat dissipation now so ordered the bookarc Air

Fingers crossed I can stream video now without aircraft noise!

After many try, i give up.

the only solution i found so far , it's using a 24" display from HP trought DVI to Mini displayport, in this configuration fan keep really quiet.

i agree with people saying trouble might come with integrated GPU, i've seem a slighly improvement using 11" macbook air 2012 with HD4000 comparing to my previous 13"MBair HD3000, Fam spining to 6000rpm a bit less often but nothing that stop me from complaining about fan noise.

Combining this issues with my other clamshell mode trouble where you need first to open the laptop before connecting the TB display otherwise it won't wake up from sleep without hard reboot. it's too much.

I'm a fan of apple product, but this thunderbolt display is really not up to apple standard , very disappoint. i hoped for sometime now that apple will fix the issue , but i need to face true , no chance with it. i wasted 1000€

So I have MacBook Air 13" 2012 i5/8GB RAM and I can't figure out where is fan? how they set up a fan into slim panel? Also I can't find a slot for cooling fan

Elevating the MBP 13 on lego blocks (until I get a stand) made the noise go down to slight humming. Having the TBD with its sensitive mic next to the noisy MBP made skyping impossible.. People on the other line thought I had a real noisy fan..

**** Genius boys should be reading these forums..

Now the fan is down to 3295...