Q: MacBook Pro Retina Fan Issues

A high CPU usage issue will be brushed off as "standard".  The issue here is that the fans kick up even with very low CPU usage.

Something is puting the FAN in "Panic Mode". It must be a miscomunnication between the sensors and the SMC software.

It's weird, now I can't reproduce it with iTunes and Apple LossLess song.

<Edited by Host>

@Oyinko2 did you get a reply?

Since I got a reply from his staff, let's wait for their call. I will keep you posted.

Only if we get negative news from Oyinko2, maybe he tells us today or tommorow there is a update coming next week?

Something is puting the FAN in "Panic Mode". It must be a miscomunnication between the sensors and the SMC software.

Download this song, close every application. Lauch iTunes and play this song. It will kick you fan up between 2-5 minutes https://www.dropbox.com/s/rexu9m8xrq4xvo7/Daybreak.m4a

And please tell me if you are able to reproduce the problem.

When I mentioned the CPU usage I should have added, you will notice that when YouTube sends a large chunk of data (when watching long streams) you will also see a large spike in CPU usage too, when the stream of data pauses from YT like it does from time to time the CPU usage drops to just a few % again, GPU usage stays pretty much the same all the time. I use iStat menu to monitor this stuff. CPU usage has little to nothing to do with the HTML5 decoding, thats all done on the GPU/Custom video decoder, but decompression of the stream seems to be done on the CPU as its cached/buffered. Sorry for not being clear enough and again this is purely conjecture I do not work in the field.

This is what I was replying to originally.

One thing I noticed was that disk access pattern was very strange: according to the (admittedly small) disk activity view, every time the fan picked up the read/written data both spiked to 10MB/sec.

It could just be that there is high CPU use when writing a lot of data to the SSD in a Macbook, but that is massively high compared to what I see with the SSD's and CPU usage on my i7 2600k PC. I didn't notice any fan noise like that when using a thunderbolt to GigE connector to copy some files across from my PC, and that was downloading at 75MB per second and I had a big cheesy grin on my face from the speed, lol.

@Oyinko2 Tried twice (shutdown, startup, open iTunes and play the song) and triggered the effect both times at 1:47.  Now if only I can reproduce it in the store tomorrow ... (and if this affects their stock units, they might do something about it)

It's funny because it start at the exact same time for myself.

I made a video and published it on Youtube.

It show the fan going full blast by just playing a Apple LossLess song with itunes. Temperatures, CPU usage and fans speed are monitored during the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly0Sp7lMKJU

Yes I can replicate the problem with that music file too. At about 2:30 into the song the fans start to ramp up to full speed over about 30 seconds, they stay at maximum speed for 30-45 seconds then it slows down again to about 2500-3000 RPM then starts to ramp up speed again after a few seconds. Here is a screen grab of the fan speed, the left two peaks are the first play through of the song and the second two peaks are the second time I played it.

The second Picture shows the CPU temps over the same time period as the picture above, as you can see its completely unrelated to fan speed.

Hey, make some screen shots of your iStat, with this you can prove it...

And you can't nearly prove it on their machines, because they are the old models...

"And you can't nearly prove it on their machines, because they are the old models..."

Do they always run older models in the store?  I would think that they would display the model that they are currently selling ...

If they heve the 2.6 retina's running, they won't change it for the 2.7 ghz models, because they also have 2.3 (now 2.4) models for sale which are always slower than the 2.6 or 2.7.  But if you're in the 14 day period, keep changing in store till they accept the are selling broken machines?

I downloaded the OVERWEK track.

I have played it twice.

First Play: Fan Spiked at 2:10 settled and then spiked again at 4:05

Second Play: It Spiked at 2:05 settled then spiked again at 3:50 in then remained at full blast untill well after the track had finished. It was the longest period I have heard the fan run at full.

Im starting to feel slightly relieved. It seems like this can surely be fixed with software....