Q: MacBook Pro Retina Fan Issues

It is a buzzing, mechanical sound that can be heard several metres away.

Take your macbook to a genius, I heard some macbooks have those annoying fans with a buzz.

My experience tells me that the fan issue is caused by iTunes. My Macbook Pro (13'', mid-2010) with a Samsung 840 256GB SSD also have this issue. After playing songs for some time the fan speed gets up to 5000 rpm. In addition, after the songs play for several hours, my start-up disk (with about 50 GB free space initially) will be filled filled with temporary files generated by iTunes and become full.

After I closes iTunes, the fan speed goes back to normal quickly and the start-up disk also slowly restores it's original free space with those temporary files deleted.

I'm having a fan issue too. I just bought my 13" macbook pro retina a few weeks ago. It's the 3ghz, 8 gb ram, SM512E hdd version.

When I watch a youtube video, by the 2 minute mark, my fans will have increased from 2000 rpm to 6000 rpm. It's even gone as high as 8000 rpm after 5 minutes. The temps never exceed 56-57 degrees C.

I tried using the html5 player instead of flash and the fans topped out at 5000 rpm.

In some instances, if I continue watching a long video, the fans will return to 2000 rpm after a while. Other times, the fans stay at 6000 rpm for the entire video.

I'm really disappointed with my macbook. It's a brand new top of the line macbook and it can't even play a youtube video without causing the fans to max out. My 2010 macbook had no problem playing youtube videos.

I tried the SMC reset and it didn't help. Is it worth taking it to the genius bar?

I had the EXACT same issue as you....and i mean EXACT. with my 13in rMBP and youtube.... I find that it only occures in Chrome and Firefox. The fans do not spike when i am using Safari... I was thinking an over sensitave flash plugin..... It is interesting that they released a fix for the 15in macbook but not the 13in.....

I have had my MBP 13" Retina for about two months, and I just took it on my first trip across the country. Used it on both of my flights, and now that I'm using it off the plane, I hear the mechanical buzzing noise really loud at a normal distance from the screen, and can still hear it even 10 feet away from the laptop.

I have never heard it before today. This is really unfortunate if normal use (carrying it around in a bag, vibrations from an airplane) can cause this to happen.

Edit: Started realizing it would go away for a second or two at a time if I quickly tilted the whole laptop upwards. Closed the lid and shook it a few times, and now the buzzing noise is gone. Definitely an issue with loose fan stuff...

I have had 2 users bring these new 15" Retinas in to me for this issue in the last week. Thus far I have not found a good fix. It's looking like a trip to the Apple Store may be the only option.

Hi there

I am having issues with my fan as well, I have Performed a system hardware check, reset smc and PR test.  I've even taken the Sytem to an authorised Apple repairer.  They didn't find anything.  Although the problem is still occuring I have Rany Apple support on three ocassions, They told me it was a software issue.  What a lot of Crap. 

I am not sure what to do next.  I just what the thing fixed. According to your Comments.  BTW, is apple reading these comments? 

I will be persuing this further, and going to the fair trading and consumer affairs.

I have same problem with my New Macbook Pro Retina (13") with Sandisk SSD.

Is resetting SMC useful?

This is getting ridiculous. How many people must complain before Apple does something. I tried the SMC and I have made the update that was suppose to fix this. I have a SD512E SSD.

Has anyone heard of anything new. Mine still does it almost every day. *** APPLE.

Resetting SMC works. After that, I have no problem with the fan.

Resetted SMC again, no effect

**** !!  I get my MBP retina 15 for 2 days and i got the same problem as you all !  Have got any solutions?? :s

Omg man return it right away! The WWDC is next week and the retina macbook will get a new CPU -> Haswell and a new GPU -> Geforce 750M!! You have a 1 year old mashine already!!