"breathing" noise

Question

Level 1

4 points

"breathing" noise

My one-year-old PowerBook G4 recently started making a noise periodically that sounds like it's breathing. Every few seconds, it will expel air out of somewhere in the back of the computer. Has this happened to anybody else, and how did you fix it? It's really getting annoying!

PowerBook G4 15-inch, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Sep 25, 2006 7:32 PM

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Answer 1

SeaBeast

Level 4

2,875 points

Sep 26, 2006 1:32 PM in response to M.Liz

Seems to me that you had described the normal behavior of the PowerBook cooling down process.

There are two fans builted within your PowerBook that will only start when the internal temperature is above a certain limit. It is possible that you never noticed before since there is a lot of thermal factors that set the internal temperature.

Be sure to let a gap underneath the powerbook to allow it to cool down by the case convection. If you have no running application, the fan shouldn't work but as you are using your computer, the CPU will heat up.

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Answer 2

shcaerp

Level 1

63 points

Sep 26, 2006 6:35 PM in response to M.Liz

Are you using iChat? The sound that iChat makes when one of your buddies logout sounds like a breathing noise. You can disable it in the iChat preferences.

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