2008 MacBook Pro Fan Woes

[CYB3RBYTE]

After replacing the dreaded 8600M GT GPU on the logic board for my 2008 MBP 4,1 it seems as though the fans on this machine are ungoverned. I say that as they don't seem to want to stay below maximum speed for some reason unless I run Macs Fan Control or smcFanControl or something along those lines.

I know these have a reputation for running hot, but with the replaced GPU and decent thermal paste (Corsair) I would believe it to not run the fans full bore all the time. dosdude1 also did the GPU replacement and I trust that all is well physically with the board, his work looked to be neat and tidy.

Does anyone have a screenshot of what their machines temp sensors look like (via iStat menus or something) to show that I have all the sensors connected?

Running Catalina via dosdude's patcher, even at idle with very little CPU / GPU activity fans are at full speed.

Thanks!

 

[rampancy]

I could help with that; I'll try to do that when I get home in a few minutes.

In the meantime are you sure there's no rogue process running amok in Activity Monitor?

Edit: For what it's worth, here is the sensor list for my MacBook Pro, taken from a screenshot of iStat Menus 5; however I've realized I have a 3,1, not a 4,1 as I originally thought.

 

[B S Magnet]

After replacing the dreaded 8600M GT GPU on the logic board for my 2008 MBP 4,1 it seems as though the fans on this machine are ungoverned. I say that as they don't seem to want to stay below maximum speed for some reason unless I run Macs Fan Control or smcFanControl or something along those lines.

I know these have a reputation for running hot, but with the replaced GPU and decent thermal paste (Corsair) I would believe it to not run the fans full bore all the time. dosdude1 also did the GPU replacement and I trust that all is well physically with the board, his work looked to be neat and tidy.

Does anyone have a screenshot of what their machines temp sensors look like (via iStat menus or something) to show that I have all the sensors connected?

Running Catalina via dosdude's patcher, even at idle with very little CPU / GPU activity fans are at full speed.

Thanks!

The fan located on the side with the GeForce 8600M GT will need — regardless the version of the OS you choose — to run higher than the other side (where the CPU is situated). This is a consequence of the GPU running a lot hotter, even for more ordinary tasks, than the CPU. I’ve come to accept this as a limitation of the internal design and the efficiency issues with the 8600M GT (which, I suss, were rectified by the time of the 9600M GT GPUs used for the successor-unibody models).

On Macs Fan Control, since replacing the OEM logic board with a green-dot version for my MBP4,1, I’ve set the left fan — the one proximal to the GPU — to 50°C minimum and 68°C maximum; the right fan — proximal to the CPU — is set with 55°C and 65°C. If you wanted to keep the fans from maxing out as often, you could increase the max temp setting whilst leaving the min setting alone (I’d try to keep them beneath 70°C, regardless). But that’s about the best you’ll be able to do, given all other limitations of this series.

This ought to give you usability without both fans needing to be pegged at max constantly.

 

[CYB3RBYTE]

Thank you both of you. Programmed the sensor values in and its behaving a lot better now.

What OS's do either of you have running on your 4,1's? I'd like to give BS a try via OpenCore but I'm a bit worried with 6GB of RAM.

 

[B S Magnet]

What OS's do either of you have running on your 4,1's? I'd like to give BS a try via OpenCore but I'm a bit worried with 6GB of RAM.

Eventually, I plan to get a much higher capacity WD Blue SSD to replace the WD Blue 500GB in there presently. When I do, I’ll bump the RAM from 4 to 6GB and add a second OS on there — Mojave. For my needs, everything after Mojave is not really useful to most of what I do. I still do run 32-bit applications, and the notion of an un-interruptable umbilical network cord with Apple when launching any application is not something I care much for — much less the strict cryptography for the OS’s components introduced by Monterey and formalized in Ventura (heck, I’ve no idea if Ventura will even run on a MBP4,1).

Since setting it up last year, this MBP4,1 runs a cloned image of my build of OS X 10.6.8, sourced from my early 2011 13-inch MBP’s SSD — which itself was cloned in 2011 from an HDD sourced from a dead (I killed it, I’m guilty!) mid-2009 13-inch MBP which shipped from Apple with the then-just-released 10.6.0.

All of this is to say: the build of 10.6.8 I run on my MBP4,1 was intended for an OEM installation (i.e., the factory grey DVDs) on a MBP which came out 18 months later. There is one outstanding quirk which I can’t definitively trace back to this lineage (an issue where extended runtime will cause misalignment between directory and file node count on the SSD, fixable with Disk Utility), but it’s one I’ve lived with for almost a dozen years across two different laptops.

I’ve considered the idea of re-installing, in place, 10.6.3—>10.6.8 from a retail DVD of, say, 10.6.3, but in its current configuration, it has 13 years’ worth of personalization which is impossible to perfectly replicate. It’s the closest extension of my brain I’ve been able to put together within a computing setting.

 

[rampancy]

Thank you both of you. Programmed the sensor values in and its behaving a lot better now.

What OS's do either of you have running on your 4,1's? I'd like to give BS a try via OpenCore but I'm a bit worried with 6GB of RAM.

I used to have 10.6.8 installed on my 3,1 but the main problem was that I needed reliable access to sites like Medium and Submittable (among many others), and while I love InterWeb and ArcticFox they simply just weren't cutting it in terms of compatibility.

I now run 10.11.6, and I do love the boost in compatibility with more modern apps like Waterfox Legacy, White Star and Chromium Legacy (which is quite frankly saving me, especially with the latest update to WebCatalog breaking all of my SSB apps I created for the sites and services I frequently use - especially Slack, whose native client doesn't work on El Capitan anymore).

I do miss the "snappiness" of Snow Leopard, as well as the ability to disable UI menu/window shadows with ShadowKiller, and run in Thousands of Colours with DisplayMaestro, which provided a big percieved speed boost (and I also like to think it made things easier for the GPU, too).

 

[CYB3RBYTE]

I’m thinking something like Mojave or High Sierra is best for these machines, being that those OS’s are livable on machines with only 4GB. This will be my browsing / light photo editing portable via Affinity Photo.

 

[B S Magnet]

I’m thinking something like Mojave or High Sierra is best for these machines, being that those OS’s are livable on machines with only 4GB. This will be my browsing / light photo editing portable via Affinity Photo.

The main trade-off, for anyone who pays much notice to it, is the reliance Mojave has on metal graphics rendering, which for 2008-era MBPs, will be lacking. A 2009 MP4,1, on the other hand…