Hi!
I recently bought a 20" early 2008 iMac (2.66 C2D, 4GB RAM) for a mere 200 bucks because it had weird fan control issues. Loaded Lion onto it and the iStat widget, which reports this:
As you can see, the CPU fan has gone ape feces/excrement/poo at 3900 RPM, all the while the HDD fan is spinning at 1200 RPM. And the HDD is at 40 degrees Celsius while the CPU is at 28. Not very logical!
So what I'm contemplating is if it's worth it to try a fan control program and try to limit the fan manually - though I've read that this can seriously mess up the SMC. I'm not super capable of handling Terminal and such and it makes me think that this is not the greatest of ideas.
Any thoughts/recommendations? I will try to do a hardware test and update this post later with the results.
UPDATE: I found a solution on some forums. Unfortunately, I'll have to manage the fans semi-manually from now on.
1. Download smcFanControl and install.
2. Download View attachment Fan control.zip - a folder of Automator apps with workflows that tells the smcFanControl driver through Terminal to set a new max fan speed. Included is 1200, 1500, 2500 and the default 3900 RPM. Just click one when the fans are unbearable, and use smcFanControl in your menu bar to report your CPU temp, so you can run the Automator apps accordingly.
(Need another speed? Take your desired RPM times 4 and feed it into here: http://www.statman.info/conversions/hexadecimal.html, then run Automator and make a workflow app paste in this https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5266108/ via Utilities > Run shell script. Delete the "cat". Save as a new Automator workflow with the name of the RPM limit.)
I recently bought a 20" early 2008 iMac (2.66 C2D, 4GB RAM) for a mere 200 bucks because it had weird fan control issues. Loaded Lion onto it and the iStat widget, which reports this:
As you can see, the CPU fan has gone ape feces/excrement/poo at 3900 RPM, all the while the HDD fan is spinning at 1200 RPM. And the HDD is at 40 degrees Celsius while the CPU is at 28. Not very logical!
So what I'm contemplating is if it's worth it to try a fan control program and try to limit the fan manually - though I've read that this can seriously mess up the SMC. I'm not super capable of handling Terminal and such and it makes me think that this is not the greatest of ideas.
Any thoughts/recommendations? I will try to do a hardware test and update this post later with the results.
UPDATE: I found a solution on some forums. Unfortunately, I'll have to manage the fans semi-manually from now on.
1. Download smcFanControl and install.
2. Download View attachment Fan control.zip - a folder of Automator apps with workflows that tells the smcFanControl driver through Terminal to set a new max fan speed. Included is 1200, 1500, 2500 and the default 3900 RPM. Just click one when the fans are unbearable, and use smcFanControl in your menu bar to report your CPU temp, so you can run the Automator apps accordingly.
(Need another speed? Take your desired RPM times 4 and feed it into here: http://www.statman.info/conversions/hexadecimal.html, then run Automator and make a workflow app paste in this https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5266108/ via Utilities > Run shell script. Delete the "cat". Save as a new Automator workflow with the name of the RPM limit.)
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