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Looking at the 13" Ultimate Air but worried about the fan noise threads...

T

tekksan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
283
142
Hello,
I've been looking at the 13" Ultimate Air but worried about the fan noise threads around the different forums. Is it really that bad? My typical use is about 20-30 tabs open in chrome, itunes, and some word processing.
 
I would guess with 30 tabs of Flash you sure could have some fan noise. I don't get the 30 tabs of browser needs, but Flash will surely get going with that. I wouldn't recommend it with any Mac, but what do I know... 30 tabs, really?

In general, I would say the MBA is amazing and I rarely hear the fan, but with 30 browser tabs the fan and spinning beach balls seem like a foregone conclusion.
 
tekksan said:
Hello,
I've been looking at the 13" Ultimate Air but worried about the fan noise threads around the different forums. Is it really that bad? My typical use is about 20-30 tabs open in chrome, itunes, and some word processing.
Click to expand...

Remember, the people complaining about the fan noise are some of the most ANAL people around. They've never been around an old PC obviously.

My God fan noise, oh nO!!!!!!

I don't have the ultimate 13" but I have the 13" MBA and the fannoise is so minimal at times.

Jesus Christ people.

Get it, you will love it!
 
Boston007 said:
Remember, the people complaining about the fan noise are some of the most ANAL people around. They've never been around an old PC obviously.

My God fan noise, oh nO!!!!!!

I don't have the ultimate 13" but I have the 13" MBA and the fannoise is so minimal at times.

Jesus Christ people.

Get it, you will love it!
Click to expand...

+1 - Right on the money!
 
I have a 2010 2.4 15" MBP now but the portability of 13" MBA is very appealing. I just don't like the idea of it being loud.
 
I assure you I'm not a nitpicker and ridicule those who are, but I assure you the fans are noticeable on my 13" MBA running almost anything that pushes it. Parallels, most games under bootcamp, HDvids, etc.

If you just use basic office apps you won't hear them.
 
tekksan said:
Hello,
I've been looking at the 13" Ultimate Air but worried about the fan noise threads around the different forums. Is it really that bad? My typical use is about 20-30 tabs open in chrome, itunes, and some word processing.
Click to expand...

tekksan, I have a new 13" ultimate MBA for a couple months now, and I have only heard the fan kick in once, while watching a movie with flash lying in bed with the notebook resting in blankets. I'm pretty sure it's kicked on other times, but I've never noticed it.

I usually have Safari open with about 8 to 10 tabs, some word processing, and maybe iTunes, but not exactly the same browsing situation. I just surf in Safari until I run into flash content I want to view then I just hit the 'Open in Chrome' tab under Safari's developer menu to launch the page in Chrome. Hope that helps. 30 tabs though....man. I dunno.
 
I finally sold mine a few days ago. I took two trips to the Apple Genius Bar to try to get them to address the problem. Fans would just roar on flash sites and temperatures would go into the 80's C. Still killed me that the wife's 11" Air on same sites and pages had no problems. Fans didn't even ramp up and temps were about 15* cooler.

Genius Bar wanted me to leave it so they could run it for two or three days and see if they could isolate the problem. I didn't want to do their R&D for them and my wife and I thought running that machine for several days flat out and then getting it back from them might not be the best thing.

I now have a new i5 MacBook pro I'm on right now. No fan noise:)
 
On 13-UMBA, normally fan runs at 2K and CPU about 43C, and cannot hear unless you put your ear to back of unit. Only time I've experience higher fan speeds are when using Skype, which causes fan to rotate 3,875rpm and CPU temp at 79C. At 3,875rpm, the fan is audible, but not excessively so, still quieter than my Dell E4310 when it's fan kicks in.
 
calvol said:
On 13-UMBA, normally fan runs at 2K and CPU about 43C, and cannot hear unless you put your ear to back of unit. Only time I've experience higher fan speeds are when using Skype, which causes fan to rotate 3,875rpm and CPU temp at 79C. At 3,875rpm, the fan is audible, but not excessively so, still quieter than my Dell E4310 when it's fan kicks in.
Click to expand...

I fear that skype is slowly killing my UMBA :(
 
I'm thinking of waiting for the next MBA rev then and see if SB improves things. I saw one thread where it was stated the next rev was expected in June but then another thread stated no hardware announcements at June WWDC so I'm not sure. I can have 30+ tabs going in chrome (no flash blocking enabled or anything), VPN, itunes, misc. background apps and my 15" i5 makes no sounds whatsoever.

Thanks guys. <crosses fingers for June MBA refresh>
 
Boston007 said:
Remember, the people complaining about the fan noise are some of the most ANAL people around. They've never been around an old PC obviously.
Click to expand...

Not really. I'm hardly picky and own several PC's including 2 PC laptops. Under light usage my MBA is by far the quietest. Under load it is by far the loudest. I'm not complaining as it doesn't really bother me, mainly because I'm rarely under a load situation that spins the fan to full blast and since using CoolBook, even under load the fan never goes up to full speed, but nevertheless, when at full speed, it IS loud. Anyone claiming their MBA 13 has always been silent is either lying, deaf, or has never put a significant load on it. Period.

That said, the MBA is still my most enjoyable laptop to use.
 
Mine doesn't seem to really get hot enough to make it spin up very loudly. And when it does, it's not particularly obnoxious. I mean, you have 14 days to put it through the wringer ;)
 
Had mine for a few weeks now, and I've only heard the fan even come on three or four times. Only time it got really loud was while iTunes was encoding all the music to 128 to save some space on my iPhone.

Watching Hulu on an external monitor doesn't even seem to spin them up. On the rare chance that they have come on, they shut back down very quickly. It seems Apple finally got the cooling right this time.
 
Today was the first i ever heard the fan...I had word, excel, safari...with flash, parallels windows 7...IE, with video streaming from IE, and a few other things going....fans came on but I could hardly hear it....fans are a non issue...
 
I usually have 8-10 tabs open in Chrome and I often have iTunes, Word, Twitter, iChat and few other programs open and I never hear the fan
 
Doesn't matter what you have "open" I can open 30 tabs, word, excel, outlook, powerpoint, ichat, garageband, itunes, quicktime, photoshop and whatever else you want open and still have nearly idle CPU usage. All that does is increase your memory usage which is not going to generate heat. Do something that actually needs significant amount of CPU, or better yet, CPU and GPU usage and you WILL hear the fan loud and clear.

The folks complaining of fan noise aren't doing so because of their imagination. I own an MBA and have worked on about a half dozen other 13" MBA. Every single one, without exception was VERY audible when under load. I was skyping with my cousin who recently got an MBA and after a few minutes of video chat he said "dude, my laptop is about to take off" due to the ever increasing fan noise. This coming from a guy who built PCs using 6000RPM delta fans a few years back so he's pretty tolerant of noise.
 
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