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janey

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 20, 2002
5,316
0
sunny los angeles
My macbook's fan (fans?) like to make a very, very loud racket in the middle of a quiet class and lecture where everyone can hear it.

I can't get it to shut up without either ****ing with the various fan control apps (and only for like 10 minutes at a time or until the fan spins up cause the temp's apparently too high) or putting it to sleep for a few minutes (hey what about taking notes?!).

What am i doing on said laptop in class? Textmate/subethaedit, xcode/eclipse/intellij (and im not doing anything particularly intensive like every minute, more like code/occasional build and/or debug while prof's lecturing and thats almost it), safari, terminal. And I either disabled or killed all the various processes I didn't need (like universal access and little snitch), and energy saver pref is set at best battery life. Plus bluetooth and airport are turned off, and im using ethernet for the intarwebs.

I used various physical cooling methods (podiums/portable laptop stand type things, books), and this computer is barely warm to the touch...and the AC wasnt even on and the weather (and room) was slightly warm the last time i used it, and you could hardly tell it was warm (plus the two apps said the temp was below 50C the whole time except when it gets particularly obscenely loud at 50-60C and above)... I'm like, almost to the point where I'm very, very tempted to bring goddamn ice packs to class to get this to get very cool and quiet...and i even have smcfancontrol and fan control in my dock to use the moment it gets stupidly loud. Plus it goes from silent -> loud -> VERY loud really fast, so..:rolleyes:

Help, and thanks in advance :mad: :mad: :(
 

Music_Producer

macrumors 68000
Sep 25, 2004
1,633
18
I know you've probably done this (after reading all the various things you have attempted) .. but, did you install the fan firmware update? My Macbook pro's fans used to do the same, after updating the firmware though.. I can't even hear it anymore.

If you have already updated/installed the firmware.. maybe it was an incomplete installation? Try re-installing it and see if the problem goes away. I can't quite think of anything else, if nothing works.. you might want to exchange it for another unit, it could just be a hardware fault and you might not be able to do anything about it.
 

janey

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 20, 2002
5,316
0
sunny los angeles
I know you've probably done this...
unfortunately i've already done that and thought about the second situation as well :eek:

I've talked to an apple genius about it and an irrelevant issue, and he said that they'd do a logic board replacement for free which might fix the issue, but given the waiting times and my need of an intel laptop i can't really afford to do that (time-wise) right now :rolleyes:
 
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