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alljunks

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 8, 2007
212
0
my MBP usually is at around 2K rpm and around temp of 47 to 50 C, and once it hit over 60 c, the fan went to 6K rpm is this normal?
 
Yep, just fine on both counts. It generally won't get that hot, and correspondingly won't run the fan flat-out like that, unless you're pushing it pretty hard, but it's not out of the ordinary.
 
I use a MBP/15/2.33 with SmcFanControl 1.2.3 installed, and the fans' behaviour is really odd.

Sometimes, when I run parallels, the temp. reported by SFC would be ~60C and the fans would up their rpm to 4000-5000. Other times, when I really push the machine with matlab, and the temp. would reach 72-74C, the fans would stay at 2000 rpm, unless I will increase it manually.

Haven't seen fan speeds of 6000 rpm, though -- at most, I think, 5000.
 
smcFanControl is ok, but when I upgraded to Leopard I switched to the Fan Control pref pane, and I like it WAY better.

Instead of just setting the minimum, it allows you to set the minimum fan speed, as well as the low and high temp levels, and shows you a little graph of the ramping curve the MacOS uses to set the speed. I like it because essentially you can keep the thing reasonably cool without arbitrarily picking a base fan speed--by setting the two thresholds pretty low, the control algorithm holds a comfortable temp without overdoing it with fan noise.

With smcFanControl (or at least the last version I used), you could set the minimum quite high (I usually parked it between 3500 and 4000rpm), but it would still get just as hot before ramping them up to full.

For example, in a warm room with maybe 20% CPU load my MBP 17" (first gen) hovers around 50C, with the fans around 3300. They'll ramp quickly so I don't roast my lap if I start doing something more demanding.

Link, since the name is so unoriginal:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31130
 
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