I have a 2011 Macbook Pro 15" i7, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB disk, OS X Lion, Logic Pro 9.

It is a grunty, Logic powerhouse but the amount of fan noise it makes is driving me crazy. Just browsing any Flash or video site on the web causes so much fan noise that I am seriously contemplating selling the damn thing and buying something else.

I use it 99% of the time with its lid closed, on the desk in front of me, hooked up to an external screen. I seem to recall reading somewhere that this uses a different graphics chip which requires extra cooling, thus the extra fan noise.





But what other Mac makes less noise?

A Mac Mini is the closest Mac in terms of how I use the computer in the studio, and I already have the external keyboard, mouse & screen. But does it suffer from the same fan noise? How about an iMac? What is its fan noise like? Both of those are i5 but I would be willing to take the hit (as if I would notice!) if the slower processor caused less noise.

Or would trading down to a lesser i5 Macbook Pro knock the noise on the head?

All help gratefully received.

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Spanky

Using it in closed-lid mode just makes it harder to cool, thus you're guaranteeing to work the fans harder.

So, I suggest using it in lid-open mode, maybe off to the side of your workspace (or use it open as a second monitor), and also using smcfancontrol to monitor and control your temperatures and fan speeds.

Also - the harder you work your CPU, the more cooling is required, so get used to committing resources, bouncing/freezing, upping the audio buffers etc etc to work the CPU less, thus not needing so much cooling.

Having said all that, I've found iMacs, even when under significant load, are pretty could at absorbing the fan noise behind the chunky displays and are pretty quiet.

You can get i7 iMacs (adds £160 over the i5 price).

Going to a slower computer is likely to *increase* your fan noise, as you'll generally be working it harder on it's CPU scale (as there are less resources in general).



Edited by desmond (10/03/12 04:46 PM)

Thanks Desmond

All of the above I understand. But this machine spins up its fans under the slightest provocation and I'm pretty sure the Core 2 Duo I had before didn't. Right now, for instance, the Flash ads (I presume) on Sound-on-Sound's own forum are making the fans spin up. And Youtube/Video etc. are the worst. It's a crying shame.

I wonder if the Mac Mini exhibits the same behaviour or can it handle a few extra degrees Celsius without having a conniption fit every time YouTube appears.

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Spanky

Well I have just run a couple of tests and it appears that the fan noise is caused by the external monitor! The fan noise caused by YouTube or a busy Logic project pales into insignificance compared to the noise caused by connecting an external screen. How about that for a kick in the teeth?

Anyone want to trade a Macbook Pro for an iMac..?

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Spanky

Quote MonkeySpank:

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But this machine spins up its fans under the slightest provocation and I'm pretty sure the Core 2 Duo I had before didn't. Right now, for instance, the Flash ads (I presume) on Sound-on-Sound's own forum are making the fans spin up. And Youtube/Video etc. are the worst. It's a crying shame.

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Well, this is largely because Flash is horrendously clunky and inefficient and demands huge CPU resources. Check the version of Flash you have installed, and either go forwards or backwards depending on where you are at. The recent versions added some hardware decoding of video but it doesn't work on all graphics cards.

Quote MonkeySpank:

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Well I have just run a couple of tests and it appears that the fan noise is caused by the external monitor! The fan noise caused by YouTube or a busy Logic project pales into insignificance compared to the noise caused by connecting an external screen. How about that for a kick in the teeth?

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Your computer has two graphics cards I think. Which are you using, and does the behaviour change if you switch to the other one?
Also check if there are any firmware updates for your machine, sometimes things like this can happen and get fixed...

Are you definitely telling us the fan noise problem is the same when the lid is open?

If you intend to use it with the lid shut, must it be positioned so close to you? A little distance works wonders for noise reduction.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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Are you definitely telling us the fan noise problem is the same when the lid is open?

If you intend to use it with the lid shut, must it be positioned so close to you? A little distance works wonders for noise reduction.

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Yes, with the lid open, I can watch 720p YouTube videos and the laptop barely breaks a sweat. With the lid open, and the external screen connected, the fans spin up even before I inflict YouTube on it. Bear in mind that I have opted-in to YouTube's HTML5 video streaming so Flash isn't much of an issue in this specific case.

Obviously, when Logic is at full pelt, any fan noise is masked by music (as I like to call it). It's only obtrusive when I'm browsing or, more accurately, when what is being displayed on the external screen is more than a static image.

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Spanky

I had a Sony Vaio that needed to be opened and blasted with compressed air, every 9 months. Screamed like a banchee with all that dust building up! Quiet as a mouse after the clean.

Quote desmond:

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Quote MonkeySpank:

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Well I have just run a couple of tests and it appears that the fan noise is caused by the external monitor! The fan noise caused by YouTube or a busy Logic project pales into insignificance compared to the noise caused by connecting an external screen. How about that for a kick in the teeth?

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Your computer has two graphics cards I think. Which are you using, and does the behaviour change if you switch to the other one?
Also check if there are any firmware updates for your machine, sometimes things like this can happen and get fixed...

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I'm now 99% certain it is caused by the chip that drives the external screen. I don't think I can change that. I used the laptop all afternoon without an external screen and it was as quiet as a mouse.

You might be right about a firmware update. I will go and have a look.

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Spanky

Obviously graphic card has to work harder with ext monitor. On my old Vaio there was option to manually switch between Nvidia and build in Intel. I used to use Nvidia only when editing video because of the temp=noise.
Unlike PCs MBP does not have vents, and so much of dust problem (though I cleaned the fan in mine recently) but that is whole idea of alu body, the entire surface emits heat so closing the lid is not good idea. Contrary more surface exposed bette- so if possible also bottomr. Mac or PC , since years I mostly use notebooks on stands because even passive stand can make few centigrade difference. I used to use active cooling pad for video editing with notebooks because the big fans are less annoying then the internal ones.
BTW. what really stresses my MBP is FaceTime, nothing else can make it loud within minutes (does not happen with Skype that much).

Quote MonkeySpank:

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I'm now 99% certain it is caused by the chip that drives the external screen. I don't think I can change that. I used the laptop all afternoon without an external screen and it was as quiet as a mouse.

You might be right about a firmware update. I will go and have a look.

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You're ignoring my suggestion to just position the laptop somewhere not quite so in your face?

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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You're ignoring my suggestion to just position the laptop somewhere not quite so in your face?

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No, just getting to the root cause of the problem first. I don't really have another place to put the laptop but if I decide to keep it I'm going to have to put it somewhere else. The noise is too intrusive.

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Spanky

So, run Activity Monitor, and watch the CPU activity when you run your CPu intensive tasks.

What load is YouTube, for example, putting on your system when you play a video? Also, compare that load to when you have an external monitor plugged in or not.

As a guideline, my aging 2008 MBP 2.4 Core2Duo on YouTube gets roughly:
Single monitor: 15% of one core
External monitor plugged in: 15%
Playing on external monitor: 18%

That is Flash Player 11.1. I actually have ClickToFlash installed and it auto substitutes HTML5 playback for Flash video when it can (I hate Flash) and in this case the loads here are lower (typically about 10% playing the same video over the Flash version).

In all cases, my fans don't kick in when I watch YouTube either way. I generally have smcFanControl set my fans slightly higher than normal as I like to run my machine fairly cool, so I default to 2500rpm rather than the 2000rpm default.

If you have a current i7 MBP, you machine is roughly 5-6 times faster than mine. Unless the version of Flash you use has a problem with graphic cards, there is no reason a YouTube video should peak at more than, what 5% or so on your machine. What figures do you see?

I can't see your fans ramping up unless you have a core working at 80% plus consistenyl for more than a few seconds - and if that's the case, I'd suggest you definitely have an issue. If it were me, I'd probably trundle into the Apple store and run some tests on an equivalent spec machine, and if you get wildy different results, I'd book a genius appointment and show them the issue.

Quote desmond:

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So, run Activity Monitor, and watch the CPU activity when you run your CPu intensive tasks.

What load is YouTube, for example, putting on your system when you play a video? Also, compare that load to when you have an external monitor plugged in or not.

As a guideline, my aging 2008 MBP 2.4 Core2Duo on YouTube gets roughly:
Single monitor: 15% of one core
External monitor plugged in: 15%
Playing on external monitor: 18%

That is Flash Player 11.1. I actually have ClickToFlash installed and it auto substitutes HTML5 playback for Flash video when it can (I hate Flash) and in this case the loads here are lower (typically about 10% playing the same video over the Flash version).

In all cases, my fans don't kick in when I watch YouTube either way. I generally have smcFanControl set my fans slightly higher than normal as I like to run my machine fairly cool, so I default to 2500rpm rather than the 2000rpm default.

If you have a current i7 MBP, you machine is roughly 5-6 times faster than mine. Unless the version of Flash you use has a problem with graphic cards, there is no reason a YouTube video should peak at more than, what 5% or so on your machine. What figures do you see?

I can't see your fans ramping up unless you have a core working at 80% plus consistenyl for more than a few seconds - and if that's the case, I'd suggest you definitely have an issue. If it were me, I'd probably trundle into the Apple store and run some tests on an equivalent spec machine, and if you get wildy different results, I'd book a genius appointment and show them the issue.

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Right. My Activity Monitor (on Lion, if that makes any difference) doesn't let me see individual core %-usage, but looking at the little floating CPU window I see roughly the same CPU usage as you during my test, whether the external screen is connected or the lid is closed.

I played this YouTube clip , in HTML5 mode, full screen at 720p.

Immediately it had finished, I noted down these smcFanControl readings (temperature / fan RPM):

Lid open, no external screen: 75 / 3600 RPM
Lid open, with external screen (video playing on external screen): 71 / 4400 RPM
Lid closed, with external screen (video playing on external screen): 71 / 6200 RPM

Make of that what you will.

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Spanky

That just says that with the lid closed, cooling is less efficient and so the fan speeds ramp up accordingly to keep the temps down. That's to be expected, particularly if the laptop is sitting flat on a surface rather than raised above it.

I found the fan noise on my MacBook Air very bothersome but eventually discovered I could eliminate most of it by using an external wall plug to power my audio interface rather than rely on power coming from the laptop via the USB cable. Hopefully, you may find it possible to use external power for connected accessories and find a similar reduction in fan noise.

Mike Philcox

You could try one of those laptop coolers, its just a base for the laptop which has some fans on - might help...

Quote Mike7:

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I found the fan noise on my MacBook Air very bothersome but eventually discovered I could eliminate most of it by using an external wall plug to power my audio interface rather than rely on power coming from the laptop via the USB cable. Hopefully, you may find it possible to use external power for connected accessories and find a similar reduction in fan noise.

Mike Philcox

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All my peripherals use mains power now, but thanks anyway. Actually, once I used external power for my audio interface all of my digital noise ground loop woes disappeared, but that's a story for a different thread.

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Spanky

Quote MonkeySpank:

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I played this YouTube clip , in HTML5 mode, full screen at 720p.

Immediately it had finished, I noted down these smcFanControl readings (temperature / fan RPM):

Lid open, no external screen: 75 / 3600 RPM
Lid open, with external screen (video playing on external screen): 71 / 4400 RPM
Lid closed, with external screen (video playing on external screen): 71 / 6200 RPM

Make of that what you will.

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Is that temp of 71 for the CPU normal for a macbook anyone? That seems incredibly high, my 5 year old dell laptop rendering some video whilst watching iplayer and running that youtube video in 720p is only mid fifties and its sitting on my bed...

Surely there is a fault here? I can't see that a machine with those specs would need to run the processor at that temperature just playing back a youtube video, I don't care how bad people think flash is.

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http://www.williammorrismusic.com

Just flicking through these posts quickly, I also run a similar Macbook Pro 2011 2.2Ghz, 500Gb, 8Gb RAM, i7, with a Dell screen attached (through the Thunderbolt port as a DVI out) and have noticed 'some' fan issues when doing the simplest things.

Is this really due to having a 2nd screen attached? as I wouldn't have thought of that?

Quote Pitchfork:

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Is this really due to having a 2nd screen attached? as I wouldn't have thought of that?

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More work for the graphics card to do, which means more heat, which means more cooling required.

Ok thanks - but (sorry for sounding thick) does that come off the graphics card 'own' ram memory or does that eat into my main Mac memory (8Gb) thats used for running programs?

Quote Pitchfork:

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Ok thanks - but (sorry for sounding thick) does that come off the graphics card 'own' ram memory or does that eat into my main Mac memory (8Gb) thats used for running programs?

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Well, the number crunching the graphics card has to do in this case isn't really relevant to the amount of RAM being used, whether it is onboard the video card or the computer's main memory. Generally speaking, video cards only get additional chunks out of main memory if large textures need to be cached for rapid use (e.g. video game scenery). For normal desktop stuff, like Logic, I would be really surprised if any of the Mac's own RAM is allocated to the video cards (though with 8 GB of elbow room you aren't going to notice even if was!).

Our Macbook Pros have 2 graphics cards (dedicated chips, actually): one for the built-in screen (an Intel HD 3000), and a different one for the external screen (an AMD HD 6750M).

Firing up that AMD 6750 for an external screen must generate enough extra heat for the fans to spool up . And, in my case, running with the lid closed even when the machine isn't really being pushed hard exacerbates the situation. If I run with the lid open those fans take longer to make themselves heard (if at all).

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Spanky

Quote Pitchfork:

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Ok thanks - but (sorry for sounding thick) does that come off the graphics card 'own' ram memory or does that eat into my main Mac memory (8Gb) thats used for running programs?

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Graphics cards have their own vram.

Quote Will_m:

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Is that temp of 71 for the CPU normal for a macbook anyone? That seems incredibly high, my 5 year old dell laptop rendering some video whilst watching iplayer and running that youtube video in 720p is only mid fifties and its sitting on my bed...

Surely there is a fault here? I can't see that a machine with those specs would need to run the processor at that temperature just playing back a youtube video, I don't care how bad people think flash is.

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Hi Will

Flash for OS X is, and always has been, notoriously badly implemented by Adobe. It wrecks battery life on Apple products, which is one of the reasons you can't get it on Apple iPods/Pads. Flash is much better coded for Windows (despite OS X and Windows being happy to run on the same Intel hardware).

That said, my CPU temp is ~68-70 degrees C when my fans are silent and the laptop is doing absolutely nothing. It's just the fans that go crazy when Flash (or YouTube's HTML5 renderer in my case) gets used. Obviously the fans are pretty good at keeping the CPU temperature steady!

And Logic gobbling 25%-40% of a CPU core when it isn't doing anything whatsoever really doesn't help.

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Spanky

Quote MonkeySpank:

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And Logic gobbling 25%-40% of a CPU core when it isn't doing anything whatsoever really doesn't help.

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If Logic is using 40% of a core, it's not "not doing anything".

Here, when idle, Logic uses about 12% of a 2.4 Core2Duo core with the audio engine on, or about 4.5% with it off.

This is largely the midi/audio engines having to be running to respond immediately to live incoming MIDI/control surface events, and potential incoming audio.

I suspect in your system you have some combination of plugins on the busses and masters, and instruments loaded, and having one of those instrument tracks selected so it's in live mode - as a result, even when stopped/idle Logic has to process the instrument and all plugins on the audio path all the time, resulting in the CPU load you see.

Quote desmond:

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Here, when idle, Logic uses about 12% of a 2.4 Core2Duo core with the audio engine on

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Similar here.

Quote:

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This is largely the midi/audio engines having to be running to respond immediately to live incoming MIDI/control surface events, and potential incoming audio.

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It doesn't seem to drop if I disengage live mode (click the red 'R' against that's against one track, so it's no longer red).

Quote chris...:

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Quote:

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This is largely the midi/audio engines having to be running to respond immediately to live incoming MIDI/control surface events, and potential incoming audio.

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It doesn't seem to drop if I disengage live mode (click the red 'R' against that's against one track, so it's no longer red).

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Live mode is when a software instrument track is selected with a loaded software instrument. It basically forces that track into a lower-latency "instant start" mode which requires a little more CPU but means that the instrument being played is more responsive.

Quote desmond:

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Live mode is when a software instrument track is selected with a loaded software instrument. It basically forces that track into a lower-latency "instant start" mode which requires a little more CPU but means that the instrument being played is more responsive.

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Yep. And I thought with Logic "stopped", clicking the red 'R' in the track header area (so that it's no longer red) would disengage live mode, for that track.

Indeed, for me, this seems to make it not respond to being played live. But FWIW Logic's idle CPU usage (as reported by "top") doesn't seem to drop noticeably.

Quote chris...:

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Yep. And I thought with Logic "stopped", clicking the red 'R' in the track header area (so that it's no longer red) would disengage live mode, for that track.

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Not if the track is still "selected", as far as I recall without going to physical check the behaviour, particularly in conjuction with the various multiplayer record MIDI input stuff.

Anyway - you get the gist of the suggestion. People are often not aware of how much stuff needs to be processed even when stopped - the mixer is always live, so any plugins on the outputs and busses are always being calculated, together with live more instruments etc.