Fan Control quells the heat
I’m the person that gets paranoid when my Macbook heats up. My old laptop heated up quite frequently to the point that one day, the hard drive and other internal components literally melted and I had to get it repaired (praise the extended warranties!). When I got my Macbook, I opted for the extended warranty as well but I also downloaded a fan controller just in case. For over a year, I’ve been using SMCFanControl and it’s been perfect. If I notice anything out of the ordinary, I use one of my presets to raise the minimum fan speed to whatever I want until the system cools down.
Everything was perfect, until now. I only just noticed it today so I don’t know how long it’s been like this or why it started in the first place, but it seems that SMCFanControl wasn’t doing it’s job anymore! I normally set my fans to 3000rpm and my presets make sure that the speeds never drop below that. Today, something clicked in my head and I noticed that the fans were not at their usual whirring noise level (I couldn’t hear them) and I realized that the fans were down at the bottom level of 1800rpm. And SMCFanControl was unable to change any of this – I would choose a preset, any preset, even the preset preset of full power (6200rpm) but nothing worked. It seemed that no matter what setting I chose, the fans began to speed up but give them 5 seconds, and they would return to their default rpm setting. I thought that my fans were dying or that somewhere some permissions needed to be reset.
I went all over the internet searching for answers but came up short. I checked my SMC (System Management Controller) updates, updated SMCFanControl itself, tried another app iCyclone (which was a disaster), and even reset my SMC settings with the ol’ removing of the battery and magsafe. I tried everything! I almost gave up and decided to visit my nearest Apple Store for help, until I stumbled upon Fan Control. It’s a preference pane that does pretty much what SMC Controller does but without the presets. You get one preset which can set the minimum limit to around a max rpm of 4000, which is quite decent. I wasn’t hopeful that it would, I’ll be honest, but Fan Control worked beautifully and I have no problems now that I’m using it! It works exactly the way I need it to.
Even though I’m happy, I still plan on finding out what the problem was in the first place and see if I could resolve it. But for now, I think I’ll enjoy the sounds of my fans whirring at 3103 rpm…
Fan Control is free download from lobotomo.com. Here’s a screenshot:
