Noisy Mac? Take Control Of Your Mac’s Fans

Does your MacBook sound like a jet engine? iMac fans roaring after a hard drive upgrade? Boot Camp Windows whine? There is a easy and free app to take control of your noisy Mac.

Crystal Idea’s Macs Fan Control (MFC) is that fast, easy and free method. However, this isn’t “set it and forget it” tool, because its misuse could toast your Mac.

• Real-time monitoring of mac’s fans speed and temperature sensors including 3rd party HDD/SSD, using SMART

• Display of tray icon (menu bar icon on Mac OS, option to display temperature value and fan speed)

• Compatibility with Windows XP/7/8 and Mac OS X 10.6 and higher

The noisy Mac that lead me to Macs Fan Control was my mom’s 2006 Mac mini, which started roaring, even when asleep, after an OS X 10.6.8 re-install. I configured MCF to automatically ramp fan speeds up and down depending on the temperature, which quieted the roar — not silent, but a huge improvement.

Noisy Mac Tamed

I tested the correctness of this setting by compressing a movie with Handbrake and periodically monitoring fan speed and temperatures. MFC ramped the fan speed as the temperature went up, keeping the system at a reasonable temp (~50 celsius).

Also, my 12-year-old son and his insatiable YouTube jones put MFC through its paces and the Mac mini came through cool (~50 celsius) with the fan active, but not not loud.

That said, as you can see in the image above, MFC can be configured to put a handy live updating icon in the menubar.

So, what’s a safe CPU temperature? That’s an open question and highly machine dependent. However, you can find an extensive listing of user reported Mac temps by model with the take away being you should reference the average at load temperature for your particular model.

Macs Fan Control can quiet your noisy Mac, but you need respect the fact that misusing it can harm your computer — downloadit here.