[Charles Bouldin]

There have been many threads on fan noise in the ghz tibooks, and solutions/workarounds. I've suffered through what I think is too much fan noise and fans that come on too often and stay on too long. I decided to post a couple of solutions I've found that work to reduce the problem, although they do not eliminate it.

BTW, Apple even exchanged my Nov. 28th,2002 Tibook (first week of production) for another Tibook in March, 2003. This made no difference in fan noise/activation. It may be that I'm just sensitive to the sound or have unrealistic expectations. In any event, here are some ideas that have helped.

First, for a laptop stand, I have given up my iCurve for a Perch Plus. (www.macmice.com/iperch_plus.html). This is a nicer stand than the iCurve, IMHO, and it has a cooling fan that directs a stream of air at the bottom of the Tibook. It sounds ironic to use a fan to eliminate fan noise, but read the Perch Plus web page on their technique: a large fan that is run at half it's rated voltage. The fan is virtually soundless, quieter than the tibook hard drive and quieter than the ceiling fan in my office.

Second, on a recommendation from this forum I got a "phase change" laptop pad from
www.climator.com/passivecooling.html. This is a flat plastic pouch filled with Glaubers salt, a solution of water and hydrated sodium sulfate. The solution melts from a solid to a liquid at about 82 F, ie, just above typical room temperture. Furthermore, it has a large heat of fusion, so if you put this under the laptop, the pad soaks up a lot of heat as it melts. It turns from solid to a sort of viscous liquid over a period of several hours. This works well for reducing the fan activation.

Of these two solutions, the Perch plus is better. Fan activation is reduced a lot, although it isn't eliminated completely. The laptop pad is great for when you're using the laptop away from a desk. It folds, and it is light and portable.

Most of my use these days is at my desk and I really like the Perch plus. Hope this helps someone who wants a quieter office.

[Cincojoe]

I just got my first Ti book this weekend and haven't really noticed the fan noise. Is this noise only on during certian actions???

[11011001]

Originally posted by Cincojoe:
I just got my first Ti book this weekend and haven't really noticed the fan noise. Is this noise only on during certian actions???

congrats on your purchase

run something processor intensive and the fans will start up

ie. watch a movie, or play a game

[alpha rays max]

My loud fan rarely ever kicks in UNLESS I've got the PB plugged in, then it comes on quite often even when doing nothing particularly intensive (unless browsing MacNN is intensive ).

Even when sitting on the iCurve. On battery power though, it usually stays off.

[Freeflyer]

A granite tile from home depot does the job of a heat sink quite nicely.

I built my own version of the icurve out of wood which makes a big difference when I'm running photoshop with two monitors.

I have a stand I use when sitting in my chair that I intend to recess a granite tile into, to make it even quieter when working in the evenings.

Cheers,

J.

[neilw]

Anyone have any info on how the iBreeze performs vs. the iPerch Plus? It has a couple of nice advantages: cheaper and USB powered. Doesn't perform the riser function of the iPerch, but my only interest is stopping my TiBook's fans, not raising it up.

[bamchum]

I'm of the opinion that, with some of the last TiBooks, nothing will stop the fans from coming on.

I'm now on my third motherboard. First, my machine had loud fans. I sent it in to Apple and they replaced the motherboard and the fans. They were a bit quieter after that though I wouldn't call them silent. HOWEVER, my AirPort reception was terrible. So I sent the machine back to Apple for the AirPort reception. Another motherboard replacement. Now AirPort reception is fine but, wouldn't you know it, fans are loud again.

It's going back again. I've had almost enough of this. A buddy's 867Mhz is almost silent, though he also had to send his in to Apple to get it that way.

[PSU guy]

Any one have an opinion towards the podium pad from Targus?

[Voch]

Originally posted by PSU guy:
Any one have an opinion towards the podium pad from Targus?

I've got one for my Ti667 and it works pretty well. The machine gets pretty warm when burning a CD while conneted to AC power but the CoolPad cools it off nicely. Highly recommended.

Voch

[catsank]

My babies hot and noisy - but I love her ;)

[threestain]

My little baby is very quite even when the fans are on. Even when the superdrive is going. It only seems to sue the fans when on ac power too.

[James L]

The common thread is space underneath the machine. I use a coolpad, as I can place it on my knees when I am sitting, on my desk at work, etc. it always leaves a bit of space underneath and keeps the thing cool.

[arekkusu]

Everyone is treating the symptom, and ignoring the cause.

Go get PTHCPUMonitor. Run it in your menu bar in CPU History Graph mode. Fits right next to Net Monitor.

Now, watch your CPU usage while you work. You'll quickly notice which apps are eating CPU. Some of them eat "too much" CPU-- apps doing nothing should use zero CPU, but there are a lot of badly written apps out there.

Sometimes when you find a bad app, you can just not use it. Replace it with something else.

Example: using Quicktime to view movies. Playing anything fullscreen in Quicktime uses 100% of your CPU, the fan is guaranteed to come on. Solution: complain to Apple and use VLC in the meantime. 30% CPU, no fan.

[cambro]

I have a TiGhz (gig RAM). I've noticed that what the computer is on has a lot to do with fan noise (which is why the granite works, as posted above).

Wood and formica suck. They heat up and stay hot too quickly (if you don't believe this, use your machine on these surfaces for a bit and then pick it up and run your hand over the surface...you'll feel the small thermal footprint for quite a while). I moved to an older "industrial" style desk that has a metalish-substance on the top and the fans come on much less frequently, presumably because the heat capacity of the substance is much more favorable.

Either way, though, the TiGhz is definitely the noisiest laptop Apple has ever made. We are still spoiled in comparison to most Wintel laptops though.

Here's hopping that the next motorolla processor is more energy efficient at faster clock speeds and that the G5 really comes through soon.

[Apfhex]

I was thinking about getting an iCurve as a stand for my TiBook, however the iPerchPlus looks great!

I'm curious though. Does anyone know how having the 'Book at such an angle would affect the combo drive? It's pretty picky as it is, and I wouldn't want to do anything to upset it.

[bmhome1]

A very low cost solution are the USB powered three fan cooling pads. They are nearly silent but draw off bottom heat exceptionally well, and have major benefit on overall heat dissipation. They are cheesy looking plastic on the down side but are only 1/2" thick total, so can be thrown into travel bag and are cheap enough to be nearly disposable.

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/nexfan03/usblacopadw3.html

[mmontano]

On my Ti667, I'm getting a deja-vu to an IBM ThinkPad I once owned.

Once the fan turns on, it rarely shuts off until the computer itself does.

Why? The fan itself generates heat, and enough of it, that the fan always stays on trying to cool itself off. As bizzarre as it sounds.

My old ThinkPad had a flaw where IBM issued a firmware update to fix the problem.

The difference was that IBM's fan had bearings with a very short life-time expectency and the fan being always-on had a risk factor.

Apple's fan obviously has good bearings as mine keeps going and going.

My solution? Turn up iTunes!