[Simon]

So, now that we've got new PowerBooks it's time to find out how hot and how noisy they are. I'm especially interested in hearing what temperature the rev D 12" and 1.67 Ghz 15" PowerBooks reach with an attached external display in closed-lid mode.

And just in case somebody doesn't know, Temperature Monitor is a free and simple tool to measure the temperature of your PowerBook.

In detail this is what I'd especially like to hear from new PowerBook owners:

� what is your PB's CPU temperature after logging in, with just the Finder idling?
� what's the CPU temperature in the scenario above, but with an external display and the PB in closed-lid mode?
� at what CPU temperature does the fan come on?
� what's the maximum CPU temperature you can achieve on your new PB?
� does the fan sound any different than on the earlier Al PowerBook revisions?

Of course all these temperatures should be measured with the processor performance setting "Automatic" in the Energy Saver preference and at room temperature (roughly 68F/20C).

Thanks in advance for any early owner reports.

[striker100]

I'd be very interested in knowing how the fan noise is on the new 1.67GHz 17" Powerbook. I had the 1.33GHz 17" PB and sold it, when the fan came on which was not very often it was pretty loud. I always wondered if it was normal but it was never so bothersome that I thought it might be a problem.

[skelotar]

i've never heard my fan / fans cut on.. could there be something wrong with my system?

thanks

btw: 15" ALBook 1.33ghz 256 ram ~ 7 months old

[Fiete5401]

I'll soon be able to report from a new 17"-PowerBook with 2 GB RAM.
I really hope that it is a bit quieter than my rev. a 12"-PB.

[Simon]

OK, I see that people are getting their new PowerBooks. Where are those reports guys?

[edit: spelling]

[Fiete5401]

Originally posted by Simon:
OK, I see that people are getting there new PowerBooks. Where are those reports guys?

Stay cool Simon, mine shipped today!

[Simon]

Originally posted by Fiete5401:
Stay cool Simon, mine shipped today!

Sorry, I am indeed very impatient.

My trigger finger is hovering over the AppleStore's buy button and I still can't decide on which one. Und f�hre mich nicht in Versuchung...

[siflippant]

Originally posted by Simon:
Sorry, I am indeed very impatient.

My trigger finger is hovering over the AppleStore's buy button and I still can't decide on which one. Und f�hre mich nicht in Versuchung...

I won't give into temptation just yet... will wait it out for the next rev. - maybe a dual core G4? Who knows...

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by Fiete5401:
Stay cool Simon, mine shipped today!

I'm supposed to have mine on Wednesday, I'll let you all know then!

[teknopimp]

in clamshell mode connected to 22" cinema display temp hovers around 125 (GPU) degrees. occasionally rises to 130 and that's when the fan kicks on. during heavy use (photoshop, multiple apps) it goes up 135+. rarely do i hear the fan go hi-speed. much quieter than my departed TiBook; not as quiet as an ibook.

[Simon]

Originally posted by teknopimp:
in clamshell mode connected to 22" cinema display temp hovers around 125 (GPU) degrees. occasionally rises to 130 and that's when the fan kicks on. during heavy use (photoshop, multiple apps) it goes up 135+. rarely do i hear the fan go hi-speed. much quieter than my departed TiBook; not as quiet as an ibook.

Teknopimp, thanks for your commnets. Is your CPU set to 'automatic' when you get these values? And could you mention what the CPU temperatures are, I guess you just quoted the GPU die temperatures, right? And is this the 1.33 GHz rev C 12" PowerBook you're talking about?

Let me try to summarize
� idle: GPU is at 125F/52C
� fan threshold is at 130F/54C
� max temp is above 135F/57C

Is that right?

[teknopimp]

Originally posted by Simon:
Teknopimp, thanks for your commnets. Is your CPU set to 'automatic' when you get these values? And could you mention what the CPU temperatures are, I guess you just quoted the GPU die temperatures, right? And is this the 1.33 GHz rev C 12" PowerBook you're talking about?

Let me try to summarize
� idle: GPU is at 125F/52C
� fan threshold is at 130F/54C
� max temp is above 135F/57C

Is that right?

i use the following custom setting: put computer to sleep after 15 min; put display to sleep after 5 min; screen saver comes on after 3 min; uncheck put hard disk to sleep when possible.

today the temps are as follows: 136 gpu, 131 cpu, 115 hd, 73 batt. fan is on. approx 98F when i logged in (differs depending on ambient temp, i've seen startup temp in the 80s).

rev C.

[Simon]

I just read this post in another thread claiming that the new 15" runs hotter and makes more fain noise than a 1 GHz Ti. Always thought the Tis had pretty loud fans and a rather low fan threshold. Especially the 800 MHz Ti I once had. Would you expect a 1GHz Ti to be more quiet than a new 15"? I find that rather scary.

[gg1234]

Originally posted by Simon:
I just read this post in another thread claiming that the new 15" runs hotter and makes more fain noise than a 1 GHz Ti. Always thought the Tis had pretty loud fans and a rather low fan threshold. Especially the 800 MHz Ti I once had. Would you expect a 1GHz Ti to be more quiet than a new 15"? I find that rather scary.

I've used my new 1.67/128/2G/100G/SD/AEX for a couple of days now. My older PB is a 1GHz TiBook which I've owned since Nov '02. So far the new one is faster and much quieter. It does run a bit warmer but so far the heat is not terrible. I really like my TiBook but this one is clearly better in many ways.

[Simon]

Originally posted by gg1234:
I've used my new 1.67/128/2G/100G/SD/AEX for a couple of days now. My older PB is a 1GHz TiBook which I've owned since Nov '02. So far the new one is faster and much quieter. It does run a bit warmer but so far the heat is not terrible. I really like my TiBook but this one is clearly better in many ways.

gg1234, that's great. It's good to hear the 1.67 GHz 15" is 'much quieter'. Could you measure some temperature values like I suggested in the first post and report? Many thanks in advance.

[jzdziarski]

My 1.67 17" is silent compared to my 1.5 17". No fan noise whatsoever unless you stick your ear right up to the notebook. The hard drive is also much quieter, but has an annoying "going so sleep click". It does seem to run a bit hotter, though. I nearly cooked little John and his merry men trying to send an email.

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by jzdziarski:
My 1.67 17" is silent compared to my 1.5 17". No fan noise whatsoever unless you stick your ear right up to the notebook. The hard drive is also much quieter, but has an annoying "going so sleep click". It does seem to run a bit hotter, though. I nearly cooked little John and his merry men trying to send an email.

No fan noise?

That blows me away. Fan noise has always been my worst enemy. I just about bought a 1.5 ghz machine, but held out for a couple months on the thought that a faster powerbook would be released. Well, it was, obviously. But to hear that it's quieter?

I can hardly believe that! Could it really be that good?

Are you sure that your fans aren't broken? put that puppy on highest processor mode and run a few photoshop filters or something.

Mark

[gg1234]

Originally posted by Simon:
gg1234, that's great. It's good to hear the 1.67 GHz 15" is 'much quieter'. Could you measure some temperature values like I suggested in the first post and report? Many thanks in advance.

Processor Bottomside 53.5�C
Processor/Controller Bottomside 56.0�C
Power Supply Bottomside 48.8�C
SMART Disk ST9100823A 40. 0�C
TRACK PAD 35.0�C

It's about as warm as I've felt it so far.

[skelotar]

I must be lucky because I didn't even know I had a fan until I very very faintly heard it come on the other day when I was encoding a dvd with idvd...

1.33 PBG4 (7 months old) 512 RAM..


When my machine had 256 ram, I never ever heard it come on..


Either someone's being extra-picky and finnicky(sp.) or I'm in the minority of pb owners with quiet fans...

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by markponcelet:
No fan noise?

That blows me away. Fan noise has always been my worst enemy. I just about bought a 1.5 ghz machine, but held out for a couple months on the thought that a faster powerbook would be released. Well, it was, obviously. But to hear that it's quieter?

I can hardly believe that! Could it really be that good?

Are you sure that your fans aren't broken? put that puppy on highest processor mode and run a few photoshop filters or something.

Mark

After years of putting up with the TI's fan noise, I can confirm that the 1.67 so far has been whisper quiet. I can't even tell if the fans are running. (and I'm doing a lot of work that used to tax the TI, so they SHOULD be on.)

[BrettOZ]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
After years of putting up with the TI's fan noise, I can confirm that the 1.67 so far has been whisper quiet. I can't even tell if the fans are running. (and I'm doing a lot of work that used to tax the TI, so they SHOULD be on.)

TailsToo - how much RAM do you have on board?

[TailsToo]

1GB - it was nice to have that open RAM slot. (the 1GB chips were just too much... $75 for 512MB or $211 for 1GB.)

[Simon]

OK, that's it.

I'm done with the 12".

I really love its form factor and it's ultra cute, but hell, my 12" 1GHz PB's fan is blasting away at 54C/129F while 1.67 GHz 15" owners here report they don't even know they had a fan. It's amazing that a 15" delivering two thirds more performance is silent while the 12" manages to drive me nuts in the silent environment of my study at home.

This 12" is up for sale. I'm going to buy a 15" 1.67 GHz/1GB/80GB/SD/128MB to replace it.

[sorry for the rant, but I do feel better now ]

[porieux]

New 15" 1.67....love it. have not heard the fan yet

[ttohio]

New 12"/100gb/512mb/Suprdrive

Fan is not loud or even on for that matter during mobile use. When I run it in clamshell with a 23" Cinema the fans do run constantly and sometimes get up to jet engine level. I thought it would be worth stating that the 100gb Seagate hard drive is a mess. It is very noisy, and makes an extremely annoying clicking sound about every 5 minutes. I have never owned a PB before, but compared to other Macs and the latest iBook I would say this thing can be very loud.

Temp:
Battery - 36c
Processor Topside - 54.2
GPU - 53.0c (Gets Hotter When Running External Display)
HD Bottom - 45.2c
SMART - 43.0c

[Simon]

Originally posted by ttohio:
Fan is not loud or even on for that matter during mobile use. When I run it in clamshell with a 23" Cinema the fans do run constantly and sometimes get up to jet engine level.

Unfortunately this sounds similar to previous 12" revisions. Even if the fan is off while using the internal screen, attaching a large external display will make the temperature climb so far, the fan will not only come on, but it will cause considerable noise.

From what I hear, this problem is much less predominant with the 15" and 17" PowerBooks. Since I'm a frequent closed-lid user and plan on keeping it that way, I will definitely switch.

[porieux]

Originally posted by ttohio:
New 12"/100gb/512mb/Suprdrive

Fan is not loud or even on for that matter during mobile use. When I run it in clamshell with a 23" Cinema the fans do run constantly and sometimes get up to jet engine level.

Why not leave it open and use it as a second monitor??

[Simon]

Originally posted by porieux:
Why not leave it open and use it as a second monitor??

The funny thing is, I never saw any change in temperature on my PowerBook depending on open or closed lid. Closed-lid mode gave identical temperature readings compared to running with internal screen off, but open.

What really makes a difference is if you're mirroring the 1024x768 to an external display or if you're running higher resolutions on external displays. The increased resolution seems to put more load on the GPU. Higher GPU temperature means more fan noise.

If he were to switch from closed-lid mode to spanning mode, he'd still have the higher resolution and the GPU would still be working harder and getting hot -> fan noise.

[novus82x]

i honestly never notice fan noise on my 1.67 15"er...

the thing just puurrrrrrs (i mean that in a good way)...

[Simon]

Originally posted by novus82x:
i honestly never notice fan noise on my 1.67 15"er...
the thing just puurrrrrrs (i mean that in a good way)...

That's very good news.

I will be benchmarking my new 15" against my old 12", when it arrives in two weeks or so. I'll report on temperatures and fan noise in a silent environment. But I do hope there will be similar reports from others before then...

[David Hagan]

I have had a combo 1.5 Rev. D for about the past week. I haven't put it through anything major yet. Like the others, I have not heard the fan yet. I almost afraid to post this because I don't want to jinx the thing! I have had aluminum 15s in the past that would have a fan and would get too hot to the touch and that was during idle, low performance usage.

[jzdziarski]

My Rev. D seems to run much cooler than everyone elses for some reason. 17" model:

Processor/Controller Bottomside: 26.8c
Processor Bottomside: 25.5c
Power Supply Bottomside: 25.2c
SmartDisk: 35.0c

[Simon]

Originally posted by jzdziarski:
My Rev. D seems to run much cooler than everyone elses for some reason. 17" model:

Processor/Controller Bottomside: 26.8c
Processor Bottomside: 25.5c
Power Supply Bottomside: 25.2c
SmartDisk: 35.0c

Hmm...

Did you set your performance setting to 'low'? Are you sure the PowerBook had reached thermal equilibrium, or IOW do these temperature values remain roughly constant? What's the room temperature? Are you measuring outdoors in Siberia?

[Jason25]

I have a 2 day old 12" PB w/ superdrive. I can't even hear a fan lol. I never hear any noise coming from the thing.

[jzdziarski]

It's on automatic, i'm doing some file sharing, email, compiling code, and have about 20 terminals open. It's sitting on my desk with an ambient temperature of about 70 in the room. Been sitting here for a few hours before i measured it. The temperature actually went down half a degree while i've been working on it.

[Simon]

Originally posted by jzdziarski:
It's on automatic, i'm doing some file sharing, email, compiling code, and have about 20 terminals open. It's sitting on my desk with an ambient temperature of about 70 in the room. Been sitting here for a few hours before i measured it. The temperature actually went down half a degree while i've been working on it.

I'm wondering if the readout is correct on the new 17" PowerBook. After all, it does have a new board and it might be that TemperatureMonitor isn't properly reading out the temperature sensors due to some design changes...

[jzdziarski]

last night, on battery, on my lap, it read about what everyone else was reporting...so it seems to work.

[gg1234]

Originally posted by Simon:
I'm wondering if the readout is correct on the new 17" PowerBook. After all, it does have a new board and it might be that TemperatureMonitor isn't properly reading out the temperature sensors due to some design changes...

I'm wondering the same thing on my 15". It seemed to work the first day I tried it but ever since when I launch the program it reports back the same temperatures for most of the sensors. I don't believe that the "Processor Bottomside", "Processor/Controller Bottomside", "Power Supply Bottomside", & "Track Pad" temperatures are the same after 30 minutes of use versus the first 30 seconds of use. Yet that is what the program is reporting. Supposedly the only temperature that is changing is the HD temp. I deleted the program preferences and installed a fresh copy and even rebooted but that didn't change the readings. Either this program isn't compatible with the new books or my temperature sensors have all failed. I've given up on this and tossed the program.

The bottom line for me is that this machine runs warmer than my 1GHz TiBook but is much quieter and I much prefer the lower fan noise so I'm happy.

[maxintosh]

12" Rev. D PowerBook, closed-lid, hooked up to 17" Acer LCD monitor 1280x1024, surfing web & chatting:

�F/�C
Hard Disk Bottomside: 114.3/45.5
Processor Topside: 112.1/44.2
Graphics Processor Die: 123.8/50.8
Battery: 95/35
SMART Disk: 105.8/41

Fan on, barely audible.

Fan got up to "high" level using Photoshop but not particularily loud.

[jzdziarski]

I've been writing a book all day, file sharing, encoding a DVD, and have email, AIM, IRC, and a bunch of terminal windows open - CPU set on "High".

CPU/Controller Bottomside: 26.8c
CPU Bottomside: 25.5c
Smartdisk: 39.0c
Power Supply Bottomside: 25.2c

[ddaix]

I've a PowerBook 17'' 1.67GHz with 1.5 GB of RAM.

My previous Mac, now used by my wife, was a 1 GHz TiBook.

Verdict: the new PowerBook is much quieter and when the fans come on they are whisper quiet. Wonderful expeireince: silent computing again after the shock of going from a Pismo to a PowerBook Titanium.

Two notes of interest: I've confirmed with the author of Hardware Monitor that version 1.4 does not yet keep track of the battery in the new models. Also, and I quote him:

"it might not be possible to get online temperature values because this is currently blocked by Mac OS X on the 15" and 17" models (not on the new 12" machines). The temperature sensors keep the readouts from boot-time and are not refreshed by the operating system."

In other words, only the first temp reding you get after a restart will be accurate. The rest of the session will just carry over those readings till you reboot.

Usual readings I get: at startup, around 23�C (74�F) for the CPU, 30�C for the HD. After running memtest on the new SoDimm, pushing the CPU usage to the maximum for quite some time, the temp went up to 45�C. Highest reading was 45.8�C I think. Hard drive went as high as 40�C.

All in all, those temps are extremely reasonable.

I haven't played any games yet though. So extreme readings could get a bit higher with both the CPU and GPU getting pushed. However memtest used up all the available CPU cycles when testing the RAM (up to 99% of the CPU power).

[gg1234]

Originally posted by ddaix:
Two notes of interest: I've confirmed with the author of Hardware Monitor that version 1.4 does not yet keep track of the battery in the new models. Also, and I quote him:

"it might not be possible to get online temperature values because this is currently blocked by Mac OS X on the 15" and 17" models (not on the new 12" machines). The temperature sensors keep the readouts from boot-time and are not refreshed by the operating system."

In other words, only the first temp reding you get after a restart will be accurate. The rest of the session will just carry over those readings till you reboot.

That explains what I'm seeing.

[hldan]

What's the real big deal about the fans coming on? It's great that they come on to protect the computer. It makes zero sense to make a final buying decision based on each posters experiences with fan noise as there are many contributing factors as follows:

(1) Larger amounts of ram in the notebook cause the fans to turn on more frequently.

(2) Multi-tasking causes more frequent fan activity.

(3) Gaming heats up the processor very quickly resulting in high fan activity.

(4) Certain bloated apps especially ones that do encoding automatically turn on the fans.

(5) Using Firefox on this forum heats up the processor enough to turn the fans on vs. using Safari.

(6) iTunes visuals automatically turn on the fans.

(7) Room temperatures and land elevation play a huge part with fans turning on.

(8) Processor settings play a part in the fans turning on but this depends on all of the above.

(9) Charging your iPod and hooking up other peripherals heat up the processor dramatically which will turn on the fans.

No two people use their computer the exact same way so fan results will vary. Expect them to turn on with any computer. Be happy that they do. What's the necessity for complete silence anyway? All electronics equipment with mechanics make noise. It means they work.

[jzdziarski]

Hmm that doesn't quite explain my experience, in that some of the sensors fluctuated throughout the day - never quite making it that high, however. The CPU temp actually went DOWN after a few hours of work, and my hard drive temp went up considerablly when i was encoding.

I'm stumped now.

[gg1234]

Originally posted by jzdziarski:
Hmm that doesn't quite explain my experience, in that some of the sensors fluctuated throughout the day - never quite making it that high, however. The CPU temp actually went DOWN after a few hours of work, and my hard drive temp went up considerablly when i was encoding.

I'm stumped now.

The first time I tried the program I was running 10.3.7. After I updated to 10.3.8 the only temp I saw fluctuate was the HD and I suspect that was because of the SMART technology.

[Simon]

Originally posted by ddaix:
Two notes of interest: I've confirmed with the author of Hardware Monitor that version 1.4 does not yet keep track of the battery in the new models. Also, and I quote him:

"it might not be possible to get online temperature values because this is currently blocked by Mac OS X on the 15" and 17" models (not on the new 12" machines). The temperature sensors keep the readouts from boot-time and are not refreshed by the operating system."

In other words, only the first temp reding you get after a restart will be accurate. The rest of the session will just carry over those readings till you reboot.

That would explain the strange readings, but somehow it doesn't make sense. The temp sensors have to update their readout so the OS software that controls the fans knows how much fan speed is required. Just keeping the readout value constant at the value the sensors measured at boot time doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Either the explanation isn't entirely accurate or I'm really missing something here.

[of course no offense intended]

[Simon]

Originally posted by hldan:
What's the real big deal about the fans coming on?

Well, for one thing, most people don't like loud fan noise in quiet environments. It's legitimate to find out before you buy a computer if it will have this problem or not. You don't have to worry about it if you don't like and you may ignore this thread as well, but I don't think you have to tell others what to care about and what not.

And precisely because fan noise depends on many factors, it's important to get reports from many different people with different setups and different use on order to get an idea of the fan noise to be expected. Although the meaning of 'noisy' can vary among different people, there are many hard facts that can be used to adequately compare setups: Fans can be on or off, computers can be idle or not, temperatures can be below or above temperature thresholds, etc.

I'll give you a simple example. My 12" rev B has a nasty fan. It's not whisper-quiet when it's on. It's a pain. When my 12" is idle in a room temperature environment its temperature is at roughly 46C/115F and since that's below the fan's temperature threshold, there's no fan motion and the PowerBook is perfectly silent. As soon as I hook up my PowerBook to a 20" ACD this idle temperature climbs up to roughly 50C/122F well above the fan's temperature threshold (which is identical for all rev B 12" PowerBooks with the same system version btw), i.e. the fan is always on (even when the PowerBook is doing nothing at all) and there's always considerable fan noise. Now there are very many people with a 20" ACD and a 12" rev B PowerBook. And an idle Finder is fairly reproducible. Had people reported about this problem before I bought the hardware, I'd have bought something else (probably a 15" PowerBook with a 20" ACD because, as I found out later, people weren't having the same problem with that combo). Unfortunately, this thread didn't exist back then - the reports starting popping up later, well after I had already bought the hardware. So, to try to prevent that from happening again to me and others, there's this little thread.

[Dr.Michael]

I observed the temps a little closer now and found out (what other people might already know) that the gpu is the bad guy on the 12 inch pb, not the cpu.

Being idle my gpu has alread >53C/128F. A simple scrolling in BBedit can boost this temperature to 60C/140F causing heavy fan activity without increasing the cpu temp above 45C/113F.

The gpu temp decreases very slow too.
I wonder what the hell apple has done with the iBooks. Although they don't have the metal case as a heatsink they don't produce that much fan noise.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Dr.Michael:
I observed the temps a little closer now and found out (what other people might already know) that the gpu is the bad guy on the 12 inch pb, not the cpu.
...
I wonder what the hell apple has done with the iBooks. Although they don't have the metal case as a heatsink they don't produce that much fan noise.

Yeah, the GPU is definitely a problem. I had this suspicion when I realized that just attaching a 20" ACD can cause the fan to turn on. The iBook's 9200 is definitely a cooler running GPU. What I'm wondering is why the 9700 mobility seems to not cause the same problem. I would have guessed it runs hotter than a 5200Go, but the 15" and 17" don't seem to have the same problem - then again, the larger PowerBooks are also larger GPU heatsinks...

[ddaix]

Originally posted by Simon:
That would explain the strange readings, but somehow it doesn't make sense. The temp sensors have to update their readout so the OS software that controls the fans knows how much fan speed is required. Just keeping the readout value constant at the value the sensors measured at boot time doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Either the explanation isn't entirely accurate or I'm really missing something here.

[of course no offense intended]

I think that Mac OS X can get to the sensors' info just fine. It's third-party applications such as hardware monitor that are blocked from accessing those readings. At least that's what I understand from Marcel Bresink's reply to my question about the temperature sensors remaining stuck.