Control the fan speed of your Mac laptop
Mac OS X, OS X Apps, Tips & Tricks, Utilities - April 24th, 2007 - 7 Comments
If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro you’ve probably noticed that it can get a bit warm, no surprise considering the tremendous amount of processing power stuffed into their respective cases. The cooling system is simple to understand; when your CPU load goes up, your fans will kick in. Well, not all users think their fans kick in soon enough, so a third party application called smcFanControl allows you to adjust the fans on your own, which can be really nice for those warm days when a hot laptop on your lap isn’t the most comfortable.
smcFanControl was created by a small company called Eidac, and it allows you to set the minimum fan speed that your MacBook or MacBook Pro will run at. There’s actually two versions, version 1 and version 2. I prefer version 1 because it is more simple, so that’s what I’ll feature here, but version 2 is just as capable and even adds a menu to quickly adjust your fans settings.
Update: Version 2.2.2 is Snow Leopard compatible and works great, you can get it here
Features:
- Simple and clean interface
- Set the minimum RPM speed for fans
- Adjust fan speed manually to cool down a warm laptop, allowing for comfort
- Auto-apply option to set the new fan speeds after restart
I rather recommend Fan Control ( http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/ ) because it’s a simple System Preference, instead of a stand-alone application. That way it takes less resources.
I second Fan Control, its really quite nice.
Does Fan Control work under Windows? From what I understand, smcFanControl settings carry over to Windows when you have it running and then reboot into Boot Camp.
I just tried the program and it works great.
powerbook support? none.. meh. cool idea though, would like to stop burning my legs.
awesome post thank you so much i turned my fan speed all the way up and it cooled everything of in a hurry !
Asks for admin name and password which I gave and it does not recognize. Good idea, but cannot get it to work