Summer is Here, Keep Your Mac Cool With smcFanControl
Let me tell you, you absolutely want to download this application. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far, and it is only going to get hotter. It was about 90 degrees outside, and my house has no air conditioning. My computer CPU’s should run between 10 - 30 degrees Celsius; yesterday it was around 50 degrees.
So I went online, and I found this amazing application called smcFanControl, and oh boy, did it help my computer. smcFanControl hacks into your computer, and lets you change the rate of the fan, and by doing this you can really lower your temperature. I only raised the fan speed by about a quarter, and it lowered my processor speeds by about 20 degrees, and I can still barely hear the fan!
That was the temperatures of my computer once I got home, and yesterday my fan speeds were running at about 500. So as you can see, I raised it by about 1000 RPM. Using smcFanControl is really neat, because now I do not have to keep going to dashboard to look at the temperature of my processor’s as my temperature is always displayed on the menu bar.
So when I took this picture my average CPU temperatures were at about 30 degrees Celsius with the fans running at about 1400 RPM. smcFanControl is already my new favorite application, one it is keeping my computer at a cool temperature in my hot house, then two, its got the temperature on the menu bar, and then three, it is really user friendly, which is really good.
This is how you can control your fans, you choose which fans that you wish to control, and you just raise the RPM to your desired number. This happens instantly, for a test I raised my CPU fan all the way, and just like that I instantly heard the fan pick up the pace. Then below the fan control you can customize the way you like it, like if you were on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, how you want to display temperature, and many other features.
Now you may be asking, well if you run the fan to hard won’t the fan break? Well, I hardly believe the fan will break because you are raising the speed. I do believe that it won’t last as long, but you need to remember. Replacing a fan costs about $50 max. Then to replace a CPU, that can cost anywhere to $1000!
Concluding Thoughts
So what are your thoughts of smcFanControl? How hot does your computer run without it, how hot does it run with it?
Comment by MacTipper on 25 May 2008:
Travis,
The link that you have doesn’t work on my MBP. Here’s a link that does:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049
(Well, the link does work. But the app it links to doesn’t.)
Oliver
Comment by Travis on 25 May 2008:
Did you try downloading it? I know when I downloaded it, it said it doesn’t support my Mac, but it works anyways.
Comment by MacTipper on 26 May 2008:
Well, I downloaded your link and when I ran it, it said, “This program doesn’t support this computer.” And the only option was to quit. However, when I ran the one I pointed out, it said, “This program has not bee tested on this hardware. However, it should be safe to run.” And the two buttons were “Run” and “Quit”.
Have you tested our link on a laptop?
Oliver