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A workaround for the MacBook 6200 rpm issue
Authored by: arcticmac on Jul 06, '11 12:15:53PM

This hint actually seems like a really bad idea. Having your computer run hotter (effectively what this hint accomplishes), will tend to decrease its lifetime (heat is bad for most electronics, especially disk drives), and can actually hurt performance as well, if the CPU runs enough hotter that the system throttles CPU clock speed back. While I agree that it's interesting to know how to change this by hand, it seems like something that one SHOULDN'T change. I actually usually use smcFanControl to turn my fan speed UP to try to keep my computer cooler. In my opinion, 60C is actually a lot hotter than your MacBook ought to be, and I usually consider anything above 73 to be abnormally hot.

Then again, I guess there is some variation in the temperature diodes between machines, so yours might claim to be a few degrees hotter than mine for the same real conditions.



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A workaround for the MacBook 6200 rpm issue
Authored by: Michelasso on Jul 06, '11 01:36:58PM

But that's the point. The computer doesn't run hotter. Well, if it does it does it for up to 60 seconds, just the time for cron to kick the script and change the MAX rpm value for the fan. After that it's up to the SMC to decide if it can go slower (usually it doesn't). If the rpm is too low, it gets hotter but then in few seconds the max value is raised. On the other hand, lowering the MAX rpm I still get the CPU getting cooler.

I checked for days before to come out with this workaround. I've found many people complaining about the fan speeding, often for nothing. It might be a problem with the SMC. It simply doesn't seem to control the fan as it should.

Regarding the 80+ C degrees.. Well, I don't know. Some people in youtube even opened the MacBook and changed the thermal paste. They claim it runs 5-10 C cooler, but still no use for the fan. All I know is that all of this started after upgrading to Snow Leopard. And so many others reported. It seems that with Lion it will get even worse. At least with the white MacBook late 2006 like mine.



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