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My Quad-Core Mac Pro tower is two days old. Initially, I was impressed with how quiet it was compared to my older Macbook Pro. Then on day two, for some reason it started running very loudly. It's not just a "little" loud- my wife walked into the room and asked what the noise was.
At first I thought this was just because I was hitting the CPU a bit (importing my iPhone library into iLife '09, and running Eclipse). But now that that's done, Activity Monitor shows a virtually idle CPU; there's nothing running that ought to be causing this, as far as I can tell.
I tried powering it off & letting it cool down for a few minutes to no avail; about 10 seconds after powering up, the box gets loud again. I took a look at it with the side cover off, and it seems to be the fan near the top middle, between the power supply and the disk drive.
It can't be a dust issue, as the machine is only 2 days old (and I peeked inside anyway just to be sure- clean). I did do a software update over the past 24 hours or so, but I can't say that it occurred immediately after that. I also did a migration of my old apps and data from my MBPro, for what it's worth.
- Why is it suddenly so loud?
- How can I monitor the fan speed and various system temperatures?
My temps and fan speeds:
UPDATE 1:
Took it to the Apple Store. They took it in the back (where it's presumably quieter) and ran a fan diagnostic; no problems were found. The guy also told me that it was "a little loud", but normal. I don't buy it. It was virtually silent the first 24 hours I was using it. They would not replace/service it in the store (grrr... that's why I went there, as directed by Apple Care) but said I could get a replacement from the online store, as it was just purchased. I think I will try that.
UPDATE 2:
Apple is letting me send it back for a replacement. Glad to see so many responses to this question mentioning that the MacPros are usually silent; it's not all just in my head.
Caffeine Coma
Posted 2009-10-29T00:01:16.033
Reputation: 153
2If its only two days old, have you thought about taking it back under warranty? Could be a faulty component. – Wayne – 2009-10-29T00:40:41.493
Hmm, I guess that's an option. But I doubt it's loud enough for them to consider it "broken". If I had turned it on and it sounded this way from the beginning I guess I'd have just accepted it, but it only started this after a day of near-silence. – Caffeine Coma – 2009-10-29T01:23:03.617
It doesn't only have to be the CPU - the GPU can also run pretty hot. – harrymc – 2009-10-29T07:03:30.383
harryc- true, but nothing interesting is happening video-wise. Not running a game, nor any fancy screen saver. Really just running Safari, and it does this 10 seconds in from a cold-boot. – Caffeine Coma – 2009-10-29T13:05:52.910
For reference the quad-core we have at work spins up when you start it up but by the time the Apple logo has come up it's whisper quiet. – Chealion – 2009-10-29T15:08:46.607