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March 30, 2007
Enhanced Apple Mac Pro Hard Drive Cooling
How to: Use smcfFanControl to Optimize Hard Drive Cooling in the Apple Mac Pro
Introduction
The Apple Mac Pro is an ultra quiet, powerful desktop computer that can mount up to four internal SATA hard drives using the four aluminum drive sleds. During the AMUG review of the Apple Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, we noticed that if the Mac Pro was fully loaded with four SATA hard drives the temperature levels of the hard drives in bays 1 and 4 were significantly higher than the hard drives in bays 2 and 3. The reason for this is that bays 2 and 3 receive more direct air flow from the top front 120mm fan. The hard drive in bay 1 only gets a reflection of the fan air flow as it sits on top of the fan assembly and the hard drive in bay 4 is the farthest away from the front fan assembly. As a result, hard drives placed in bays 1 and 4 will operate warmer than those installed in bays 2 or 3.
As you can see in the graphic above, SATA hard drive bay 1 is on the left side and bay 4 is on the far right.
Background
The Apple Mac Pro expansion slot/HDD fan seems to stay close to 500 RPM even if the SMART hard drive temperature indicates that the hard drive has reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Users can view the RPM of the Mac Pro fans using Hardware Monitor 4.11. As this 120mm fan can provide additional air flow one solution would be to have Apple increase the fan speed when the SMART data from the SATA hard drives indicate a temperature of over 115 degrees. Another solution would be a user adjustable setting for the Mac Pro fan RPM speed. However, neither of these options are currently available from Apple.When the MacBook was released and some users noticed it was too hot to place on their lap for an extended period of time, the smcFanControl application appeared on the scene. While smcFanControl was originally intended to increase the speed of the fan in the Apple Intel notebook computers, we thought this same application might be helpful for increasing the fan speeds in the Apple Mac Pro.
The Apple Mac Pro provides quiet, high performance computing with room for expansion. With expansion usually comes additional heat. This new tool provides Mac Pro users with the ability to tweak the cooling capability of the computer to meet advanced cooling needs. Complete user control of the Mac Pro internal fan system is an awesome feature. smcFanControl also works with Apple notebooks. Users that are interested in more details may want to check out the smcFanControl FAQ.
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Contact Information:
Hendrik Holtmann
holtmann@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/holtmann/eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/
Copyright 2007
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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