Fan noise on the Powerbook is getting annoying.

Anybody have a silent running powerbook g4? Which fan or how did you get it done?

Regards,

Matt

Are you sure both fans are working at all? If one fan is dead, the other will run at maximum power to compensate.

And it is actually quite hard to find proper working fans as apple is using a quite special piece of hardware.

Geit

I would suggest to open your Powerbook, clean it and apply new thermal paste as I'm sure old are not doing their job propely.. I can recommend ifixit.com with great tutorials how to open Powerbook.

matt3,
Quote:

I agree with the suggestion to use the ifixit instructions to remove and clean everything inside your G4 PowerBook and then install new Arctic Silver thermal paste on the heat sinks attached to the fan assemblies. They are very different in the 15" model when compared to the 17" PowerBook models. I rarely ever hear the fans come on in either of my G4 PowerBooks, and in fact have looked for fan control software that will allow me to turn the fans on at lower temperatures, so I can turn them on and keep my PowerBook's cooler, because I think my PowerBook's get too hot before the fans turn on, or increase their speed. I do know that at least on the 17" models, the fan on one side is controlled by the temperature of the CPU, while the fan on the other side is controlled by the temperature of the GPU, so no matter how hot the CPU gets, only one fan will come on if the GPU is not also getting hot.

I replaced my fans and heat sinks on my 17" G4 PowerBook because I thought that both fans should be running at the same time and only found out later the information I just typed above. So don't make the same mistake I made and think that your fan is faulty if only one of the fans is running. That is the way it is designed.

If your fans are running all the time, or running a lot, specially when running MorphOS3.0, it means you have a problem and should find out what is wrong (probably dried out thermal paste that needs replacing).

Edit: I also suggest replacing the main battery and the PRAM battery. I doubled my running time by replacing my battery from 2 hours to well over 4 hours of regular use by replacing my battery.

[ Edited by amigadave 13.06.2012 - 20:10 ]

Just to add to the above, Both my Powerbooks have no fan on until the CPU reaches 60 C, then the fan comes on till it drops down,but then it only does this very heavy CPU use, like Flash on MacOSX.


Yeah, viewing a 4 inch video is the most CPU intensive thing that it does.

But anyway, in my experience, Powerbooks fans don't come on. And are not that noisy anyway.

Don't think I've heard them come on with MorphOS...

My two PowerBooks are quiet but run hot with long use. My hearing is bad so I might not notice fan noise.

MorphOS generally keeps the fan speed at the minimum at all times. There are several speed levels matched with temperature ranges as the machine warms up. Many fans tend to be quiet at lower speeds, but all of them will generate some noise at highest speed. If your fans are old, you best look for a new cooling strip - it's a long copper plate with both left and right fans attached, you have to buy the one for your model as there are several versions of this. Both fans are of course controlled independently - the left one cooling the Northbridge and the Radeon and the right one cooling the Northbridge and the CPU. This implies that it's more likely that the right fan will spin up more frequently - due to MorphOS not having 3D support at the moment.

To be more precise : no 3D support for Powerbook line of computer with 3.0 release. Pedantic mode off.