FANS kick in very late

Question

Hi - I wanted to know if there's any way I could control the fans in a way that they would kick in at lower temperatures. I noticed my MacBook is completely quiet - can't hear the fans - until about 67 - 70 deg C. Then they kick in. When idle - the Mac stays around 56 - 62 deg C - I would like it little cooler if possible - Any ideas>?

Answer 1

The company that makes the SpeedIt kernel extension, the one that CoreDuo Temp installs an early version of, is getting closer to releasing a 1.0 version that they claim will allow adjustments to control CPU whine and other things.
http://www.increw.com/speedit.html
If you're interested in monitoring your fan behavior, the developer of the Temperature Monitor application has a shareware program called Hardware Monitor, which now reads fan speed.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16609
My fan runs at 1500 RPM minimum. When I run yes processes to stress the CPUs, the fan kicks in as the temp hits about 75 deg C, speeds up rapidly to the specified max of 6200 RPM, stays at that speed until the temp drops from a max of about 81 deg C to about 66 deg C, and then adjusts itself to keep that temp. When the CPU load is removed, the fan drops to the 1500 RPM minimum again.
Hardware Monitor also reads CPU frequency, which for me runs 1333 MHz mostly, dipping to 1000 occasionally, and of course rising to 2000 max. The steps seem to be 1000, 1333, 1500, 1667, 2000. The readings from Core Duo Temp that I've seen recently posted (always maxed out) are apparently bogus. (I don't run CoreDuo Temp.)
Lastly, reading your post about your idle temperature, I glanced at my temperature, which usually reads about 40 deg C at low load. I was surprised to see it at 53 deg C. I looked at Activity Monitor and saw that there was a process called coreaudiod using about 9% CPU. (I didn't have any audio apps running.) After a little googling, I killed it, and as expected the system immediately started a new instance, but one that wasn't using measurable CPU. The temperature immediately dropped by 12 deg C, to the usual 40-ish. The point being, I guess, that if you have unusual temps to check to see if there are any processes chewing up CPU that you can identify that shouldn't be.