MOTUnation.com

I have had a MacPro for a while. It runs great. This past year the fans have become increasingly noisy. Lately its been downright annoying. I periodically would open it up and blow the dust off of the fans and the circuit boards. It gets pretty dusty.
Then last week, I started having very intermittant problems with my video screens going blank to the rotating color scheme.

I got on the internet and started researching fan problems figuring I am getting ready to have a fan go out or a video board.

What I discovered for me was nothing short of amazing. There was an article with a picture of the 1900 video module like I have and hidden from view was a carpet, yes I mean a carpet of solid dust blocking the heat sink fins that allow the air to flow to the rear fan on the module.

Hmmm I said. I pulled my module out and I had the exact situation. I blew it out and cleaned it well.

Conclusion. I cannot even hear my computer running right now. No fan noise at all.

Wow.

Thanks for the info! I'll check mine tomorrow. Can you share the link?

Let me confirm from experience this is absolutely true. My video card in my old 8 core mac would get clogged with a carpet of lint once or twice a year. When this happens, the fan runs constantly...especially if you are doing anything at all that requires video processing.

Cleaning the card is as easy as chips as they say. You can actually use your little finger to remove the lint from the heat sink, but I had the most luck using a QTip. Run it across the lint and it pulls right up so you can remove it. Use as aerosol can "dust blower out er" (don't know what they are called) to blast air thru the ventilation path of the card to get the last bits of dust out, and you are good to go.

I don't know if this the exact page I looked at but it has a photograph of the the way the dust loooks on the video card. It is the grey carpet in the card. Easy to miss of you are not looking at it. It almost looks like it should be there, like a ventilation filter or something, but it definitely should be cleaned out. I used a Dust buster compressed air from Walmart and a bobby pin to lift it out.

Be careful though not to handle the surface mounted components on the other side of the circuit board. Might be static sensitive.

Very easy job to do though.

Here is the link.

http://macsaregreat.com/?p=63

I bet hundreds if not thousands of people have gotten rid of their computer over this issue and was not aware of the quick fix.

This should be at least a semi-annual maintenance task.

Apple would be doing themselves a favor if they would issue an email to users that have bought MacPros and alert them to this issue.

In the article, many, many people stated that they had contacted Apple support and was not told to check this and problem was never solved.

Can't see the forest for the trees

Thank you so much for drawing attention to this! My machine was driving me mad and I hadn't figured out what was making the racket.....

I went and got an air-duster and blasted the whole of the inside of my Mac Pro - I can't believe how quiet it is now!

I actually swapped out one of the drives a while back because i was worried the noise was coming from there.... anyway it was an excuse to get larger drives and re-organise.

I always try to avoid dragging the Mac out and disconnecting all the many cables, but I really will do this more often now.

Again, thanks for the heads-up.

Cheers

Stephen

Wow! Thank you! What a difference!


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Glad it helped you Stephen. I knew I was not the only one on the 'nation that had this problem. I figured my fan was going bad. My computer is running like a whisper now also. I was getting ready to relocate it out of my mixing area!!

Wow! Thank you! What a difference!


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Great info,my MacPro has been getting a bit noisier will check.
Thanks

Yeah, every once in a while I evict the dust bunnies. Haven't done it in a while. Thanks for the reminder.

Phil

I don't recall my G5 having a card like that. OTOH, my G4 test machine does and, guess what?

Much quieter now.

Thanks!

THANK YOU for the reminder!!

Time to clean the dust-bunnies from my happy machine! Because I'm always adding or changing something in my MacPro about twice a year, it makes for a convenient time to clean those nasty little bunnies out from inside. LOL! Haven't done anything to my dear MacPro for several months now so those bunnies are multiplying!!! It's "Bust the Dust-Bunnies" time.

I also have iPhone, send it to me..
Let me check, how could it works..