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Feature Request: Set temps, let's do the software the rest

Control fans on Apple hardware: iMacs, Macbooks, etc

Moderator: Steven

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Pete248
Posts: 5
Joined: 24 Jun 2016, 09:00

Feature Request: Set temps, let's do the software the rest

Post by Pete248 »

I've used fan control in iStat menus for years and resently switched to Macs Fan Control mainly because of the sensor based control of fans.

Great software, congratulations.

But for me to be the ultimate fan control tool, it should save me from deciding, which fan I want to control from which sensor.

The reason for using a third party fan control software is to keep the temperature of all components in my 2009 Mac Pro in an acceptable range and otherwise keep the fans as silent as possible.

I don't want to figure out, which fan is mostly responsible to keep a harddrive in drivebay 1 cool. Is it the Intake, the Outake or the PSU Fan? Frankly I still do not know.

Lets say it is the Intake fan, which is mostly responsible for cooling the drive bays, then it doesn't help much, if I control it's speed from the smart sensor in drive bay 1, if I copy tons of data to the drive in bay 4. Bay 1 stays cool, Intake fan runs low and drive 4 gets cooked. :(

Ideally I want to set a dedicated base and maximal temperature for each of the devices in my Mac Pro and want to have Macs Fan Control figure out, how to achieve this with minimal fan speeds.

As nowadays SSD / flash storage can be as well on PCIe cards, a preference pane, where I tell Macs Fan Control where each device is located inside my Mac Pro could be helpful for the software and wouldn't be much effort for the user to set up.

Figuring out a strategy, which fan(s) should be adjusted to cool a special device could be complicated and you would have to generate a profile for each machine.

But maybe you could hand over the task to Macs Fan Control. In case it needs to cool down a special component it could slightly vary the speed of each fan and monitor the effect on that device. That way it could create a weighting key for each device/fan combination and improve on it over time.

Edit: Meanwhile I believe it is only the PCI fan that cools both the PCIe devices and the hard drives in bay 1 to 4. There is still the problem that I can drive this fan only from the readout of a single sensor but this sensor obviously does not reflect the temperature of every device that is cooled by that fan.
So maybe just making it possible to control a fan by more than one sensor (i.e. the sensor whose value is closer to the set maximum temperature wins) would be a much simpler solution that's almost as good as what I've asked for initially.

Maybe I'm asking too much for a free app.

Let me say, that I'd happily pay 20 or even 50 bucks for a pro version of Macs Fan Control. Still a bargain if it protects the $1000 M.2 flash storage in my cMP from dying premature due to overheating.

Best regards

Peter
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Steven
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Re: Feature Request: Set temps, let's do the software the rest

Post by Steven »

Pete248
Hello,

thanks for the feedback and proposal.

Currently, I don't suspect this coming - cannot imagine to buy any kind of Apple PC (MFC supports more than 75) to test all scenarios.
Pete248
Posts: 5
Joined: 24 Jun 2016, 09:00

Re: Feature Request: Set temps, let's do the software the rest

Post by Pete248 »

Well I've already expected, the idea with profiles for each Mac would be too much work. ;)

I've added my other small solution with letting a fan be controlled by more that one fan, which would be a bit more work on the user side to set up, but would make it possible to keep every component below its critical temperature, as a new topic.

Maybe this one has more chance to get implemented.

Best regards

Peter
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