15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Affected With Fan Speed Issue, SanDisk SSDs To Blame?

By Binu Paul email: b.paul@mobilenapps.com | Mar 09, 2013 07:51 AM EST

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There seems to be an increasing number of Apple's 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro owners flocking to Apple support forums to vent their issues with the fan speed. Many users are experiencing mostly unexplained bursts of system cooling fans shifting to fast speed, which is apparently caused by the Sandisk solid state drive (SSD) that Apple recently replaced the original Samsung model with. The laptops are reportedly emitting extremely loud fan noises even under light CPU load.

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The issue was first brought out when a user posted a complaint about the fan issue on an Apple support threat and the forum quickly grew into a 27 pages worth of complaints. Despite the increasing inflow of complaints, Apple is yet to officially acknowledge or comment on the issue.

According to the original reporting user on the thread, following the standard troubleshooting steps including running the Apple Hardware Test utility did not provide any fix or insight on the problem.

"I bought a MacBook Pro Retina just under a month ago, and have been experiencing some issues with the fan speeds. I can be just browsing the web or checking emails or playing music through iTunes, and the fans will spin up to full speed for a minute or so, and then return to normal. I have reset the SMC, the PRAM and repaired the Disk and Disk Permissions, with no luck, I've also tried a full format and reinstall with no luck either," the user by name 'jamezmbp' wrote on the Apple support forum.

According to a YouTube user by name Oyinko, the early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro model's fan ramps up its speed to a potentially detrimental level regardless of the unit's temperature. Oyinko and a host of people on the official Apple support forums believe that the issue is related to SanDisk SSDs; however, a couple of other users have reported that the same issue has been noted with the Samsung-equipped units as well.

"MacNN spoke with an independent testing lab who tried to reproduce the issue with eight previous-model Retina MacBook Pro laptops, five with the Sandisk SSD, and three with the Samsung SSD. Seven of the refreshed models were also tested. None of the 15 laptops examined were able to reproduce the issue, given the steps that were provided on the support forums to test machines," Electronista reports.

It's speculated that Apple will likely refresh both its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines in June 2013 with internal upgrades while, reportedly, retaining their current design.

Check out the annoying fan noice in the video below:

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