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smcFanControl?
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11 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
application called smcFanControl, allows you to set a custom fan baseline for the curve, meaning you can make your fan go faster than it would in some situations. This is important in macs because despite the fan hitting 100% around 80C macs don't cool down very quickly. It is better to prevent it from getting that hot in the first place. Also it's better for the lifespan of the computer. And for why it's getting hot, idk, that's just what macs do. Also you don't need to be worried about the hardware unless you are running super intensive games for like 5 hours straight. the CPU will throttle as well as the GPU to prevent overheating. I have a 2014 MBP 13" that I have pushed waaaaay past the limits of what you should do with a baseline mac.... no hardware damage, I did recently change the thermal paste on it, and that improved performance and thermals, but a 2017 computer should not need new thermal paste. it's just that mine was 5 years old, and you should change thermal paste every 3-4 years.
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Github link to SMCFanControl
Oof, OP, please use caution with macupdate.com – that site has long been known to distribute apps bundled with malware. Since this is OP’s first foray into macOS, my advice would be to avoid that site (and the litany of slick-looking “download free Mac apps!” clones just like it).
The original developer of smcFanControl hosts a compiled version (.app in a .zip) on their GitHub. If you want to trust a third party app or repo, best to cut out the middleman because who knows what they’ve done to it.
Worth noting that the latest build of smcFanControl was last updated and compiled back in October 2016, and I’d imagine OP’s brand new MBP is running Big Sur, so it might not work very well, if at all:
A cursory glance at the Issues and Pull requests there suggest problems exist such as: no support for dark mode, resolution scaling issues, broken/unlinked core components due to SMC-related naming convention updates in later Mac firmware versions, and I’d bet you’ll run into kext/SIP-related headaches just trying to get this thing installed.
Your MBA will do about 45hs on xmr (35 with the Monero GUI ).
Your better off using it to mine cryptonight light like Aeon or TRTL where you should get about 190hs or so.
Edit: if you do any mining download and install smcFancontrol and bump that sucker to 3800rpm. The stock Fan curve on a Mac is a joke for anything other than web browsing. Even running daemon will run your cpu 65-70c because the fan is set to 1100rpm up to 75c. https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl
I recommend xmrig 2.6 for easiest setup but you will need to compile it to run.
Don't worry about it. Intel has three levels of mitigation for making sure that the CPU is not damaged by high temperatures. If you think that the skin of the MBP is too hot, you can increase the minimum fan speed with a program like smcFanControl:
https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl
but your CPU should not be damaged by it.
Note: If you put your computer on the edge when operating in clamshell mode (with a stand, obviously), it will cool down a bit with no increase in fan noise.
There are many things you can do to help speed up and cool down your computer: a big thing you can do would be to wipe your drive and reinstall the OS. I would also suggest using SMCFanControl (or something like it) to keep the fans running higher and the computer cooler – this could be what you need to keep it going until you get a new one. Make sure that nothing's keeping air from flowing around it - you could even lift it up on four corks or whatever so that there's more space underneath it. Installing an SSD would probably be the single best thing you could do for speed, but if you're planning up a new device soon then maybe it doesn't really make sense. Aside from this, try disabling as many login items as you can, running OnyX to clear caches and logs, and turning off Show item info and Show icon preview in Desktop View Options (and if you're running Yosemite you can go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Reduce transparency).
<edit>
Official docs from smcfancontrol say that the fan control still happens, just you get to set a new minimum speed.
> When I run smcFanControl and set a new minimum speed, will my fan speed still increase if the CPU load gets higher?
> Yes, fan speed will increase as defined by Apple. smcFanControl lets the fans stay in automatic mode and just sets the minimum fan speed. However, the higher you set the minimum fan speed, the longer it will take for the fan speed to increase.
A couple of things it could be:
Running out of memory. - You might check that your computer has sufficient free space on its main drive. The drive gets used as "swap space" (virtual memory) for the RAM when your computer runs low on RAM. If memory is the issue, it can help to quit other programs to free up more RAM. And restarting your computer before you start playing could free up more RAM too.
Heat. - This game looks kinds of graphically intensive. If your computer is getting really hot while playing, this heat is not good for the computer. If you are on a laptop, you might get a cooling pad to help keep it cool. And as the other commenter said, turning down the graphics settings in the game will also help with this.
You might also run the "Activity Monitor" app while you play. It's located in either the Applications folder or the Utilities folder. This will allow you to monitor how much of your CPU and Memory (RAM) are getting used while you play.
If you think heat is the issue, you could also try the smcFanControl app to make your computer's fan run harder. https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl/releases (this app might not do anything on the MacBook Air, if that's what you're using, though, since not all of those have fans.)
I still use mine daily for Firefox, Thunderbird, TextWrangler, and gcc. It was one of the beefiest you could buy in 2007 with the 2.4GHz C2D and 1920x1200 matte screen, and I've upgraded it to 6GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I kept it on 10.6.8 Snow Leopard and I use uMatrix+uBlock to block most JavaScript on the web, so it's still fairly snappy.
Apple replaced the logic board replaced once, just outside out of warranty but they did it for free because it was the known GPU issue; it still has an 8600M GT, but I don't think the replacement boards used the same faulty batch. More recently I redid all the thermal paste and replaced one of the fans, and I think I'm on my fourth battery as they tend to swell when they get old. Oh and something went wrong with SMC last year (dead sensor?) making the fans blare full speed all the time... until I wrote a cron job to run every minute, reading the temperature and overwriting the max fan speed, using smcFanControl for the dirty work.
Bear in mind though, this is an 11-year daily driver still going strong.
Hmm... I've heard that heat has been an issue with most MBPs for a while now, and I recently had one die on me due to overheating. I would strongly suggest using some kind of fan control (I like smcFanControl myself) to control the heat.
I've had my other MBP (late 2009 2.26GHz Core2Duo, 8GB RAM aftermarket, 750GB + SSD Hybrid aftermarket) for almost 5 years now and it still runs like a champ and is primarily where I develop. It can even play D3 at about 10-15 FPS (all low settings) haha.
Got the 2014 on tax free weekend + student discount + $100 back to school Apple Gift Card. Well worth it.
The 2014 is imo money well spent and if you can swing the 16GB (or decide that 8GB is enough and you'd prefer 256GB SSD), I'd go for that. Just better performance and eventual resale down the road.
Even if you do still decide to get the base model, it's a fine purchase.
Be sure to grab SMC Fan Control 2.5B - a handy little tool that puts a bit more control over the fan when gaming.
If the computer becomes so hot, you can surely hear the noise from the fan. If not, there's definitely a problem with SMC controller or so, that stop increasing fan speed accordingly with the temperature. Best solution is to take it to Apple Services.
Or maybe on Mac OS, you want to try the SMCFanControl app to see if it can help boosting fan speed. https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl/releases