Macbook, temperature and fan-speed (again)

Hello,

I have been using my 1.83 Intel Core Duo macbook for the past couple of years. I bought it in Oct-06. Did not have any major problems till recently.

Off late (past couple of months) my macbook-fan seems to be running quite erratically and making too much noise. I did not pay too much attention to it.

Very recently, it got automatically shutdown when I was running a flash application, and it was placed at home on a blanket. It did not recur. In general, the fan speed seems to be reaching 6000+ rpm when I lauch the video of Skype. The main problem with both of these is the sudden increase of noise of the fan, which seems a little too much.

I have read the past threads on the subject and understand that others also have experienced similar problems with macbook. I have installed smccontrol and watching the speeds (did not adjust the base-speed) for the past couple of weeks.

The temperature at low loads is 60 C with fan speeds aroun 1500 rpm. When under high loads (a flash player + X + iTunes + skype) it is 75-85 C with 6200 rpm.

So, are the above temperatures and speeds normal? Do I need to clean the macbook?

I am not protected by Apple-care protection (beyond warranty). Should I go to the apple repair centre and ask them to replace the fan? What should be done to find out the problem?

Are there any other things I could do to find out if the problem is with the fan or mother-board or something else?

Please let me know.
Thanks for any help.
Regards

 

Whoa, the temperatures are not normal at all! I would make sure that nothing is blocking the fans, and also make sure that you clean the fans out thoroughly, because there could be something obstructing the fans from dissipating the heat properly.